By Justin Leighty, Truth Staff
MILFORD -- Little green signs dot the farmland outside of town, but the closer you get to town, the more red you see.
The green signs support the idea of a proposed ethanol refinery just outside of Milford.
The red signs support the idea of putting it someplace else.
South Dakota-based VeraSun Energy Corp. came to town last year wanting to build an ethanol refinery. The proposed refinery would sit between Old S.R. 15 and C.R. 100 E., between C.R. 1300 N. and the railroad tracks. The site borders on the northeast corner of Milford's town limits. VeraSun agreed to purchase all the necessary land.
The proposal didn't sit well with more than 1,100 local residents, though, who presented a petition to the Kosciusko County Commissioners in late November. They don't want the facility so close to town.
Now landowners are sitting in limbo, wondering what's going to happen. When Del and Lou Ann Acton agreed to sell the small acreage where their home sits, VeraSun planned to make their official announcement Jan. 1.
That date came and passed without a peep, though. While the company filed an application in January for a construction permit, Acton wonders if VeraSun also will let the May 1 date for closing the sale slip quietly by.
"We're kind of stuck here in the middle," Acton said. "Now that we have no commitment, we're still just doing nothing."
VeraSun officials didn't respond to a request for an interview for this story.
"They're not telling us anything either," said Acton. "I need to give them a call."
Acton said he figures the intense opposition may drive VeraSun away. "Places they've gone before, people rolled out the red carpet and here they haven't done that," Acton said.
Plenty of people like the idea, evidenced by the green signs. Kosciusko County Farm Bureau and Elkhart County Farm Bureau printed those signs, and a couple of farmers along S.R. 15 parked semi trailers with big signs in favor of ethanol.
Milford resident Greg Baumgartner is one of the people who told the county commissioners he opposes the project.
"There are actually several issues," Baumgartner said. "The more I learn about this thing the more it doesn't make sense," he said.
"Originally I was pro-ethanol thinking this is a good thing, but the more you research it and look at it, there's a lot of things" that concern him, he said.
"This is a bad location." It's too close to a populated area that relies on volunteer emergency workers, Baumgartner said.
Those are some of the concerns he raised in a letter to the Kosciusko County commissioners in December, concerns also raised by the Northern Lakes Area Concerned Citizens Association. That group distributes the red signs that oppose the project and also maintain a Web site at www.milfordethanol.com.
In addition to worries about the local impact, Baumgartner also worries about corn-produced ethanol's long-term future prospects. "It's got a lot of inefficiencies in the process," he said. "The thing that just blows my mind about this thing is that if we used every last bit of corn we produce" to make ethanol, it would still only make up for a fraction of our oil dependence.
Even Acton has some worries on that count.
"I guess at this point in time I'm rather in favor of it," he said of the proposed Milford plant. However, "I'm kind of mixed about it personally. With the whole ethanol thing, I see the future of ethanol as not looking too great."
While energy independence is a great goal, "ethanol's not the fuel of the future, it's just a Band-Aid, so to speak," Acton said.
Whatever happens, Acton would like it to happen soon. "We're just kind of sitting here in limbo."