Biodiesel not so green

At least not its byproduct runoff. Just because the byproducts of soy-based diesel fuel are themselves organic doesn’t mean they’re not harmful. Any oil slick can reduce oxygen levels in water, for example. And, these slicks certainly aren’t ‘green’ in an environmental aesthetics sense. That and other damages can cause major fish kills:

Leanne Tippett Mosby, a deputy division director of environmental quality for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, said she was warned a year ago by colleagues in other states that biodiesel producers were dumping glycerin, the main byproduct of biodiesel production, contaminated with methanol, another waste product that is classified as hazardous.

Glycerin, an alcohol that is normally nontoxic, can be sold for secondary uses, but it must be cleaned first, a process that is expensive and complicated. Expanded production of biodiesel has flooded the market with excess glycerin, making it less cost-effective to clean and sell.

Ms. Tippett Mosby did not have to wait long to see the problem. In October, an anonymous caller reported that a tanker truck was dumping milky white goop into Belle Fountain Ditch, one of the many man-made channels that drain Missouri’s Bootheel region. That substance turned out to be glycerin from a biodiesel plant.

In January, a grand jury indicted a Missouri businessman in the discharge, which killed at least 25,000 fish and wiped out the population of fat pocketbook mussels, an endangered species.

In many cases, biodiesel plant owners are willing to pay state fines that are little more than pocket change in order to get plants started up faster and run them at higher speeds. Or, in other cases, they tell regulator to eff off:

In October 2005, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management informed Alabama Biodiesel that it would need an individual pollution discharge permit to operate, but the company never applied for one. The company operated for more than a year without a permit and without facing any penalties from state regulators, though inspectors documented unpermitted discharges on two occasions.

Are biofuels plants so un-green that they’re more trouble than they’re worth, as California GOP Congressman Brian Bilbray claims? Well, that is surely going to far, but if you insert “unregulated” or “in their present state” in front of “biofuels,” he might be on to something.