Maybe the initials “EPA” should stand for the Ethanol Protection Agency, as environmental protection seems just too costly and time consuming for the agency. The EPA recently admitted that it has not been in compliance with the 2007 law that requires the agency to study the environmental impact of the ethanol mandate and report its findings to Congress every three years. So far, envirofascist bureaucrats have only met the law’s requirements once in 2011. The EPA’s excuse is that it just doesn’t have enough funding or time and therefore has simply ignored the law.

According to the EPA’s inspector general, because the agency hasn’t been conducting the impact study, it hasn’t been able “to identify, consider, mitigate and make policymakers aware of any adverse impacts of renewable fuels.” The EPA now says it won’t have a fully completed study until at least 2024. Well, that’s good news if you’re a corn farmer, but not such good news for the environment or even other corn-dependent industries, as price of corn has increased.

Several recent independent environmental studies conclude that ethanol biofuels have had an overall negative effect on the environment from an increase of smog in cities to the amount of land, water and energy needed to produce ethanol when compared to that of gasoline. Combined with worse mileage and damage to small engines, ethanol has had the exact opposite effect of what it was touted to accomplish when it was initially mandated back in 2005. Yet there is no push by either Congress or the Obama administration to repeal or even question the ethanol mandate. And the agency tasked with protecting the environment seems too busy figuring out how to clean up its own environmental messes to care. Cronyism at its best.