I would like to take a moment to thank john for sticking to this issue. It is my experience that 1) any community activist simply cannot handle many issues - the issues are many times too technical and time consuming to manage - one must concentrate on an issue or two; 2) once folk see that a community activist is on a particular issue they begin to rely on that individual or group - others believe the issue is being addressed - and that is good because other activists can adopt other issues; 3) community activism is literally a thankless job - I will bet John can count the times folks have said "hey thanks" on one hand.
Hey thanks John!! Brian Bates, Macgrove
John Birrenbach wrote:
After a more in depth look at the article in the paper and knowing that with GSE you always have to read between the lines, I have many concerns about what is gonna happen.
First it only takes a couple of days to process ethanol from start to finish. They state that they plan on continuing to make ethanol from supplies of Beer and stuff, as they are available. As they are
really doing the bottlers a big favor in getting rid of their hazardous waste, I would suspect that as they started to take this material, that information went out to all the area bottlers, and has since gotten around the state in publications for the industry. So a shortage of this material, enough to keep them from operating, is uncertain.
Therein lies the issue.... if they are able to get enough bottlers to either give them or pay them to get rid of this stuff, it is possible for them to resume production on a limited or maybe even full capacity. Now the chemistry of everything will have to change in order for them to use this waste product. Additives will be needed to be added to make it a nutrient rich environment to get the ethanol process to work, these additives I am told are not that expensive and in ready supply.
IF GSE goes into partial production, as they have clearly indicated in the comments to the paper, then, they will be under the cap's required under all of the agreements they have with the Consent Decree, and the Stink settlement with the city. Yet at the same time, on given days of the week they will be making a stench the likes of which we have come to know all to well, maybe even worse.
IF GSE goes into full production, there is no information available about what sort of chemicals will be produced as an offshoot, but it is clear that they will change. Many will be the same, but there will be a complete new set of chemical compounds created in the process using only Waste from the Bottlers.
In other interesting news, we are not the only one's fighting the stench of ethanol plants and what they do. In Michigan people are suing, not an old brewery, but a state of the art ethanol production facility. Recently, they have a bit of a problem mainly a fire.
http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1084893347327030.xml
What's pretty amazing is that this is the third fire in the last 18 months. When are people gonna learn these things catch fire.
But Michigan Ethanol is just another in a long line of "good corporate citizen" ethanol plants, which is why they started building the plant without alerting neighbors, are being sued by those same neighbors (because those neighbors hate the noise, stink and danger), and are themselves pursuing litigation against a local resident (Eric Fox) because Michigan Ethanol wants a court order to allow them access to land belonging to Mr. Fox and to cut down Fox's trees so that Michigan Ethanol can clean up a mess in the Cass River that Michigan Ethanol's negligence caused:
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/business/7147184.htm
This of course follows the weekend news of ten dead in an ethanol plant explosion in China:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9541793%255E1702,00.html
When does GSE open up again, without any notice, on an expired permit designed for Ethanol from Corn not POP? Inquiring minds are asking these questions of the DOJ, EPA, MPCA, MNDH.
_____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul
Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
