From my trader newsletter I googled it and found other stories about this issue.

Talking Points
Thirst For Biofuels Raises Water Worries
The growing global thirst for biofuels is raising concerns about increased competition
for water supplies.
The issue could come down to a “drink or drive issue,” as policy makers will
have to weigh the “water footprint” of biofuels development on available water
resources, scientists at Rice University warn in a recent report.
Concerns over the often-vast volumes of water needed to grow various biofuel
crops follows controversy over rising food prices in the wake of stepped-up use
of corn and soybeans in making renewable fuels. Meanwhile, efforts to develop
so-called next-generation biofuels, using non-food crops that often require less
water, have so far yielded niche operations that haven’t yet proved profitable on
a larger scale.
With the U.S. government requiring a sharp increase in the use of biofuels as
part of a plan to curb use of foreign oil and curb greenhouse-gas emissions,
vexing concerns over water supply and pollution look bound to persist.
The Rice study, a U.S.-focused effort funded by the university’s Shell Center for
Sustainability, noted that because of differing land-use practices and other factors,
50 gallons of water would be required to produce enough irrigated-corn
ethanol in Nebraska to fuel a car for a single mile. For Iowa-grown corn, the
requirement would just 23 gallons of water, while producing enough ethanol to
move that car a mile using Texas-grown sorghum, a cereal crop, would require
115 gallons of water, the researchers estimated.
Rice professor of civil and environmental engineering Pedro Alvarez, who led
the study, said competition for water resources, and the potential for related fertilizer
pollution of waterways, must be “balanced by biofuels’ significant potential
to ease dependence on foreign oil,” and reduce carbon emissions.
The key will be to determine which potential biofuel crops can yield the most
energy, while using less land, fertilizer and water.
The Rice findings tilt toward support for crops like switchgrass, or other crops
that could be sustained by rainfall, rather than irrigation. Increased irrigation
requirements for biofuel production could lead to local and regional water shortages
in the Midwest farm belt, the study warned....................Found this......

Water worries cloud future for U.S. biofuel

By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - It's corn planting time in the U.S. Plains, and that means Kansas corn farmer Merl "Buck" Rexford is worrying about the weather -- and hoping there is enough water.

Rexford plans to start seeding his 7,000 acres near Meade, Kansas, this week and he is relishing a recent heavy snow storm that dropped several inches of much-needed moisture.

Like corn farmers throughout the United States, Rexford hopes to grow a healthy crop yielding more than 150 bushels an acre this year. Much of his crop will wind up at a nearby ethanol plant.

And that puts the 65-year-old Rexford at the center of a bitter divide over biofuels, particularly corn ethanol.

Critics argue that precious water resources are being bled dry by ethanol when water shortages are growing ever more dire. Federal mandates encouraging more ethanol production don't help.

Proponents say corn ethanol for transportation fuel is far better for the environment, national security and the economy than oil and the first step toward cleaner fuel sources.
..................................MORE HERE.............................................. ...
Water worries cloud future for U.S. biofuel - 1163750 - 14/04/09 - elEconomista.es - elEconomista.es

GOOGLE SEARCH: Thirst For Biofuels Raises Water Worries - Google Search

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The only reason corn-based ethanol is profitable (and possibly the reason some of the "niche" operations aren't) is because of America's out of control corn lobby.

If you care about the earth, DO NOT PUT CORN BASED ETHANOL IN YOUR VEHICLE!

__________________
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

That's right!!!! Brazil is often touted by the eco-left as a model of how ethanol can be used in place of oil. But the small detail thay always leave out is that the sugar cane and corn fields that supply the bio-mass for the ethanol are all being raised on land that was either wetlands or rainforest. I'm thinking of a word that begins with "h".

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Giving a liberal facts is like throwing bacon at a vegetarian. All it does it piss off the vegetarian and waste good bacon.

And a lot of that land was bought by "Mr-Friend-Of-The-Earth", George Soros, specifically to grow ethanol crops.

Why do you think he's pushing Global Warming??

sugar cane based ethanol is a whole different story... much of the land was already converted form rainforest to agricultural land, and in Brazil the rainfall is so prolific that the use of sugar cane for ethanol doesn't endanger the water supply.

Here in the U.S., regardless of what wetlands may or may not have been destroyed to create the corn fields - the problem well supercedes the drive for ethanol... for decades the corn industry has had a massive lobby and have benefitted from major subsidies - which is why for so long all sodas in the U.S. have been made with corn syrup and not sugar as they had been say 100 years ago... now ethanol has displaced the corn market and many soft drinks and other products are returning to sugar as so much corn is being used for ethanol.

IF it were possible to get sugar cane based ethanol here in the states - I'd say go for it... but it isn't - and the corn based stuff is draining our aquifers and wasting water resources.

Not only that, but corn based eth. is more equipment intensive farming, which requires about .7 or .8 gallons of petroleum based fuel to deliver each gallon of ethanol - which is why it costs so much, and doesn't lower the carbon footprint but about 20% - a wash when you consider it is about 15% less efficient. And the fact that you only get 19 gallons of ethanol per acre means it is a land waste.

Ethanol derived from algae, on the other hand, if properly farmed in verticle racks of plastic bags or tubes, can produce hundreds of times more ethanol than corn - but these experimental "niches" as they have been refered to, though technically viable, are fighting the massive corn lobby.

Ethanol is not a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination, just depends on the source biomass, and the climate where it is being produced.

England is moving ahead with sugar beet ethanol, which is probably slightly better for a temperate climate than corn, but still maybe not a good idea as it is also somewhat a water and land hog.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried producing hemp ethanol?

__________________
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

Algea's got it's pluses, but growing it on a scale large enough to be viable is still a big challenge. Algea is a plant and as such needs sunlight, so you're either building huge tanks across the landscape, or your pumping power into a confined facility. That's where the "racks of plastic bags or tubes" falls apart, you have to provide light to grow the plants and the power for that light has to come from someplace. In my wholy uninformed opinion (), the best place to grow algea would be in a barren desert. The two best palces for this would be the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula, but then you run across the problem in the OP - no water.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Giving a liberal facts is like throwing bacon at a vegetarian. All it does it piss off the vegetarian and waste good bacon.

I think the best places might be in large abandoned facilities, such as roofs of warehouses and parking lots, or on the sides of skyscrapers...

Not pretty to look at, pond scum filled tubes clinging to the sides of a 50 story building on the side that gets the most sun... but trucks could pickup the algae by pumping it out through a valve at the ground level and move on to the next building - maybe, maybe not, that hasn't really been tried yet.

[/quote=popularmechanics]Just three years ago, Colorado-based inventor Jim Sears shuttered himself in his garage and began tinkering with a design to mass-produce biofuel. His reactor (plastic bags) and his feedstock (algae) may have struck soybean farmers as a laughable gamble. But the experiment worked, and today, Sears’ company, Solix Biofuels in Fort Collins, is among several startups betting their futures on the photosynthetic powers of unicellular green goo.

The science is simple: Algae need water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow. The oil they produce can then be harvested and converted into biodiesel; the algae’s carbohydrate content can be fermented into ethanol. Both are much cleaner-burning fuels than petroleum-based diesel or gas.

The reality is more complex. Trying to grow concentrations of the finicky organism is a bit like trying to balance the water in a fish tank. It’s also expensive. The water needs to be just the right temperature for algae to proliferate, and even then open ponds can become choked with invasive species. Atmospheric levels of CO2 also aren’t high enough to spur exponential growth.

Solix addresses these problems by containing the algae in closed “photobioreactors”—triangular chambers made from sheets of polyethylene plastic (similar to a painter’s dropcloth)—and bubbling supplemental carbon dioxide through the system. Eventually, the source of the CO2 will be exhaust from power plants and other industrial processes, providing the added benefit of capturing a potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere.

Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga’s body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.

“If we were to replace all of the diesel that we use in the United States" with an algae derivative, says Solix CEO Douglas Henston, "we could do it on an area of land that’s about one-half of 1 percent of the current farm land that we use now." [/quote]

Pond-Powered Biofuels: Turning Algae into America's Newest Alternative Energy Source - Popular Mechanics

And this article about a Mexican algae biofuel plant to begin producing this year... using saltwater

Algae farm in Mexico to produce ethanol in '09 | Green Tech - CNET News

There are a number of smaller-scale operations running smoothly - but imagine trying to fight a multi-multi-billion dollar industry such as the corn industry - with their well paid and well established lobby

__________________
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

So don't give Obama any ideas on algae as he is already using a lot of land for solar and wind farms...... And No way to get the power to the Utility Company once it is produced.....So if they start in on algae farms we won't have land left to grow..... But what the heck our grand children and their children might be living in America as a 3rd world country if eagle ears has his way..

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The great thing about algae, not only can it be grown vertically... but it can also be grown on land that is not suitable for other crops in the first place. Potentially generating 5000 gallons of biofuel per acre, vs. 19 for corn, which does require arable land, and thanks to the corn lobby, is currently gobbling up untold areas of land.

Each time a consumer pumps a gallon of corn methanol and pays the same price as a gallon of regular gas, the taxpayers pay a nearly equal price to subsidize the 0.8 gallons of diesel required to produce that gallon of corn methanol.

Using algae for biofuel would reduce the amount of land and water wasted on corn ethanol, and save the taxpayers subsidy money - but getting the corn lobby out of the way is next to impossible.

__________________
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

We could produce more fuel from algae in the abandoned parking lots of recently closed GM dealerships than we could if every farm in the U.S. was converted to corn for ethanol.

Valcent Products Inc,. - Home Page - Fri Jul 3, 2009

Links to two videos near the bottom of the page. Algae isn't problematic, it is proven.

__________________
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain