Ethanol plant sold Chatham a Monorail

Chatham is located in the agrarian haven known as southern Ontario. This small city is not known for its cultural savvy, or its economic bounty. But, as my mother reminds me, its a nice place to raise kids.

Chatham is also the corn producing capital in Canada. Detasseling is a right of passage for teens here.

So, in the mid-90’s, when the economy was looking no better in Chatham than it does today in the US, Chathamites were looking for a way to attract industry, and inject some life-giving employment into our area. Looking around we wondered what we had that the world wanted. Answer? Corn. Lots and lots of corn.

It ended up that we struck a deal to bring an ethanol producing plant (gasoline made from corn mostly) to our little corner of Canada.

I even shilled for them as a grade 7 student. In a radio interview I remember touting how ethanol was better than dirty burning fossil fuels, helping to reduce particulates in the air, and thereby helping to reduce Chatham’s alarmingly high youth asthma rate. I remember talking about CO2 emissions and the glories of having this ethanol producing plant come to invigorate our economy. (Oh, and if you weren’t aware, I apparently WAS Lisa Simpson as a child. Ha!)

Regardless of who courted who, its my opinion that Green Field Ethanol sold Chatham a proverbial ‘Monorail‘. They built an Ethanol plant on the edge of town. Despite their claims of clean burning fuel, Chatham noticed a distinct smell in the air not soon after they opened. Was is burnt toast everyone was smelling? Someone burning grass clippings that had been soaked in pesticide first? Either we were and are all still having one perpetual stroke, or this is one smelly plant.

According to researchers and environmentalists alike, biofuels originating from plant matter like corn, take more fossel fuels to produce than the net energy they produce. In short, they don’t make sense as a solution to our fossil fuel quagmire.

To be sort of fair, all biofuels are not created equal and the technology is still in the works.

If you’re interested in reading more here’s a few links:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705231841.htm

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9861379

And one for their side:

http://www.journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html