Ethanol stations remain few and far between

LOS ANGELES -- The ethanol industry has a problem, but you wouldn't have known it Tuesday from the line of big, thirsty vehicles snaking down the street from a single service station.

Most states still have few places that sell the industry's highly touted E85 fuel (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) even though there are an estimated 6.8 million cars and trucks on the road capable of burning the mixture.

Here in the motoring mecca of Los Angeles, there's exactly one E85 station to serve consumers. It is one of just three open to the public in all of California.

"I've been waiting to get a station out here," said Keira Lowery, 28, of Los Angeles as she filled up her Dodge Caravan minivan. Some waited more than half an hour.

Promotions like this one have been staged around the country to raise awareness of E85, plugged as a home-grown, environmentally sound fuel. But even officials of GM, which makes the most flex-fuel vehicles that can burn E85, say they are frustrated by the slow rollout of pumps around the country.

"We're trying to bring attention to the fact we need more stations," said Clay Okabayashi, a GM executive who was on hand at the event.

The Corn Belt has most of the E85 pumps. Of the 1,490 U.S. stations with E85, 89 are in Iowa, 169 in Illinois and 342 in Minnesota, according to the tally kept by the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. But there are just four stations in Utah and one each in Montana, Massachusetts and Delaware.

The slow growth of the E85 stations contrasts with this season's huge corn plantings and the continued opening of ethanol plants, many near the corn.

While more pumps are located near ethanol plants, red tape is also a problem. In California, the coalition blames California air-quality officials for holding up installation of E85 pumps in a dispute about permits for their vapor recovery systems.