Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Fueling Around

Sounds like APM's Marketplace will be doing a piece about a Florida company that wants to grow the invasive grass Arundo donax as a biofuel. I say "sounds like" because I can find no evidence of it on the Marketplace website - minus two points to them, and minus 50 points if the report refers to the plant as "e-grass!"

When the story goes up online I will update this post with a link to the audio. Until then, your homework is to read these two previous ISW posts about farming the giant reed, and the recent statement by the Florida Native Plant Society about Arundo donax (hint: they don't like it!).

Update: Marketplace has posted a transcript along with a link to the audio of the report here. The piece did look at both sides of the issue, but was way too short to provide any real answers: the brush-off of people opposed to the project ("Citizens Opposed to Virtually Everything") was rude, and there was no questioning of the statement that ditch boundaries are an effective control (what happens when there is a flood...or hurricane-force winds?). At least only a passing reference was made to "e-grass" :-).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No one in their right minds would plant that stuff ON PURPOSE. It's considered an ivasive nuisance in other parts of Florida. What makes them think that it is going to behave nicely anywhere else???