Ethanol plants, Coal run Electric Plants, The Ogallala Aquifer and the Great American Desert
After listening to Margot Gerritsen post Ethanol: Irrational Exuberance? I'm reflected on my own thoughts about this.
One source says that one Ethanol Plant will use approximately 600,000 gallons a day, that's 219,000,000 gallons a year. Also, in comparison an acre of corn uses a million gallons a day. One Ethanol plant added to farmers raising corn could reduce trillions of gallons from the Ogallala per year. My granddad once said that water would become a commodity like oil and gas and it look like it already has, as many farmers are selling water rights to these plants.
With the added addition coal burning electric plant, the water usage again increases to more billions of gallons on top of the above mention gallons.
The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the world's largest aquifers and it lays underneath eight states: South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. With this much depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, these areas could become the Great American Desert and we could see several cities such as Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kansas and Grand Island, Nebraska become ghost towns. This can result in a transitional shift of population to the east and west sides of the United States - a repeat of the dust bowl.
