GROUNDBREAKING HELD ON ETHANOL PLANT
Groundbreaking was held Thursday of the Center Ethanol Company, LLC’s new $100 million ethanol production facility. The new biorefinery, to be built near the town of Sauget is creating about 35 new permanent jobs, as well as 250,000 worker-hours of construction jobs. The Governor recently announced nearly $5.7 million in grants and tax credits for the new biorefinery.
The groundbreaking follows the Governor’s announcement last week of his energy independence plan to replace 50% of the state’s current supply of imported oil with renewable homegrown biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel.
The facility will produce 54 million gallons of ethanol per year, use more than 19 million bushels of corn annually and produce about 160,000 tons of livestock feed each year.
BEAUMONT AVE TO BE RESURFACED AT A COST OF $320,000
The Greenville City Council conducted a lively discussion last night about resurfacing Beaumont Avenue. The usual resurfacing, last done 14 years ago, would cost the city about 150 thousand dollars. However the consulting engineers, The HMG Company, recommended a more comprehensive job which would require milling off all the old asphalt down to the original brick surface and applying a fabric liner with the new asphalt. That process would run about 290 thousand dollars plus 30 thousand for the engineering work. City Manager Dave Willey recommended doing the more comprehensive overlay, as the engineers believe most of the old asphalt has deteriorated.
The council voted to accept the engineering contract. HMG will begin advertising for bids next week and should have bids ready for opening and consideration at a special city council meeting on September 25th. That would allow construction to began in October. It was pointed out that construction would take place in the middle of harvest, and Beaumont gets a lot of incoming grain truck traffic. The city manager said that had been taken into consideration and with good weather the construction should take two but no more that 3 weeks. The entire council agreed it was past time to resurface Beaumont Avenue.
