Good-bye Yellow Brick Ethanol Plant

My home town (I dub thee Orac) is known for a couple things, the formula for Pepsi, the Pumpkin Festival, the Guiness World Book Record for the biggest apple, and the Pioneer sugar beet factory.

Right now, it's known for the ethanol plant...on fire.

I didn't drive home late enough to see it, but my dad said he saw the yellow glow in the distance as he was coming home from work.

I don't know what caused it, or even if it's serious. I just know the factory is on fire, or the ethanol is on fire. Whatever is on fire, it reeks to high heaven. The smell is like a combination of something being cooked in a pressure cooker and a hot glue stick from a hot glue gun. It's like hot glue in a pressure cooker. It's worse than when the sugar beet factory is in full production. When the sugar beet factory is going, the air mostly smells when the factory is in processing sugar beets. The smell fades at night. My mom, who works close to the ethanol plant said that the powers that be told everyone to go home at 2:00 because the smell was so bad. I didn't notice it until I came home. Our house stinks. It smells worse closer to the floor. Don't know what that is, but I noticed it when I bent over to pick up something. If it smells that bad here, I can't imagine how bad it was at Mom's workplace.

My friend C-Whore used to work at the ethanol plant. Even though her title was temporary secretary, she was actually a glorified filer. She was a little bitter about working there, Patlick will attest to this. It seems odd and strangely coincidental that the ethanol plant should catch on fire within a week (five days to be exact) of her leaving the country...hmmm....

I remember when the ethanol plant was first conceived, people protested it because Orac is an agricultural community, not an industrial community. People supporting the plant said it would bring more jobs to the community, but since it is run mostly by machines and robots and stuff, it only added about sixty new jobs. I think there is even a lawsuit against the ethanol plant's parent company, because the plant is "noisy and dangerous." The article is from last October. I don't know if the lawsuit was actually filed, but if it was, I wonder what sort of impact the ethanol plant being on fire will have on the case.

Well, in any case, the damn thing's on fire, and I don't know when it'll quit. Maybe it's stopped already. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll rain and wash away the stink smell from our fair village. Since the fire happened today, I couldn't find any news articles about it. Who knows, maybe the ethanol plant fat cats are trying to keep news of the fire out of the media. I'll keep you guys posted of any new developments.