Gopher State Ethanol told residents that the only smell they might whiff would be like bread baking.

But from the day ethanol production began in 2000, neighbors complained of sickening odors and a host of ailments, ranging from rashes to loss of appetite.

The city sued. State health officials investigated, followed in short order by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

And what the federal government's air pollution enforcer discovered in a dozen ethanol plants in Minnesota has led to a plant-by-plant crackdown of the nation's 74 operating ethanol facilities.

An EPA enforcement official tells the New Era that what he has seen so far suggests that many existing ethanol plants are in violation of the Clean Air Act.

"Most are going to be major sources'' of regulated pollutants and will need additional anti-pollution measures, said Charles Garlow, an attorney in the EPA's Air Enforcement Division in Washington, D.C.

It is in that kind of an industry shakeup environment that Conoy Township officials find themselves as they consider approving what could be the East Coast's first ethanol plant.

At 7 tonight in the Bainbridge Fire Hall, the supervisors may take a crucial vote toward allowing the $80 million ethanol plant to be built next to the Susquehanna River and county incinerator.



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All this from a hailed effort to save a Minnesota landmark.

"That brewery was considered to be an essential for that neighborhood and had been a part of it since its inception. Gopher State Ethanol was seen as a potential savior of it,'' says Eric Larson, an assistant city attorney for St. Paul.

When state environmental officials held a public hearing on the proposal in 1998, not one resident showed up.

Officials concluded that an environmental impact statement wasn't even needed and promptly issued a permit.

But within days of startup, residents living as far as several miles away told of stinking odors that caused asthma attacks, rashes, nausea, headaches and changes in sleeping and eating patterns.

Residents of the blue-collar neighborhood also said they often found a yellow film on their windowsills and car windshields.

The plant has been fined numerous times by the city and state for noise violations.

St. Paul, which has logged thousands of health complaints, hired an expert from the Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Susan Schiffman concluded the maladies were consistent with emissions coming from the plant.

After efforts to reduce the odors failed, the city filed a nuisance lawsuit against its former savior that continues today.

"A big thing to remember is compliance with emissions standards by the EPA does not mean that you are not going to have significant and very powerful obnoxious odors,'' Larson says.

Beer was discontinued at the plant in 2001, but odors continue to fail court-ordered limits.

Also, there have been two releases of anhydrous ammonia at the plant. Several people received medical attention after one incident in which an ammonia compressor could not be turned off.

Concerned, the Minnesota Department of Health came down to investigate. They found "numerous irritant and odorous volatile organic compounds'' being emitted from the plant. Some of the chemicals cause cancer.

But the agency concluded the facility posed "an indeterminate health hazard'' because air emissions and how toxic they were "couldn't be sufficiently characterized.'' Chemical data for many emission sources at the plant were lacking, the agency said.

What happened next has sent a shock wave through the ethanol industry that is still being felt.

Prompted by the findings in St. Paul, the EPA inspected all 14 ethanol plants in Minnesota and found 12 of them were major sources of volatile organic compounds. Those can cause health effects and contributes to smog as well as carbon monoxide, which affects breathing, nitrogen oxide, another smog precursor, and other hazardous air pollutants.

In October 2002, the EPA ordered the dozen plants to add state-of-the-art emission control equipment and fined them.

But that was just the beginning.

Since the ethanol-plant boom began in the 1990s, it had been assumed that ethanol plants were minor sources of pollutants and did not require stringent pollution equipment that is mandated for power plants and other industries.

After the St. Paul and Minnesota discoveries, the agency hurried to make up for lost time.

Joined by 11 states with ethanol plants, the EPA in April 2003 reached an unprecedented enforcement agreement with ethanol industry giant Archer Daniels Midland Co.

ADM, which was accused of under-estimating air emissions, agreed to shut down its dirtiest grain and oilseed plants and make sweeping, $213 million worth of air pollution improvements at plants in 16 states.

All seven of the company's ethanol plants were affected. The other 36 were grain operations.

ADM and the 11 states were fined $4.6 million.

Now, EPA will be going to each of the remaining 53 plants in the country, checking to see if pollutants are being adequately controlled.



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What does all this mean for the ethanol plant proposed for Conoy Township? The events of the last year mean a safe, unobtrusive state-of-the-art ethanol plant would be built here, said Scott Welsh, project manager for Penn-Mar York, the consortium of farmers and investors seeking to build the plant.

"What's being designed for our facility is based on the current requirements. We'll have best-available technology in the facility.'' Welsh said the plant would have a thermal oxidizer, the machinery almost all ethanol plants are being required to have now to incinerate odors and emissions. Plus, the plant would have another step most plants do not have to capture carbon dioxide emissions, he said.

Asked if odors could be detected off the property, Welsh said, "The state Department of Environmental Protection has a requirement that malodors don't leave the property and we're working on that basis.'' The plant would be built by Lurgi PSI, a Memphis-based company that has built several ethanol plants in the Midwest. Clients include Stroh, Schlitz and Pekin Energy Co. The company says it is the leading corn wet milling design firm in the U.S.

The plant's primary water source is hoped to be wastewater from Elizabethtown. The Susquehanna River would be a backup, Welsh said.

Monte Shaw, spokesman for the ethanol industry's trade group, the Renewable Fuels Association, said ethanol plants are, with one exception, in rural areas and are not causing harmful air pollution.

Of the EPA crackdown on ethanol plants, he says, "Hey, they changed the procedures and found things never found before. Instead of going to court, we decided to work things out and we're very proud of that.'' He said the track record of ethanol plants has been decidedly as "good neighbors.'' Of citizen opposition to some plants, he said, "there are always going to be people who don't want anything.

"If you want your town to dry up and blow away, that's fine, this is America.

"But if you want to protect the rural way of life and keep your area viable, then you have to look at different options.'' The booming ethanol industry -- capacity has doubled nationwide in the last five years -- has taken a few public relations hits in recent weeks.

· In Port Kembla, Australia, on Jan. 28, a storage tank containing 1.85 million gallons of ethanol exploded and it took firemen 20 hours to bring the resulting blaze under control. Two people were injured and hundreds of workers on the site and at neighboring industries were evacuated.

· On Feb. 28, a tanker carrying 3.5 million gallons of volatile industrial ethanol exploded 58 miles off the coast of Virginia, killing 21 crewmen. The cause of the blast is still under investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Renewable Fuels Association sent a news release to media, saying that ethanol will burn, but not explode; thus, the cause of the sinking was probably not related to the transport of ethanol.

If Gopher State Ethanol is the industry's Three Mile Island, there have been other trouble spots.

In Midwestern states, where almost all ethanol plants have been located since the first ones in the 1970s, communities are no longer embracing ethanol plants, no questions asked.

· In Cambria, Wisconsin, the town of less than 800 people got Didion Milling to drop plans to build an ethanol plant adjacent to a school. An "advisory'' referendum turned up more than 60 percent against the project and the village board denied the company a zoning permit.

Health and water-use concerns were paramount. "This is a farming community. This is not the place for an ethanol plant,'' said Ann Smedema, an activist married to a farmer.

In the statehouse in Madison, a state senator and two representatives have introduced legislation that would prohibit an ethanol plant from being built within five miles of a school. The bill has been bottled in committee.

· Nine months after starting up, an ethanol plant next to a residential area in Lena, Ill., was sued last May by the Illinois attorney general and a Lena citizen's group.

The state alleges the plant exceeded pollution limits, failed to report emissions violations and "created and maintained a public nuisance.'' The Neighbors for Good Neighbors group alleges smoke, odors and haze from the plant have disrupted life in the community of 2,887.

The owner of a nearby KOA Kampground told a local newspaper that he and his wife have to go indoors and close windows when wind from the plant blows in their direction.

"Even in the house, you can still smell the fumes,'' said Dennis Drake. "After the plant opened in August, longtime customers told us they won't be back unless it stops.'' The group and the ethanol plant have reached an interim agreement in which the plant has until September to reduce pollution.

· In January, residents of Caro, Mi., sued the town and Michigan Ethanol, calling a plant there noisy and dangerous.

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