News

Ethanol ball rolling: Coshocton plant gets permit, others working

September 22, 2005

SALEM, Ohio – The ethanol industry is one step closer to calling Ohio home.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued a permit to install to Coshocton Ethanol, LLC, Aug. 31.
That permit gives plant developers an outline of design requirements and air emission regulations needed to operate the facility, as well as permission to install equipment, according to EPA spokesman Jim Leach.
“They get a one-year test, a shake-down period, to see if they meet the terms and conditions of their permit,” Leach said.
A permit to operate, which would let the plant produce ethanol permanently, is the next step, Leach said.
Air quality. The permit to install also includes an air permit, Leach said.
An air permit for an ethanol production facility limits emissions of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and acetaldehyde.
No one from Coshocton Ethanol, whose parent company is Nebraska-based Baard Renewables/Nordic Biofuels, returned calls for comment.
Renewal. Elsewhere in Ohio, planners are also moving toward their goal of bringing ethanol production to the Buckeye State.
The initial earthmoving has begun at Greater Ohio Ethanol’s Lima, Ohio, plant, according to Greater Ohio Ethanol office manager Linda Hesler.
Hesler said there’s been no formal groundbreaking, but stream mitigation work has begun and there’s talk of building foundations for the facility inside Lima city limits within the next six weeks.
The facility has all the required permits from the state for the proposed 54 million gallon per year production, she said.
Organizers are already looking at other several other sites in western Ohio to locate the company’s second and third plants, Hesler said.
“People have been very supportive of [us], especially in the last few weeks with high gas prices. There really seems to be a renewed interest in ethanol,” Hesler said.
Harrison County. In Harrison County, Wendel Dreve and his wife, Marion Gilliland, have obtained all the permits necessary to begin construction of Harrison Ethanol LLC.
Dreve said they’ve purchased a parcel, roughly 300 acres, south of Cadiz to site the plant.
He expects initial ground clearing for surveying to be completed this fall and says construction of the facilities should be started by spring 2006.
The Harrison project plans include an anaerobic digester, ethanol plant, 2,000-cow dairy and 10,000-head beef feedlot.
Dreve’s parent company, Farmers Ethanol, is also planning facilities in Perry and Pike counties.
Northwest Ohio. No representative of North West Ethanol, planned for Hicksville, Ohio, returned phone calls.
Farm and Dairy previously reported the plant was proposed at 40 million gallons. In February 2005, Farm and Dairy reports said a committee was working to put together financing for the project.
New idea. In late June, Cargill Inc. partnered with two other agribusinesses and revealed intentions to build an 100-million-gallon ethanol plant in Bloomingburg, Ohio, near Washington Court House.
Demeter Enterprises, the conglomerate, says the facility will also produce 315,000 tons annually of dry distillers’ grain, a byproduct that’s a suitable livestock feed.
The plant will be fueled by a Cargill grain elevator expected to be built with the facility and will demand 35 million bushels of corn each year.
With Cargill, the other two players are AS Alliance Holdings, an investment firm that develops renewable energy projects, and Fagen, Inc., which has designed and built half of the existing ethanol plants in the U.S.
(Reporter Andrea Myers welcomes reader feedback by phone at 1-800-837-3419, ext. 22, or by e-mail at amyers@farmanddairy.com.)
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