Texas: Potential Effects of New Ethanol Plants
Report overview | State maps: Colorado | Kansas | Nebraska | New Mexico | Oklahoma | Texas
Map 1. Declining Water Table
Potential effect: Already scarce water supplies become scarcer
Four new ethanol plants are planned for or under construction in the Texas Panhandle in areas with some of the highest rates of Ogallala Aquifer depletion. In some parts of the panhandle, the water table declined by more than two feet a year on average between 1980 and 1996. Hereford, where two plants are to be located, may be especially strained for water and land resources.
The new plants would increase the region’s ethanol production capacity by 330 million gallons per year and exacerbate existing over-pumping of the Ogallala Aquifer. Water needs for corn-to-fuel processing in the plants could draw an additional 1.5 billion gallons per year from the aquifer. If the new ethanol plants lead to any increase in local irrigated corn production, the plants would have an even larger impact on water pumping demands in one of the most overexploited sections of the Ogallala Aquifer (see Map 1).
Map 2. Conservation Reserve Program: Land Retired from Use
Potential effect: Loss of critical habitat
The Texas Panhandle was part of the center of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Increased demand for corn could create pressure to plow restored and native grasslands that are often highly erosive and also are critical habitat for at risk grassland species like the lesser prairie chicken and swift fox
Map 3. Important Native Grasslands of the Central Shortgrass Prairie
Sources
CRP data: Conservation Programs, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Ethanol plant location data: Earth Policy Institute. 2006. Data files for distillery demand for grain to fuel cars vastly understated.
Native grasslands data: Neely, B., et al. 2006. Central Shortgrass Prairie Ecoregional Assessment and Partnership Initiative. The Nature Conservancy of Colorado and the Shortgrass Prairie Partnership.
Ogallala depletion data: Fischer, B. C., and V. L. McGuire. 1999. Digital data set of water-level changes in the High Plains aquifer in parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, 1980 to 1996. Lincoln, NE: U.S. Geological Survey.
