| Ethanol plant rezoning hearing April 24
By Brent Zell, Tribune/Beacon
editor |
The
Minnehaha County Commission last Tuesday set April 24 as the date for a public
hearing on the rezoning of property near Sherman for a proposed ethanol plant.
The public hearing will be held as part of the commission’s regular meeting,
which starts at 9 a.m. at 415 Dakota Ave. in Sioux Falls.
The commission will have a hearing in order to turn a 300-acre plot of land just
east of the Sherman city limits from the A-1 Agriculture District to the Buffalo
Ridge Planned Development District. Last November, Buffalo Ridge Energy, which
is headquartered in Brandon, announced that the land near Sherman was one of
four areas the group was considering as a site for its proposed plant that would
produce about 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. In January, Buffalo Ridge
Board Chairman Greg Van Zanten of Colton said that Sherman topped the group’s
list of the four sites.
On March 26, the county’s planning commission approved the planned
development. Planning Director Scott Anderson said that the county would have
flexibility in how the land would be zoned in areas such as setback from water
sources.
The proposed plant would take up the southern third of the parcel of land,
Anderson said. That way, the plant would be farther away from several acres of
wetlands in the northeastern part of the property.
Anderson said that Buffalo Ridge is considering increasing the plant’s annual
output to 100 million gallons of ethanol.
“The footprint of the plant will not increase much by increasing it from 50 to
100 million,” said Planning Director Scott Anderson.
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