Sal Grimaldi first noticed the strange case of the missing fuel last fall: his Ford Ranger pickup was not carrying him as far as it used to on a tank of gas.
Now, many fill-ups later, the East Petersburg man blames ethanol.
"It's like you're burning extra fuel" to cover the same distance, he said.
Pennsylvania and the rest of the nation are investing heavily in ethanol. But Grimaldi questions whether the renewable fuel additive is the energy and environment panacea backers claim it to be.
Grimaldi said he bypasses local service stations that sell E10, a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline.
He does not appear to represent a groundswell of contrarian motorists.
Marketing Manager Cindy Brough reported no ethanol-related complaints to AAA's Central Penn Chapter.
But it's not as if Grimaldi is the only skeptic.
Though 36 billion gallons of ethanol are poised to flow into the energy pipeline by 2022, there are serious disagreements over the fuel's impact on driving and air quality.
Ethanol provides less energy per gallon than gasoline. On the positive side, proponents say, substituting corn-based ethanol for gas reduces net greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists are still studying how all that bears on fuel economy, said Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C.
"Some people will say that you actually get higher mileage" with E10, he said, but "it may be a little less in older cars."
Given the huge commitment to ethanol, Cooper added, it behooves society to engineer cars to accommodate it.
"We also have to make sure the price reflects the costs" of production.
But Jim Barto of Manheim said the price/cost ratio is nearly impossible for consumers to pin down.
Barto said he usually fills his 2003 Chevrolet Suburban with E85, a harder-to-find blend of 85 percent ethanol, before driving to his camp in Potter County.
The price per gallon has ranged from $1.99 to $2.55 per gallon at the Worley & Obetz pumps in Manheim in recent months, he said, making the fuel looks like a real bargain compared to $3-and-up gasoline.
"It's worth buying if it helps the atmosphere," he said, but the Suburban's fuel economy drops from 17½ to 15 miles a gallon when he uses it.
Barto said he's happy he bought the flex-fuel Suburban, which can burn various combinations of gas and ethanol.
Still, he said, rapid fluctuations in fuel prices make ethanol's real value difficult to determine.
"I don't know if ethanol's the answer to our problem."
But it's becoming a widely-available response.
In Pennsylvania, according to Brough, 64 percent of all stations offer E10. Some businesses identify the blend by putting stickers on their pumps, but they don't have to.
Barto's friend, Doug Henry of Manheim, said he steers away from pumps with ethanol stickers.
Grimaldi, who with Henry works for the Manheim Township School District, worried that the fuel additive might impact more than his wallet.
He noted that its predecessor, methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, is a possible human carcinogen and a notorious contaminator of groundwater. "Is [ethanol] going to harm the environment?"
Yes, says Co-op America, an economic justice group in Washington. Ninety-five percent of the country's ethanol comes from corn produced via huge expenditures of fossil fuel and herbicides, such as atrazine, judged a likely cancer-causing agent by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Biofuel proponents, including the American Coalition for Ethanol, say the fuel is a cleaner-burning alternative needed to wean the country from foreign crude.
Agribusiness interests such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. have banked big on corn ethanol, though critics say cellulosic ethanol from sources such as switch grass and wood chips is much easier on the environment.
Ethanol is a key component of the Bush administration's 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act and of Gov. Ed Rendell's Energy Independence Strategy, which will eventually require gasoline sold across the state to contain 10 percent ethanol.
A proposed ethanol refinery in Conoy Township would be one cog in the plan.
Come what may, Grimaldi hopes that he can continue to fill his truck with regular unleaded.
Last Wednesday night on Route 72, he went out of his way to do that.
"I don't see any savings" in ethanol, he said. "I drive all the way to Citgo because they don't put ethanol in the gas."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
