Never Mentions Water

Bill Ritter went to Lamar this week. He was there for the Liquid Maize ethanol plant ground breaking and the PCDI annual meeting.

He had only good things to say about ethanol production but never once mentioned water:

When asked what he sees as the future of Colorado’s green energy economy and the role corn based ethanol will play the governor [ Bill Ritter ] said, “Colorado, because it’s an ag producing state is going to be able to take advantage of the bio fuel future...we have such fantastic research and development that not only are we going to take advantage of it, we’re in large part going to direct it. I think we’re going to have a real role in deciding how that goes.”

More Pandering to Corn Farmers, No Solutions

This is a water starved state. Our governor, Bill Ritter, has no business promoting a crop that uses a lot of water for a product that uses even more water. But that is what he is doing.

"This is a really important part of our agricultural economy, and the whole idea of growing the corn/ethanol economy is something that helps with respect to our entire sort of economic situation," [ Bill ] Ritter said. "So we're very focused on agriculture and making sure we keep that a stable part of our economy."

Even the farmers understand that the elephant in the corn ethanol room is water:

Yet, while some were grateful for his work on [corn ethanol ] thus far, Glen Murray, a corn farmer from Brighton, was slightly miffed that the governor [ Bill Ritter ] had nothing new to say about the issues concerning water use in the state.

"He didn't really give us a lot of direction," Murray said. "I mean conservation is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time. Storage is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time."

The most curious quote of the evening came after the speech:

"Really, we can help ourselves a great deal with conservation, with re-use, with shared use between municipalities and agricultural land," said Ritter after his speech. "And then we have to decide at what level we embark upon greater water storage."

Ritter may not be aware that the Mark Udall bloggers appear to be trying to gin up an attack on Bob Schaffer based on his past support of water storage. We'd guess that issue just disappeared.

We ask Bill Ritter to explain his pandering position on corn ethanol when there will be a water crisis in this state.