From the Prior Lake Association 

The fastest-growing user of underground water in Minnesota is ethanol plants. As of 2007, Minnesota had 17 ethanol facilities.

Six more facilities are being built, and 11 more are on the drawing board, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

On average, such plants use four to five gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol produced. As ethanol production in Minnesota has skyrocketed, the industry’s overall volume of water use has increased more than 250 percent, according to information compiled by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and published in a report by the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Most new Minnesota ethanol plants are targeted for the western part of the state, an area rich in corn but poor in quantity of water. A plant near Granite Falls that went into operation in 2005 caused a 50-foot draw-down in local aquifer wells up to 8 miles away from this new ethanol plant. This information is from the March/April 2008 issue of the DNR Minnesota Conservation Volunteer Magazine.

In other lake news, the water elevation as of Wednesday, April 2, was 902.18, an increase of over 16 inches since ice-over last December. The inflow stream into upper Prior Lake is flowing very well, and there is about 200 feet of open water as it flows into the lake.

Enjoy your lake, and be careful, as the ice is soft and slushy around the edges.

 The Prior Lake Association can be reached at www.priorlakeassociation.org [2].