Too many ethanol plants equals big trouble for Nebraskans

Rough draft of Editorial #2

It’s 4:30 a.m. in the tiny town of Madrid, Neb. Most people are tucked away warm in their beds for at least another two or three hours. For Steve Flaming, 48, of Grant, Neb., it’s the beginning of his 12-hour shift.

Flaming scrapes the ice off his 1976 Ford Pickup and drives the ten miles on a deserted gravel road to work. He tosses a lunch, snacks and drinks into the company fridge and clocks in. For the next 12 hours, Flaming scoops gravel, cleans pits of ethanol waste and fixes elevators.

Flaming is not alone in his 12-hour, hard-labor work shift. Over 1,000 ethanol plant workers are scattered throughout Nebraska in plants from Bridgeport to Jackson to Trenton.

Fellow Nebraskans, when it comes to allocating one of our best resources, corn, we are all in agreement over ethanol. We actually agreed so much that in the last decade or so, we opened over 20 plants to produce the demand for renewable fuels. Now this abundance of plants is coming back to haunt Nebraskans.

Layoffs, pay cuts and plants closing are all too common news in the last couple of months. Plant owners are blaming the economic down turn; but before plant owners start pointing fingers, let’s look at the bare bones of the ethanol industry in Nebraska.

According to the Nebraska Corn Board, the first ethanol plant was built in the 1985, and from there multiplied into 21 plants with a handful still under construction. All of these plants combined could hold 1.3 billion gallons of ethanol. These billions of gallons of ethanol have literally transformed the lives of rural Nebraskans. It has given many Nebraskans jobs and provided farmers a market to sell their corn.

The ethanol industry has also transformed the lives of rural Nebraskans in a not so positive way. Many have been laid off or experienced pay cuts in the recent months. Although the economy may be a factor, it is not the only factor. In fact, the main contributing factor may be the plants themselves.

In less than 25 years, over 20 ethanol plants were opened. That’s about one plant per year. Multiply each plant by 50, for the amount of jobs each plant provides and you have an employee count of 1050 statewide. These 1050 employees of ethanol plants started their jobs thinking it would be guaranteed for the future because of the demand for renewable fuels. Unfortunately, these employees were wrong.

When these plants were built, the demand for ethanol was high. The demand is still high, but the supply of ethanol has now grown. This leaves many plants deserted.

Many plants that are under construction have come to a screeching halt. Instead of building more, just to eventually close them, let’s stop building and concentrate on the ones that are still thriving. If we continue to build more and more ethanol plants, we will only have more unemployed Nebraskans.

We need to concentrate on plants, such as the one in Madrid or Lexington, that are thriving. Let’s move the plant workers from Wood River, for example, to plants that are succeeding. How can we get people to uproot their lives to work at another plant? Offer relocation bonuses and a guaranteed job. Let’s get back to basics. Let’s focus on a few plants, instead of trying to stretch our resources to over twenty plants. Let’s not let the high unemployment rate of the United States affect Nebraskans.