Georgia has joined two other livestock-heavy states in urging the US Environmental Protection Agency to relax its ethanol mandate this year and next as drought shrinks the nation's corn supply.
Governor Nathan Deal, a Republican, said the Renewable Fuel Standard's requirement on refiners to blend corn-based ethanol into gasoline has inflated corn prices, which are threatening to put livestock producers in Georgia out of business.
"It is abundantly clear that ... current and futures pricing of corn will result in severe economic harm in the poultry and livestock sectors," Deal said in a petition to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson dated Monday.
"It also can be reasonably projected that this harm will continue well into 2013, if not beyond 2013, and that the decreasing availability of stocks of grains will only be eased when a new crop season provides an abundance of supply," he added.
The letter follows two other formal petitions filed with EPA last week by Governors Mike Beebe of Arkansas and Beverly Perdue of North Carolina, both Democrats, asking Jackson to waive all or part of the ethanol mandate for 2012 and 2013.
The policy requires refiners to blend 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline supplies this year and 13.8 billion gallons next year.
EPA said Monday it would collect public comments on the waiver requests for 30 days and reach a decision on them within 90 days. The clock starts when the agency publishes the public comment notice in the Federal Register, which has yet to happen.
If the notice runs Wednesday, EPA would have until November 20 to act -- two weeks after the US presidential election.
Analysts have said the governors' attempts to alter the ethanol policy face extremely low odds.
