The bloom is off the ear?

The honeymoon is over? Have science and common sense begun to prevail?:

In Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and even Iowa, the nation’s largest corn and ethanol producer, this next-generation fuel finds itself facing the oldest of hurdles: opposition from residents who love the idea of an ethanol distillery so long as it is someplace else.
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Some experts say the local protests reflect a new anti-ethanol mood spurred by a slow but steady drumbeat of negative attention on the industry. Across the Midwest, questions about ethanol have been raised by environmental advocates, livestock owners have complained about soaring prices for corn feed and farmers have fretted about how expensive some farmland has become.

“That wonderful aura that the ethanol plants had may be wearing off a little,” said Wallace E. Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

Industry advocates play down the size of the opposition and suggest the increase in objections to new plants is simply a factor of math; 131 plants are now operating and more than 70 others are under construction, and the vast bulk of them are in the Midwest.

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That is a marked increase from less than three years ago, when Congress enacted an energy law that included a national mandate for the increased use of renewable fuel in gasoline, setting off the ethanol rush. In January 2005, more than a quarter century after the commercial ethanol industry got started, just 81 plants were functioning.

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The local strife coincides with what is already a moment of tumult for the ethanol industry. In recent months, an enormous supply of ethanol has glutted the market, sinking its price and sending a chill through the ethanol boom.

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Experts debate whether the current ethanol glut is the start of the end to the rush to corn-based ethanol or merely a temporary correction as transportation lines are developed from the Midwest to bigger markets on the coasts. Either way, residents’ complaints about proposed plants have only added to the cascade of bad news for ethanol.

“It’s like the dot-com industry,” said Anne Yoder, who is pressing to stop plans for an ethanol plant outside Topeka, Kan., and describes herself “not at all” as an activist but as “an ordinary soccer mom.”

“When ethanol first came along there was so much promise,” she said. “Maybe that’s starting to trickle off.”