Posted: May 11th 2009
KSFY-TV
reports on Senator John Thune's efforts to overturn a pending EPA
decision that could dramatically impact many South Dakota families.
South Dakota Senator John Thune says he's getting ready to fight the Environmental Protection Agency over a recent decision which could hurt the state's ethanol production industry.
Going forward, the EPA wants to consider what it calls "indirect land use" issues involving ethanol production: such as carbon emissions from tractor fuel and fertilizer.
Senator Thune tells us the EPA is unfairly targeting ethanol production and undermining the economy of midwestern states including South Dakota. "What this does I think is undermine an industry that's worked very, very hard to become competitive and to actually reduce significantly the amount of foreign oil we have to rely on as an energy source in this country."
What's more, the EPA wants to determine the carbon footprint of ethanol by putting forth an idea that corn grown in the U-S for fuel is replacing the amount of corn grown here for food...and that agriculture is expanding worldwide as a result...leading to more pollution.
Senator Thune tells us the "fuel for food" idea doesn't fly in his book and that if this EPA plan stays in the place, the big winner will be: big oil. "I think the country is going to go backwards in terms of this unhealthy addiction we have to foreign oil."
We did some checking and found while the EPA wants to apply this new carbon footprint standard to ethanol, production related pollution would not be calculated for petroleum products.
