Some days you wake up and the view is exceptional.  Here are 180 degrees of mountains for your viewing enjoyment. 

She Doesn't Care For Activist Senator

Marylee prefers Ashburn's passive complaining to Florez' progressive action as a behavioral guide for legislators.

She is wrong when she says the air board was unanimous in extending the clean-air deadline.  After being shown that it was possible to clean our air faster, two board members, Brar and Perea, voted against the extension.

Judy Case doesn't really represent ag interests on the air board.  Most farmers are in favor of progressive rules on air quality because they know it won't hurt them much and cleaner air is good for crop production. 

Case's mistake has been to vote over and over, directly and indirectly, against regulating that one part of valley agriculture that does seriously pollute our air.  That is, the factory dairies with their thousands of animals in close confinement, on cement 24-7, where antibiotics are fed nonstop to keep the pus levels down in the milk.  The pollution that comes out of these giant barns and massive waste lagoons is similar to the smoke out of a factory of 100 years ago.  This is industrial agriculture, not at all similar to the sustainable farms of the past nor the crop growing farms of today.

People like Case belong to the era of the Wild West when you did whatever you wanted with your property.  It is not NIMBY to want cleaner air and to feel that everyone has to do their part.

Rules are Lax

The following is a continuation of an earlier post today but with a better video link.

This flare is in Kern County. The video was taken Tuesday evening (2.12.08).  The flare belongs to an independent oil producer with a permit to flare under emergency conditions.  The permit allows almost daily flaring.  This flare often burns for more than a week straight.  This video was taken during an extreme bad air episode that lasted a full week.  The flare was burning the entire week as well.  It is within a half mile of several dozen homes.  The flames are about 8 feet high at the top of a 15 foot pipe.

Other air basins in California with significant oil production have far stricter rules against this kind of flaring yet we have the worst air.  The homes are mostly low income so that probably explains the less than appropriate rules.

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oil production f~.wmv

Six Straight Days Above Federal Standard

Sunday was the worst as it was approaching record highs for ammonium nitrate levels.  I heard a weatherman say on the radio that it was a nice sunny day with blue skies.  He should have said if you want to see blue skies, go to the coast.

The air district claims recent improvement in air quality but the levels of PM 2.5 (the most deadly pollution we deal with) have risen dramatically this year.  They can't explain the cause either.  Could it be record numbers of cows in Kern County?  Dairies have recently expanded milk production because of record high prices for milk.  Thanks to our Supervisors, we have recent increases in numbers of dairies here in Kern County as well.  Ammonia is the key ingredient in our current pollution levels.  Ammonia rises in massive amounts from manure lagoons at dairies.  I don't believe in coincidences.

We should get some relief later today as some breezes enter our valley.

On a related note, people have been correctly asked not to burn their fireplaces during these horrible air episodes.  Yet, no such restrictions are ever put on industries.  I took photos and a movie of a gas flare yesterday evening which has burned continuously for the past week.  It is located within half a mile of dozens of homes.  These are generally low income homes without the best protection from the elements.  The energy wasted in this flare the past week could have heated all these homes for the entire winter.

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Plants in Wasco, Famoso, Delano, Pixley, Hanford, and Goshen are Ridiculous

The following fact sheet, compiled from many sources, tries to summarize why making ethanol from corn is just about one of the dumbest ways to minimize foreign oil imports and reduce greenhouse gases we could imagine.  Taxpayer subsidies are the only reason this is viable.  Two plants in Wasco and one in Hanford are up for approval February 19 and one in Famoso will come up before our supervisors sometime in March.  I am sure most readers will disagree with one or more of the statements below.

• Ethanol Plants are Refineries. 

Ethanol Plants, as refineries, are dangerous, noisy, and release dangerous air pollutants. 

Air pollutants include volatile organic compounds such as acetaldehyde, acetic acid, acrolein, ethanol, formaldehyde, methanol and furfural.  Ethanol itself is extremely flammable and very hard to control once on fire.  The plant is noisy, the weekly trains are noisy and the hundreds of daily truck trips are noisy.  Since 2003 there have been 5 or 6 major ethanol fire disasters around the U.S.

• Ethanol Plants produce Noxious Odors.

Some of the odor is sour and reeks of stale beer.  These smells and other pollutants will drift all over a nearby community on the still, bad air days already common in the San Joaquin Valley.

• Ethanol Plants Increase Local Traffic

Over 50 truck trips per day of up to 120 miles round trip, 365 days per year, are needed to carry away the waste product (wet distillers grains) to dairies.  Dozens more truck trips per day will carry the ethanol product to refineries and blenders around the state.

• Ethanol Plants use Massive Amounts of Water.

Each ethanol plant uses from 750,000 to one million gallons of fresh water per day.   This loss of water forces several hundred acres of good farm land out of production.  It lowers water tables which makes pumping more expensive for everyone else.  Growing corn also uses lots of water which is especially critical where the corn fields are irrigated.  It takes about 2000 gallons of water in the San Joaquin Valley to grow enough corn for one gallon of ethanol.  This water use would be  justified to grow food for humans but probably not when it is used to keep American drivers in their SUV’s.

• Waste Water Streams to Local Sewer Systems will add industrial type pollutants to a system not designed for such pollutants.

Besides producing a waste water stream very high in organic matter and expensive to treat, industrial chemicals such as algaecides and rust inhibitors can end up in the thousands of gallons waste water produced per day. 

• Making Ethanol from Corn raises Food Prices.

Food prices have risen dramatically over the past year or two.  A lot of this increase is directly attributable to the nearly doubling of corn prices over the same period.  Demand for corn to make ethanol has depleted our corn reserves at a time when malnutrition and starvation worldwide is increasing.  It is immoral to maintain the energy intensive American way of life by stealing from the stomachs of starving people.

• Taxpayers Subsidize Ethanol Production at well over $1 per gallon.

A partial list of subsidies:  there are tax credits to the producers, direct payments to the blenders, farm subsidies to the corn growers, import tariffs against Brazilian ethanol, and local economic incentives and infrastructure from communities who accept these plants.   Without these subsidies the corn based ethanol plant is not profitable.

• Corn based ethanol costs more to produce than the selling price.

The current commodity price of just the corn necessary to produce a gallon of ethanol is almost as much as the selling price received by the ethanol plant (note:  Futures for corn are currently $5.25 per bushel and current prices of ethanol are around $2.40 per gallon.  One bushel of corn produces around 2.5 gallons of ethanol).  The other costs in transporting and producing the ethanol would leave the balance sheet in the red except for the subsidies of over $1.25 per gallon which are enough to leave large profits for the investors.

• Corn based ethanol uses more energy to produce than the energy it contains.

The GREET analysis the producers like to quote shows a slight gain in energy of around 30% for corn based ethanol.   But, other researchers, who include all inputs in a complete “well to wheels” analysis, find there is no energy gain at all and a significant loss instead.  Since more fossil fuel energy is used than produced it makes no sense to continue in this way.

• Ethanol in the gas tank lowers gas mileage.  Ethanol has an energy value only 70% of an equivalent amount of gasoline.

This problem will only be more apparent as the percent of ethanol in our gas tanks increases. 

• Ethanol in the gas tanks of cars makes local air pollution worse. 

Ethanol evaporates much more quickly than gasoline and its combustion releases more volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides.  Essentially, it makes ozone formation worse and some areas are banning its use in the summertime.  Its only benefit is a reduction in carbon monoxide emissions which is why California started using it as a replacement for MTBE.

• The promised jobs are not what the area needs. 

The only jobs for local people, unless they have high levels of technical education, are truck driving positions carrying either explosive ethanol to dangerous oil refineries and blenders or carrying stinking waste products to stinking dairies.

• Corn based ethanol contributes to global warming.

Because the entire process uses more fossil fuel than what is used to produce an equivalent amount of gasoline the result is more global warming emissions rather than less.  The California Air Resources Board is in the process of analyzing the entire “well to wheel” process of corn based ethanol.  They are also going far beyond the “GREET” analysis the advocates are using and calculating all peripheral inputs such as farm machinery manufacturing, transportation of corn from the Midwest to California, and transportation of the waste products.  They are even taking into consideration food vs. fuel considerations and general land use priorities.  They are definitely moving towards declaring corn ethanol schemes as unviable in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reach one of California’s targets of 10% less carbon in our fuel supply.

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Is Our Pollution Insignificant?

Air pollution director compares air of Bakersfield, Beijing...

Nice of Seyed to remind us how lucky we are that people like him are working on our air quality problems.  Things are so much worse in other countries.  The fact that we are number one for worst air in the nation does not seem to matter.

Does he really think some expensive cloud seeding could help us clean our air?  Why didn't he mention some measures that would actually decrease pollution when there are no clouds?

Seyed keeps saying our air is getting better.  Study the graph of ozone violations over the past 18 years and come to your own conclusion.