OXFORD, N.C. (AP) - It's fast-growing and drought-tolerant, producing
tons of biomass per acre. It thrives even in poor soil and is a
self-propagating perennial, so it requires little investment once
established.
To people in the renewable fuels industry, Arundo donax - also known
as "giant reed" - is nothing short of a miracle plant. An Oregon power
plant is looking at it as a potential substitute for coal, and North
Carolina boosters are salivating over the prospect of an ethanol
bio-refinery that would bring millions of dollars in investment and
dozens of high-paying jobs to hog country.
But to many scientists and environmentalists, Arundo looks less like a
miracle than a nightmare waiting to happen. Officials in at least three
states have banned the bamboo-like grass as a "noxious weed";
California has spent more than $70 million trying to eradicate it. The
federal government has labeled it a "high risk" for invasiveness.
Many are comparing Arundo, which can reach heights of 30 feet in a
single season, to another aggressive Asian transplant - the voracious
kudzu vine.
More than 200 scientists recently sent a letter to the
heads of federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, urging them not to
encourage the commercial planting of known invasives like Arundo.
"Many of today's most problematic invasive plants - from kudzu to
purple loosestrife - were intentionally imported and released into the
environment for horticultural, agricultural, conservation, and forestry
purposes," they wrote Oct. 22. "It is imperative that we learn from our
past mistakes by preventing intentional introduction of energy crops
that may create the next invasive species catastrophe particularly when
introductions are funded by taxpayer dollars."
Mark Conlon, vice president for sector development at the nonprofit
Biofuels Center of North Carolina in Oxford, hates the comparison with
"the weed that ate the South."
"There's no market for kudzu," says
Conlon, who is among those promoting a proposed $170 million, 20
million-gallon-a-year ethanol project here - and Arundo's role in it.
"There's no reason to manage it. It was thrown out in the worst places
you can think of and left there."
His message about Arundo: It'll be different this time. We can control it.
But
Mark Newhouser, who has spent nearly 20 years hacking this "nasty
plant" from California's riverbanks and wetlands, has his doubts.
"Why take a chance?" he asks.
___
The back wall of the
North Carolina biofuels center's lobby is dominated by a large timeline,
beginning with the General Assembly's 2006 recognition of the state's
potential as a biofuels leader.
The display ends with a panel declaring "10% in 10 Years" - meaning
that by 2017, a decade after the center's creation, officials hope
companies here will be producing the equivalent of a tenth of the liquid
transportation fuels consumed in the state annually, or 600 million
gallons of renewable biofuel a year.
"An extraordinarily audacious goal," W. Steven Burke, the center's president and CEO, says proudly.
Near
the middle of the timeline is this: "November 2011: 50-acre energy
grass propagation nursery established with Arundo donax."
The center's staff has explored a variety of biofuel raw materials,
from food crops like corn, sugar beets and industrial sweet potatoes, to
cottonwood and loblolly pine trees. Even pond scum - or duckweed. All
were either hard to raise in quantity, too expensive or more valuable
for other uses.
The staff also studied so-called "energy grasses" - giant Miscanthus,
coastal Bermudagrass, switchgrass. Out behind the center, farming
director Sam Brake planted test plots of four varieties of sorghum.
But for hardiness, ease of cultivation and maintenance, and, above all, yield per acre, none comes even close to Arundo donax.
"Wow!
Exclamation point," says Burke, who, in his matching gray suit and
shirt and with his snow-white hair and beard, evokes the evangelical
preacher.
Believed to have sprung from the Indian subcontinent, Arundo has
spread around the globe. Europeans have been using it for centuries in
the production of reeds for woodwind instruments.
Like kudzu,
which came to the United States as part of Japan's exhibit at the 1876
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Arundo arrived here in the mid-
to late 19th century. And also like kudzu, Arundo was once touted as a
perfect crop to help stem erosion. In California and Texas, farmers,
ranchers and government workers enthusiastically planted it along
waterways and drainage ditches. Shallow rooted, the canes would break
off and move downstream, starting new stands.
Arundo has become "naturalized" in 25 warmer-weather states, according to a USDA weed risk analysis released in June.
In banning it, California, Nevada and Texas have said the plant crowds out native species and consumes precious water.
The Tennessee Exotic Pest Plant Council lists it as a "Significant
Threat." Virginia officials have labeled it "moderately invasive." The
West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has categorized giant reed
as "occasionally invasive." But that might change if it were to be
promoted as a commercial crop, says Elizabeth Byers, a vegetation
ecologist with the agency's wildlife diversity unit.
"I certainly wouldn't want to see any invasive species used as biomass," she says. "Because they can escape."
North Carolina is keeping an eye on Arundo, but the folks in Oxford say past need not be prologue.
___
Earlier this fall, Chemtex International christened the
world's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the northwest
Italian city of Crescentino. Turning inedible biomass into sugars, the
company hopes to produce up to 20 million gallons of fuel a year.
By mid-2013, Chemtex wants to break ground on a like-sized plant that
would employ 67 people in North Carolina. It has set its sights on the
little city of Clinton, in the heart of hog country.
David Crouse,
a soil scientist at North Carolina State University, says energy grass
production and the Tar Heel State are "a logical match" - depending on
which grass it is.
Spread across the state's coastal plain are about 100,000 acres of
so-called sprayfields, onto which industrial farming operations pump
millions of gallons of hog and chicken waste per year. In order to
comply with federal clean water regulations for runoff of nutrients such
as nitrogen, many of those fields are already planted with energy
grasses, chiefly coastal Bermudagrass.
In terms of yield, Arundo far outpaces the competition - up to 20 dry
tons per acre, versus 3 to 6 tons for Bermuda. So planting Arundo would
require far less land to supply Chemtex's fiber needs. The problem is,
the fields' owners also need to worry about absorbing the nitrogen in
the manure and the jury is still out as to whether Arundo would be a
good fit.
"If it's not, it's not where we need to be on the swine farms," Crouse says.
Brake and his colleagues in Oxford are trying to figure that out.
On
a farm a few miles from the biofuels center, a dense patch of what look
like anorexic palm trees waves in the light autumn breeze. They tower
over the 6-foot-2 farming director.
Brake planted this quarter-acre plot of Arundo donax in 2010. He's
been applying fertilizer at four different rates - zero to 120 pounds
per acre - to gauge the plants' nutritional needs, as well as their
ability to absorb nitrogen.
Even in the tightly packed, red-clay soil, they have thrived. Brake
steps into the thicket and struggles to wrap his arms around a clump.
"It's about maybe 3 foot in diameter," he says.
So
far, yields from North Carolina test plots have averaged from 5.8 dry
tons per acre at the Oxford site to just over 11 tons in the sandy loam
soils in which most Chemtex suppliers would be planting, though NCSU
soil scientist Ron Gehl notes these are not yet "mature stands."
Brake grabs an Arundo stalk and walks until it's parallel with the
ground. Tiny seeds cascade to the ground, clinging to a visitor's wet
shoes.
"You afraid of becoming Johnny donax-seed?" he asks with a chuckle. The seeds are sterile, he says reassuringly.
Brake points to a joint on the stalk where a small sprout or "node" peeks out.
"Each node is a potential plant," he explains. "That makes it easy to propagate."
And that's what gives so many pause.
___
In the 16 years since Arundo was first identified in
California's Sonoma Creek Watershed, Mark Newhouser has developed an
attack strategy.
First, workers spray the mature cane with
herbicide, then move in with the large flail mowers. If that doesn't do
the trick, it's time for chain saws.
"And then you'd still have all of these stumps of cane sticking up everywhere," he says. "You can't even walk through there."
The cost: Up to $25,000 per acre.
To
address such concerns in North Carolina, state agriculture officials
teamed up with the biofuels center last year to craft a set of "best
management practices" for energy crops. Among them are not planting
directly adjacent to streams and irrigation canals, and establishing
buffer zones of at least 20 feet around production fields.
They are listed as "voluntary." But anyone wishing to do business
with Chemtex would have to sign a contract agreeing to certain ground
rules, says executive vice president Paolo Carollo. He points out that a
$99 million USDA loan guarantee announced this spring also came with
certain mitigation measures.
Noting that Chemtex has already made conditional agreements to plant
10,000 acres near Clinton, Carollo points to a factory near Venice,
Italy, that, from 1937 to 1962, used Arundo grown on 12,000 nearby acres
in the production of fabric, including Rayon.
"And they never had issues of spread," he said in a phone interview
from the company's headquarters in the coastal city of Wilmington. When
production ceased, he said, those acres were converted back to pasture
land.
___
Attempts to commercialize Arundo donax in other parts of the U.S. have met with limited success.
When
a company proposed to use Arundo for power generation in Florida, the
state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services drafted
regulations requiring permits for plots larger than 2 acres. Although
some permits have been issued, the large-scale project that prompted the
regulations never materialized.
And when Portland General Electric decided to convert a power plant
from coal to biomass, Oregon state agriculture officials conducted a
risk assessment for Arundo. Last year, the state authorized a 400-acre
"control area," prohibiting plantings within a mile of water bodies and
requiring growers to post a $1 million eradication bond.
In a statement released last March, the Native Plant Society of
Oregon accused the state of understating the risks. It cited research
suggesting that Arundo's sterile seeds might, through "genetic
modification," become fertile.
When Chemtex announced its plans for North Carolina, the
Environmental Defense Fund and others petitioned the state to have
Arundo declared a noxious weed, and to ban it. Officials expect to make a
decision by early next year.
Federal action could take longer.
In January, the EPA gave
Arundo preliminary approval under the federal renewable fuel standard
program - meaning producers could qualify for valuable carbon credits.
When environmental groups complained that the decision was at odds with
an executive order aimed at preventing the spread of invasive species,
the agency agreed to re-evaluate the crop.
Without the EPA's renewable fuels designation, Arundo would be less
profitable to grow. And without Arundo in the mix, says Conlon, "I would
be greatly concerned" about the Chemtex project - and the state's grand
plans.
"North Carolina's on the precipice of becoming an economic powerhouse
around this whole idea of advanced biofuels," Conlon says. "There's
room down there to build five or six of these facilities, if and when we
can figure out the right balance between environmental concerns and
economic viability."
Burke notes that Arundo has been sold in the state for years as an ornamental, without any problem. To him, it's a no-brainer.
But
EDF Southeast Director Jane Preyer wonders if a hurricane-prone state
like North Carolina is the smartest place to grow such a crop on so
large a scale. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd caused widespread flooding that
put much of eastern North Carolina under several feet of water.
Arundo, she says, appears "not worth the risk."
It's naive to think man can truly control nature, says Newhouser in California.
"You know, that's the thing with weeds. They know no boundaries, and they don't recognize fences. They don't follow rules."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
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