Lack of suitable site sent ethanol plant to Turner

TIFTON — Success is when opportunity and preparedness meet. Tift County had the opportunity to bring the corn ethanol facility of the Georgia Alternative Energy Cooperative here but was not prepared with land resources and the facility went to Turner County.

Last month The Gazette covered the announcement that the plant, which will be built in Turner County south of Sycamore, is expected to employ 50 people. Shelley Zorn, president of the Turner County Chamber of Commerce, said, “This is a major development for Turner County and the region.”

Tift County was considered by the cooperative as early as last August after a deal with Worth County fell through. The Tift County Development Authority and the Tifton-Tift County Chamber of Commerce began to put a proposal together — but the deal with Tift County also fell through.

“We didn’t have a large enough tract of land,” said TCDA Chairman Grady Thompson. “We didn’t have the property to put it on, where it needed to be.”

One of the requirements for the cooperative was that the land had to be adjacent to a railroad and it had to be a large tract of land — 100 to 200 acres.

The TCDA was able to locate a suitable piece of property that was privately owned. The property was 395.6 acres south of the Industrial Park, just off Highway 41 south and had access to rail. They were prepared to purchase the land and were working with Georgia Power engineers to lay out a location for the ethanol site. They were also looking at the availability of gas for the plant.

One of the complications the TCDA faced with the property they had selected was that a dirt county road separated the parcel next to the railroad from the remainder of the land.

At a special called meeting on Aug. 30 last year, the TCDA voted to negotiate to buy the property with the view of working with GAEC to locate their plant at the site.

At their regular meeting held in September, Brian Tankersley, with the Tift County Extension office, introduced Allen Whitehead with GAEC to talk with the board members about requirements for the facility. Whitehead told the TCDA the cooperative had 240 members and would have 800 members with 36 different counties involved. The TCDA remained interested in working out the details to make the project come together for Tift County.

“We couldn’t work out a price (on the land), that’s what stopped it,” Thompson said. He said when the TCDA was unable to agree on a price for the land with the private owner, the deal fell through.

“They (GAEC) were moving faster than we could move,” Thompson said.

Tankersley said, “That’s success, when opportunity and preparedness meet.” And, in this case, he said, they didn’t meet.

“Tift County was very interested and they wanted it here,” he said. “The timing was the problem. A lot of counties were interested.”

Tankersley agreed with Thompson that having or finding the right piece of land “was the gist of it.”

Tankersley said Tift County is limited on land and there were other requirements as well. “It was just a problem with land resources,” he said.

“It will still be beneficial to Tift County, and this region,” Tankersley said. He said he thought Tift County had the largest number of members in the cooperative.

To contact reporter Jana Cone, call 382-4321, ext. 208.

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