About 100 local land owners packed the Depot Civic and Cultural Center on Thursday night to learn how they could get mesquite trees removed from their property at no cost. Those in attendance not only found out how this program works, but also heard about plans to bring what was called a Biomass Gasification Power Plant to Brownwood.
Mesquite Fuels and Agriculture is the company over the project. This company is working to secure agreements with local land owners that allows them to clear land of mesquite trees and cedar at no cost to the owner and use the wood as fuel for their power plant. This plant will use what is called a gasification process by roasting mesquite and juniper cedar wood then burning the gas that is emitted to generate electricity.
“We have selected Brownwood as a site to build a plant,” said the company’s Chief Operations Officer Jack Lauterbach. He said that Coleman and San Saba are also locations that the company is looking at for power plants.
“If the communities want it as well as land owners, we know we can build a plant in all three locations,” Lauterbach said.
Lauterbach outlined a three step process to set up each plant in a location. The first step is to secure enough contracts with landowners to remove mesquite trees and juniper cedar from their property to supply the fuel source for the plant. The company needs 150,000 acres of land to be available over a for harvesting through land owner agreements to enable them to secure financing from their investor. The land would not be harvested all at once, but over a 10 year period.
The second step in the process is selection of a site where the power plant would be built. Lauterbach said that a suitable site has been located in the Brownwood area.
The final step that was outlined is the process of harvesting the wood for the project shortly before the plant goes online.
Lauterbach said that the proposed power plant would be a 20-25 megawatt producing plant and would cost approximately $60 million to build. He also said that the power plant would create approximately 60-80 jobs for the area including subcontractors. It will take 18 months to 2 years for the power plant to be constructed and operational.
The mesquite would be harvested by a specialized machine called a John Deere Harvester 1490 which would bundle the mesquite logs into bales around 8’ in length. Lauterbach said that the company has been doing testing on land at the corner of Sidney Johnson Road and the access road which is owned by the Brownwood Industrial Foundation in the Camp Bowie Industrial Park. The bales are being stored at that location and he encouraged residents to drive by and see the results of their land clearing process.
Lauterbach stressed that Mesquite Fuels & Agriculture needs community support and enough mesquite to fuel the plant long term for project to become a reality. The company is looking for more agreements with land owners that gives them permission to clear mesquite and juniper cedar from property at no cost to the land owners. Contracted properties need to be within a 50 mile radius of the power plant to keep fuel costs down.
Lauterbach said that they will host another public meeting in about two weeks to help answer any further questions about the project.
Pictured are mesquite bundles on land south of Brownwood during testing by Mesquite Fuels and Agriculture.
