Lagan Sebert talks to Gerald Winegrad about corn growth in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Winegrad authored legislation to protect the Chesapeake Bay during his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee. Now he teaches at the University of Maryland and has dedicated much of his work to conserving the bay. Listen to the audio interview by clicking above.

Controversy over whether production of corn-based ethanol damages water quality has continued since President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address where he announced a goal of increasing corn ethanol to 35 billion gallons by 2017.

Following his address, a committee of scientific experts warned that such a rise in production could pollute water and cause shortages at local and regional levels — including the Chesapeake Bay.

“The quality of groundwater, rivers, and coastal and offshore waters could be impacted by increased fertilizer and pesticide use for biofuels,” reported the experts of the National Academies in a study published on Oct. 10.

The report cites case studies of areas such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, where the nutrient pollution of agricultural runoffs has had a devastating effect on the environment.

Although the committee suggested some agricultural improvements that could minimize the effects that biofuel production has on water resources, they noted that “corn has the greatest application rates of both fertilizers and pesticides per acre, higher than for soybeans and mixed-species grassland biomass.”

This year, a number of bills have been introduced in Congress to set the volume of renewable fuel that gasoline must contain and to permanently set the tax incentives for biodiesel and ethanol.

The tax exemption of 51 cents a gallon that the U.S . government provides to American ethanol producers will reach an estimated $4 billion in 2007, according to a publication of the Brazil Institute in Washington D.C. published this year. The report analyzed the difference between Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol and U.S. corn-based ethanol.

“The economics of corn ethanol have never made much sense,” according to a Sept. 19 editorial of The New York Times, because corn requires more land for growing, has “modest” environmental benefits and is expensive to produce.

The Ethanol Factbook 2007, issued by the American Coalition for Ethanol, said that ‘the total economic penalties of America’s oil dependence equal $297.2 billion to $304.9 billion annually,’ and that investing in the production of biofuels is a way to reduce such a dependency. According to the report, “ten percent ethanol blends reduce greenhouse gases by nearly 30 percent.”

The American Coalition of Ethanol denounced The New York Times in September, claiming the paper was throwing “a laundry list of accusations at the ethanol industry (increasing food prices, invading natural habitat, inverting agricultural markets) that have been routinely discredited by government officials and unprejudiced third-parties.”

However, other organizations have criticized the increase of ethanol production and the support it receives from the U.S. government.

Brazilian economist Marcus Renato S. Xavier, said in an article on Feb. 15 by The Competitive Enterprise Institute, that although U.S. ethanol producers often cite the case of Brazil’s ethanol production as a “success model for increasing energy security,” the comparison is off-base. According to the environmental group Greenpeace, the think tank has recieved $2 million from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Xavier said that Brazil’s ethanol derives from sugarcane, which is more economical to produce and requires less land to cultivate. Corn-based ethanol, on the other hand, requires twice as much land to produce.

The projected rise of corn-based ethanol “could have significant environmental impacts,” Xavier said. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “ethanol may damage the environment when it is produced on a large scale from low-yielding crops such as corn. In these cases it may generate as much or more greenhouse gas emissions than do petroleum fuels.”

An expert at the Institute, Dennis T. Avery, said that ethanol production cannot viabally compete with gasoline.

“Ethanol is an environmental disaster in the making,” Avery said. “There will never be enough ethanol to end the United states’ dependency on oil. It would take 75-100 million more acres of corn, than the current 77 to 90 million acres, to match gasoline,” according to Avery. “Every acre taken away for corn is taking away from wildlife and forests,” he added.

Supporters of increasing ethanol production argue that it is a way to decrease the United States’ dependency on foreign oil –- especially the oil that comes from unstable countries –- and that it is more environmentally friendly than others suggest.

Yet studies and experts who discuss whether the benefits of corn-based ethanol counter the negative consequences show contradictory opinions.

According to the National Academies report, there is a “strong national interest in greater energy independence,” and the U.S. government supports the expansion of ethanol production on the basis that it is more environmentally friendly and will reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.

The report adds that the expansion of biofuel and corn crops into regions with little agriculture –- especially dry regions– “could change irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States.”