Wrong use

To the editor:

The Lawrence community is fortunate that it did not go with the proposal by the Denver-based International Risk Group, who was considering the former Farmland property for an ethanol manufacturing facility. That land is no longer suitable for such use. With city expansion, that property now lies immediately adjacent to residential, retail, recreational and public school properties. There is not the land buffer that is needed for an industrial chemical manufacturing site with large volumes of hazardous material and significant transportation issues.

Ethanol plants are a proven source of air pollution, noxious odors, fire and explosion hazards, polluted wastewater and noise. Existing ethanol plants have been cited by state and federal environmental agencies on numerous occasions for violating clean air and water laws. Even with emission equipment, they present environmental and quality-of-life issues for surrounding areas.

With an ethanol plant we could expect a facility emergency plan that would significantly impact business employees and residents within a 2.5-mile radius of the plant, use about a 1,000 gallons of water per minute, store over 2 million gallons of ethanol, 100,000 gallons of gasoline, thousands of pounds of sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, phosphoric acid, urea, and ammonia.

Fire risk is an important issue. Ethanol fires cannot be put out with water. It requires special-purpose high-cost foam and responders with specialized training. There were 67 reported tanker truck leaks in 2005 and nine tanker derailments in Pennsylvania alone during 2007.

We don’t need this type of use on the former Farmland property.

William Myers,
Lawrence