One of the two companies looking to build an ethanol plant in the Cass County town of Atlantic has announced plans to bow out of the proposal.
In a letter to the Cass County Board of Supervisors on Monday, a spokeman for Green Plains Renewable Energy said they will be searching for other sites in the area to build a 50-million gallon ethanol plant because the location they selected just northeast of Atlantic has an insufficient supply of water to meet their needs and the quality was such that it would have required extensive, costly treatment to make it usable for ethanol production.
GPRE’s decision means their competitor, Cass-Co Amaizing Energy, will likely boost the production capability of their proposed ethanol plant northwest of Atlantic, from 50- to 100-million gallons. Construction on that plant is set to begin in the Spring of 2007.