DNR approves air permit for Webster County ethanol plant

As Gulfstream Bioflex Energy LLC moves forward with the $185 million proposed plant east of Rogersville, the company has apparently abandoned efforts to build a second plant in northwest Missouri, according to a report by Quincy, Ill., TV station KHQA.

In January 2007, GBE – formed by partners Greg Wilmoth, Charles Luna and Jeff Negre – announced it would build a $220 million plant in Monroe City, about 20 miles west of Hannibal, and that the facility would employ about 65 people. In a news release issued at the time, GBE stated that the plant would be operating within 16 months.

“We are especially pleased with this location,” Wilmoth said in the release. “Monroe City provides an exceptional site for an ethanol plant with access to rail, natural gas, available work force and markets for all products.”

But Monroe City Administrator Jim Burns told KHQA that high corn prices were among the factors that derailed the proposed plant, according to a May 26 report on the station’s Web site, www.khqa.com.

GBE’s attorney, Craig Lowther, was in a jury trial and unavailable for comment by press time.

Closer to home, GBE’s plan to build an ethanol plant in Webster County that’s capable of producing 101 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol annually has cleared a regulatory hurdle.

On April 24, DNR issued an air pollution permit for the plant after GBE paid nearly $17,000 in fees for the 330-hour permit review process. GBE has two years from the permit issue date to begin construction at the 252-acre plant site, which is northeast of U.S. Highway 60 and Porter Crossing Road between Rogersville and Fordland.

GBE may receive no more than 8,064 tons of grain daily from trucks and no more than 26,880 tons of grain per day by rail, according to the permit, which states that the plant will process up to 1.2 million tons of corn grain annually.

The permit also states the proposed plant, which would be powered by natural gas, is limited to emitting no more than 100 tons each of carbon monoxide or volatile organic compounds.

DNR has required the company to maintain detailed logs once the plant is in operation.

A clerk at the Webster County Recorder of Deeds Office was unable to find any deeds indicating that property owners William and Linda Porter had sold the land to GBE or its parent company, Renewable Energy Holding Co.

GBE first announced its plan to build the Webster County plant in August 2006, but the proposal was met with fierce opposition from surrounding property owners concerned about the potential impact on their groundwater supply.

Several of those residents sued GBE in October 2006 to block the proposed plant, but a judge ruled in May 2007 that the company could move forward with its plans.

The plaintiffs – known collectively as Citizens for Groundwater Protection – appealed to the Missouri Court of Appeals, where the case is pending.

In a brief interview with Springfield Business Journal in December, GBE Vice President Charles Luna discounted widespread news reports about a national slowdown in ethanol plant financing and stumbling stock prices for producers of the alcohol-based fuel.

“There is no slowdown,” he said at the time. “It’s going full blast.”

GBE is led by Luna and Wilmoth, a first cousin once-removed to Gov. Matt Blunt, who signed new ethanol standards into law in 2006 that required gasoline sold in Missouri to contain at least 10 percent ethanol by Jan. 1. Wilmoth, Luna and Negre – president of Mount Vernon-

based Boomerang Transportation Inc. – have experience in the trucking and oil industries.[[In-content Ad]]