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Commissioners approve biodiesel expansion at Jackson County’s Green Energy Park
By Justin Goble
Commissioners Monday night (July 23) gave unanimous approval to Smoky Mountain Biofuels’ request to expand operations at the Jackson County Green Energy Park.
The company, which is owned by Sam Gray and Al Begley, was given permission by county leaders to use the roofed loading pad and outlying areas at the park to house more storage tanks and reactors to make fuel.
According to Gray, this expansion will allow the company to triple their output of biodiesel.
“We’ll be going from between half-a-million to 1 million gallons per year to a steady 3 million gallons per year,” Gray said. “We think that will add three more jobs to the three we already have. It’s really exciting.”
Earlier this year, Smoky Mountain Biofuels signed a contract with Mountain Energy to provide biodiesel to its stations throughout Western North Carolina. Gray said the expansion will help them fill that contract.
“Most of what we’re making will be distributed throughout WNC,” he said. “We’ve got trucks coming in all the time to pick up fuel.”
Commissioners have discussed the expansion in numerous closed sessions over the past three months.
“It’s been a little bit of a wait,” Begley said. “But it’s worth it. We’re happy the commissioners are allowing us to go ahead with this.”
In other business July 23:
-– Commissioners approved a $78,000 change order from Buchanan and Sons Construction to do site preparation for a kindergarten building at Fairview Elementary School.
According to county Manager Ken Westmoreland, the construction will necessitate some changes in traffic flow in order to give Buchanan room to work.
“They need to do some demolition around one of the school’s entrances,” Westmoreland said. “So they will create a temporary parking lot and a traffic island.”
Since the construction project had already been approved by the board, Westmoreland said commissioners only needed to approve a change order and didn’t have to create a new contract.
– A $1,000 contribution to the Jackson County Little League All-Star team was approved unanimously.
According to commissioners’ Chairman Brian McMahan, the expenditure is to help the team offset travel costs.
“They won the Division 5 championship and went on to the state tournament,” McMahan said. “I hate to report that they didn’t win the state tournament, but they did represent Jackson County well.”
– Richard Wilson was unanimously reappointed as chairman of the Jackson County Planning Board. Kim Cowan was reappointed as vice-chairman.
– Terry Bell was unanimously approved as Macon County’s appointee to Southwestern Community College’s Board of Trustees.
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