State legislator has bill to ban corn ethanol in N.H.

Even as federal officials consider raising the amount of ethanol in gasoline from the current 10 percent, a New Hampshire legislator has drafted a bill to ban corn-based ethanol from being any part of the mix in his state, Steve Taylor reports in Lancaster Farming, a weekly journal aimed at the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

"It makes no sense environmentally when making a gallon of ethanol has a bigger carbon footprint than a gallon of gasoline, and it makes no sense to allow it to drive up food costs and availability when millions of people around the globe are facing starvation,” David Campbell told Taylor, who writes that the lawmaker is "undeterred" despite advice from "state bureaucrats" who say his idea "is an impossibility in light of ethanol mandates coming down from Washington."

Taylor, who recently retired after a long tenure as New Hampshire's appointed agriculture commissioner, reports that Campbell has allies in "owners of chainsaws, snowmobiles, outboard boat motors, weed whackers and other power equipment who have already seen their machines damaged by fuel containing ethanol. They’re the leading edge of what the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, a Washington trade group, says is going to be a huge and angry mass of equipment owners should the Environmental Protection Agency go along with proposals to allow gasoline to be formulated at more than the current 10 percent level for ethanol content."

Taylor, right, also reports, "Many in the gasoline industry claim ... unscrupulous marketers are boosting ethanol content well beyond the present E-10 limit because they can make money doing it." (Read more)

So, does Taylor think Campbell's idea will go anywhere? "When it comes to setting public policy, New Hampshire is usually either first or last. An ethanol ban will be sure to stir things up, but I'll bet it will get referred to study," he told us in an e-mail. "But the New Hampshire legislature can do some startling things when it looks from the outside like an idea will go nowhere. The best recent example is a law that banned private entities from mining unknowing patients' medical records for profit. The law was recently upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the consternation of drug companies, and now a couple of other states are looking to copy."