By Erik Potter, Post-Tribune staff writer
Lake County Solid Waste's director announced Monday morning that two locations have been chosen for the soon-to-be-constructed garbage-to-ethanol plants.
Executive Director Jeff Langbehn named two sites, one in the Crown Point/Lowell corridor and the other in the Hobart/Merrillville corridor.
A plant will be built on each site, Langbehn said, to provide a back-up in an emergency if one of the plants shut down. It would also allow the company to process more garbage, capacity the company might need if talks with Chicago, neighboring counties and private companies about processing their waste are fruitful.
In a phone interview Monday, Earl Powers, president of Powers Energy One of Indiana, was unwilling to confirm that any sites had been chosen, saying he had narrowed it down to Hobart, Merrillville or Lowell, and an unlikely fourth location at the Interstate 65/Interstate 80/94 intersection that posed flooding issues.
However, Langbehn said Powers asked him on Thursday to make the site selection announcement on the district's regular half hour program on Monday on WJOB.
Final contract negotiations are under way for the two sites, Langbehn said, but nothing will be final until the respective town or city councils approve the plant locating there.
"What we're trying to do, we're trying to find a community that will welcome us. ... That was (Lake County Commissioner) Gerry Scheub's condition, that wherever we go they welcome us,"?said Powers, referring to the contract provision Scheub inserted that the local council give approval before Powers Energy builds a plant in the county.
Langbehn said the council members of the communities are "unanimously" supportive of the project, which could bring $1 million a year to the host community.
The district and Powers Energy are supposed to meet next month with Indiana Department of Environmental Management staff about the environmental permitting needed for the site. Langbehn said the permit application should be finished by Jan. 31, and could be approved by June or July, with construction to start soon afterward.