A Houston-based company is starting work on a new ethanol transport hub in southern California.
Construction of the facility will occur in two phases. The first phase, located in Rialto, Calif., will consist of a manifold transfer system that will begin receiving and offloading ethanol railcars in the fall of 2009. The second phase includes full unit train capability and ethanol storage. It will be located on an adjacent site in Colton, Calif., and is scheduled for completion in mid 2010. The Phase 1 facility will have the capacity to handle the current Colton area demand for ethanol plus that required to meet the 2010 mandated increase to a 10% blend.
“Demand for ethanol in southern California continues to grow in order to meet the requirements of the State’s biofuels mandates,” said Larry Padfield, vice president of U.S. Development Group. “Our new facility will help meet this growing need for ethanol by greatly enhancing the distribution capability of ethanol in the region.”
Extended families of the ’90s.(different ways of child care in families)
Ebony November 1, 1996 | Townsel, Lisa Jones First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton re-popularized the notion. But for centuries, Black people have acknowledged and embraced the concept of the village.
Before the advent of welfare, nursing homes and day-care centers, the extended Black family attended to virtually every need of the African-American community. Homes served as hostels, kitchens as diners, bedrooms as birthing areas – and neighbors saw to it that every child was well taken care of But migration, urbanization, unemployment and revolutionary institutional changes have severely changed the structure and the function of the family unit – Black and White – and redefined family life as we know it, perhaps forever.
“Families are still the centerpieces of African-American life, but they have clearly changed and evolved quite significantly over the past century,” says Dr. Niara Sudarkasa, president of Lincoln University (Pa.) and a noted author and anthropologist.
Consequently, Dr. Sudarkasa and other social science experts say an increasing number of young professional couples have had to make some tough choices. Although some have left their home base for promising jobs, many have found that they also left behind grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews – relatives who have historically assisted young families with child care. go to web site lincoln university pa
“We’ve got nuclear families, but we don’t get into much of the extended families anymore,” notes Dr. Anna Harvin Grant, head of the sociology department of Morehouse College and director of the Family Institute in Atlanta. “I wish we would embrace the village concept, whether it is biological, legal or just reaching out to the extended family of friends and relatives. Somehow, we have to come back to a sense of caring. Otherwise, the human race is going the way of the dinosaur.” A number of young couples, like Kimberly and Darren Carter of Kansas City, Mo., don’t plan to let that happen. They still live and work in areas where they have strong family structures in place. But many others, like Gail and David Howard of Fairfax, Va., do not live in areas where they have much family, which makes it necessary for them to bear the brunt of child-rearing responsibilities alone. Yet in other cases couples like Tracy and Sonia McMillan of Arlington Heights, Ill., who do not have family nearby, have created extended family networks among trusted friends for support.
The idea of incorporating friendship ties into the extended family structure is not new, social experts say: “The extended family always extended to people who often weren’t blood relatives,” says Dr. Robert B. Hill, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University and author of several books on the subject. “So many people whose blood relatives lived far away developed relationships with close friends who provided interchanging support, extended family support.
“We need to take that concept of `It takes a village…’ seriously,” Dr. Hill says. “I’m optimistic that things can be positive. But it means we will have to work together to make that happen.” Kimberly Carter, a specialty editorial manager at Hallmark Cards Inc., readily admits that neither she nor her husband, Darren, a 29-year-old plant controller, gave much thought to having family Close by when they married and moved to his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., after college. But now, the 29-year-old mother, who has a 9-month-old son, says she couldn’t imagine how drastically different their lives would be if they didn’t have close family around to help out.
“I didn’t realize that [family support] needed to be considered until after I had Isaiah,” the new mother says. “You know that saying, `it takes a village to raise a child,’ I really believe that is true because I don’t know that you can ever anticipate the emotional, financial and time drain that a child has on you.” Neither Carter nor her husband could have anticipated that just a week after she returned to work that their son’s baby-sitter would quit. Immediately, the Carters were in need of familial support.
“I had been at work a week trying to get re-established, and then I had to deal with this crisis,” Carter says, exasperated. “I have a pretty busy schedule; it’s pretty hectic as a manager. And it was difficult trying to find a baby-sitter over the phone, so I took off a few days to interview child-care providers and to make sure that I was making the right choice about who to leave my son with. But in the interim, my mother and father-in-law kept the baby for me. That kept me peaceful and focused at work because I knew he was with people we trusted. That was a tremendous help.” Without regular assistance from relatives and church members, Carter says she and her husband would always be in crunch. “I make a lot of long distance calls to my own mother and sisters for advice,” says Kimberly Carter, who is from Memphis. “But it’s really great to have people here in town who love our son. Having family close by gives us a break as parents, and it helps us to maintain our relationship as a couple. If on a Saturday I need to go to the grocery store, I can drop him off. I can just call [family members] up and they always like to see him. So I don’t feel like I’m imposing.” The best part about having a support system, Carter says, is that it gives her and her husband peace of mind. “It’s good to know that if you’re in a pinch, you don’t have to be nervous all the time that something is going to happen and you’re going to have to try to find somebody [to watch your child]. Since I have close relatives and church members in town, if a crisis arose, I would have someone to keep him. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty or stressed. It makes things easier to know they’re there.” Gail Smith-Howard and her husband, David, who are parents to a 2-year-old son, live hours away from most of their kith and kin. During the first year of their son Daniyyel’s life, the Howard treated child-rearing like a business partnership. David Howard, a 38-year-old, self-employed carpet broker who works from a home office, watches the toddler during the day. His wife, a hotel general manager, tends to the baby’s needs in the evenings and on weekends. (This year, the Howards say, things may change, since Daniyyel will attend day care.) “All marriages have to be a partnership. We’re both two independently successful people, and we have to support each other: We’ve been very blessed so far because a lot of the [child-rearing responsibilities] fall on us,” says 39-year old Smith-Howard, who is from Montclair, N. J. Her husband’s family is spread across Kansas, New Mexico and California. “We’ve always been committed to taking care of Daniyyel.” But the Howards say their schedules haven’t always been in sync, like the time when Smith-Howard was at the hotel preparing for a special promotions campaign while her husband, at the home office, had just received word of a lucrative business deal that be needed to respond to in person. That meant, Smith-Howard explains, that someone needed to watch their son – right away. Luckily, she says, a friend from Maryland was in the area and able to baby-sit. web site lincoln university pa
“We worked it out. But that’s tough,” she says. “It’s times like that that we wonder what we would do if my friend or one of my two cousins [who live in the area] weren’t around.” One saving grace, Smith-Howard says, is that every other month, her mother travels from New Jersey to Virginia to watch the toddler for a week or so, which gives her and her husband a little time to themselves. “It’s like a date; you get excited about it and it really keeps your relationship fresh,” she says of those rare occasions.
It took Tracy and Sonia McMillan of Arlington Heights, Ill., years to find trusted child-care help and almost that long to get some time to themselves. Three years ago, the McMillans, who have two young daughters, ages 3 and 5 months, moved to the Chicago area, where neither of them has family.
“We knew we weren’t going to have any family here, and that was almost a deal-breaker from my wife’s perspective,” says 32-year-old Tracy McMillan, a certified public accountant from Philadelphia.
McMillan’s wife nods in agreement. “It’s a lot easier when you have a family around to help out with the children; so we were concerned about what it would be like having children out here with no support,” says Sonia McMillan, whose family lives in New York and Barbados.
For a while, trying to secure trusted child-care help was a hit-or-miss situation, the McMillans say. “We have struggled,” laments the young father. “Not until recently have we found a niche in terms of finding outside baby-sitters. And, of course, you rely more so on your family and that puts your mind at ease. But we didn’t have that advantage when we came out here. So we had to do a lot of investigating and referral checks.” At one point, the McMillans, who both maintain breakneck work schedules, say they resorted to desperate measures in order to manage their child-care needs. “Once when we first moved here, we both had to be out of own at the same time, and that was a nightmare,” recalls 32-year-old Sonia McMillan, a software analyst. “We didn’t know anybody we could leave our children with overnight, so we ended up flying Tracy’s mother down to watch the kids for us.” The McMillans say they have no doubt that their lives at that time would have been much easier if their families lived nearby. “This past summer, I went home to New York, and it was really nice,” Sonia McMillan says. “The children were with my mom. And it was nice to be able to go places without having to worry about them. So it makes a big difference. If our families were here and we had more of a support system, we could do a lot more together.” Nevertheless, Sonia McMillan and her husband have learned to make the best of less-than-optimal circumstances. Over the past three years, they have developed strong friendship ties with a number of other young Black couples in their community. “A few times when we’ve been absolutely stuck, our friends baby-sat for us. And we’ve actually had a friend or two watch our older daughter overnight once or twice when I was out of town and Tracy needed to work late,” the native Barbadian says. “And sometimes we return the favor.” The McMillans, like so many other families who live far away from loved ones, wish they had family members nearby who could assist with the daily challenges of child care. But they say they are fortunate to have trusted friends they can rein, on. “If we weren’t comfortable, we wouldn’t leave our children with them – regardless of friendships,” Tracy McMillan contends. “But we’ve found a very sustainable network here, and that keeps us going.” If the extended family of the future is to survive, Dr. Sudarkasa says, the Black community as a whole has to recommit and pull closer together. “It is absolutely vital for us to return to [the extended family] for the basis of our self-help,” she says. “Whatever the extended family becomes as we move into the 21st century will be different than what it was in the past. But we have to build on our kinship and friendship ties if we are to succeed during the next century and the next millennium.” Townsel, Lisa Jones
This edition of “The Ethanol Report” features an interview with Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen during a visit to the 2009 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois on September 2. Dinneen discusses the need to increase the amount of ethanol allowed in gasoline above the current 10 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency rulemaking on the expanded Renewable Fuels Standard and the issue of indirect land use, and the ability of American farmers to continue to produce enough corn to meet the demand for ethanol.
The clock is ticking down on the comment period for the expanded Renewable Fuels Standard, better known as RFS2. The Environmental Protection Agency will be taking comments until September 25th – just 18 days from now.
Dinneen calls the principal of indirect land use being considered by the EPA “not just not scientifically sound, but silly” because it literally equates an acre of land used to grow ethanol in the United States with an acre of Brazilian land forest being destroyed. “This is a very big issue and we’re a long way from having it resolved.”
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) hosted officials from the Environmental Protection Agency last week for a tour of agriculture and biofuels in Iowa. Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, and Margo Oge, Director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality, represented EPA on the visit that included the BioCentury Research Farm in Boone, an Iowa family farm and the 
“We have the safeguards and controls in place to prevent fraudulent acts like this for producers,” says Clayton McMartin, President of 
The USDA is handing out another $13 million in loans and grants for 233 renewable energy projects in rural areas of 38 different states.
“While overall it may only be a couple of dozen jobs on a statewide basis, it is an important signal because we were in a period of real economic turmoil in the ethanol sector, but yet we didn’t see layoffs in those plants, even the ones that went through bankruptcies, and in a couple of cases we saw companies use this time to modify their plants to create addition production capabilities, such as corn oil extraction,” Sneller said. 
U.S. ethanol production is on the rise with the news that the industry has set new production records. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), American ethanol facilities produced 694,000 barrels per day (b/d) in June 2009. That is up 109,000 b/d from a year ago.
Everywhere you go at the 2009 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois this week, people are talking about ethanol.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will play host to a pair of EPA officials at an Iowa biodiesel plant this coming Thursday at 3 pm. Let’s hope he can use the opportunity to teach them the REAL math behind the amount of corn and soybeans it takes to make ethanol and biodiesel.
The U.S. Department of Energy has handed out $1.6 million to the Alternative Fuel Trade Alliance… a group made up of the Renewable Fuels Association, the National Biodiesel Foundation, the Propane Education & Research Council, the Clean Vehicle Education Foundation and ASG Renaissance… to boost efforts for a targeted educational plan aimed at Clean Cities Coordinators and related stakeholders.
Bob Dinneen, President and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, commented, “This DOE grant will supplement our individual and joint efforts to work with and train coordinators, stakeholders, and others at the national and regional level to enhance their knowledge and expertise on the latest developments and applications for alternative fuels and advanced vehicle technologies which include ethanol, biodiesel, propane, and natural gas fuels as well as hybrid/electric technologies and idle reduction strategies to improve fuel economy.”
Joe Jobe, CEO of the National Biodiesel Board, said “This program unites the mainstream alternative fuel organizations in working collaboratively towards a common goal: educating America on all aspects of alternative fuels, and increasing their use. This will benefit our air quality, our energy independence and our economy.”
Watermelons… that tasty summertime treat… could be the next feedstock for the green fuel ethanol.