Water Storage Issue

Yesterday, we ran across more name calling by a left wing blog. Since we don't do any linking to blogs that engage in name calling, we won't be linking to them.

They opined that Bob Schaffer could be attacked because he had supported a referendum that would have spent $2 billion for water storage projects. Since that blog is part of the big blue lie machine, they claimed that it was $4 billion, but what is a little exaggeration among friends?

Today, we discover that Bill Ritter is talking about water storage to the corn farmers.

"Really, we can help ourselves a great deal with conservation, with re-use, with shared use between municipalities and agricultural land," said Ritter after his speech. "And then we have to decide at what level we embark upon greater water storage."

That is going to make it very difficult to play the water storage card against Bob Schaffer.

Fouling up the Planet by the Numbers

In what was obviously a warning to Bill Ritter and Mark Udall without mentioning either by name, the Rocky Mountain News said the following about corn ethanol:

"This dramatic expansion has substantial implications for already strained water and grassland resources in the Ogallala Aquifer region [eastern Colorado]," the report states, calculating the additional withdrawal of water from the most depleted parts of the aquifer at 59 billion to 120 billion gallons per year - comparable to the amount of water consumed by Denver Water Board customers in a year. Another potential consequence, it warns, is the loss of fragile grasslands...

Lawmakers need to recognize that alternative fuel programs come with a price that is not always obvious, and could create larger problems than the ones they're intended to cure.

Isn't it interesting that the same Mark Udall who has done so much to kill off Colorado's forests might also eventually take the blame for permanently turning eastern Colorado into a dust bowl? And he has done all of this while claiming to be an "environmentalist!"

Cornfused

Just a week ago, Mark Udall was touting his corn subsidies for Colorado ethanol production.

This site pointed out that the water intensive process of growing corn to produce ethanol in a water intensive refining process didn't seem like such a good idea in a state that always seems to be short of water.

CSU, which is a leader in research into ethanol production, reports in its college paper:

... ethanol experts and politicians are beginning to agree that corn-based ethanol may not be the magic energy solution many have come to see it as.

"When you start thinking about what kind of plant you should grow to best utilize its biomass, corn is not the answer," said Ken Reardon, a Colorado State University chemical and biological engineering professor who researches ethanol production.

"Because corn uses a lot of water, people are now looking at crops that take less water to grow and produce more mass per acre than corn...”

Fort Collins Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer said alternative and renewable energy is a “national security” issue and the advances being made in ethanol production will play a big role.

“We seem to be right on the cusp of being able to crack the next step,which is to allow a wider range of organic material to be used in the development of ethanol,” Schaffer said. “Once that is cracked, we will be able to see everything from wood chips and switchgrass to other crops that will result in higher yields.”

Schaffer’s opponent, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, called corn ethanol a “bridge” to the new energy future.

One week, corn is THE answer, and the next, it is only a "bridge." Is anyone else cornfused?

This just raises more questions for Mark Udall: Why would any profit oriented entrepreneur want to build a corn ethanol plant in Colorado if it is only to be a temporary "bridge?" Where in Colorado do you propose to put a corn ethanol plant and which city's water do you intend to appropriate for it? Environmental Impact Studies will doubtless slow the construction of a corn ethanol plant to well past the period when the "bridge"no longer needed, so why are we trying to grow more corn if there are to be no local corn ethanol refineries?