The Associated Press
Article Published: 12/27/05, 3:29 am In
southwestern Minnesota, a lack of water has been thwarting the
development of new factories and ethanol plants and forcing
utilities to pump water through thousands of miles of
pipelines just to meet existing demands.
“People can
see they’re running out of water,” said Tim Cowdery, a
Minnesota-based hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“They’d like to build more industry. They’d like to build more
ethanol plants. They just don’t have the water to do
it.”
The problem came into focus about a year ago when
agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. quietly inquired about the
prospects of building an ethanol plant near Pipestone. The
plant would benefit local farmers and create jobs in the
sluggish economy.
However, Dennis Healy, chief
executive officer of the Lincoln-Pipestone Rural Water System,
said he had to reject the idea. He said Minnetonka-based
Cargill requested 1 million gallons of water each day, but he
could offer only 100,000 to 200,000 gallons.
The
growing clash between water conservation and economic
development is most clearly seen in the ethanol industry,
where plants typically use 3€ to 6 gallons of water for every
gallon of fuel produced.
About 2 billion gallons of
water a year are consumed by Minnesota’s 15 ethanol
plants.
One source of help should come from a $400
million public works project in South Dakota – the Lewis &
Clark Rural Water System – that eventually will pipe 3.78
million gallons of Missouri River water daily to southwestern
Minnesota and northwestern Iowa.
However, that water
might not actually arrive for another 10 to 20 years because
of shortfalls in congressional funding.
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