Scripps News has a feature on ethanol fever in the Heartland, focusing on Heron Lake, Minn.

Ethanol mania is sweeping through Heron Lake and many towns like it across the Corn Belt. Investors are spending billions in rural communities, sparking a wild rush to secure land, an industry movement to alter environmental standards and a rash of fierce bidding by communities desperate for their own plant.

Two decades after farmers began mashing their corn into ethanol, the clear, odorless liquid is seen by many as the best chance for America to lessen its dependence on foreign oil.

Read the story here.