WAHOO -- In the long season of courtship between steely-eyed builders of ethanol plants and starry-eyed rural communities across the Midwest, Wahoo, might be one of the brides left standing at the altar.
Attempts to get an explanation for unfinished construction are made difficult by the loud silence emanating from Williamsburg, Va., headquarters of a company called E-85, Inc.
Another series of telephone inquiries to one of the business holdings of Indian billionaire C. Sivasankaran went nowhere Thursday.
But the view from downtown Wahoo, which had so much to gain from an ethanol investment of at least
$150 million, is not encouraging.
“It doesn’t look good,” said Tim Otte, part of the management of a local propane dealership, “when you start cutting up stuff you’ve been welding on for a year, when you cut it up for scrap.”
As recently as February, it seemed that E-85 was the payoff for the Greater Wahoo Development Corporation’s eight-year pursuit of an industry that could add value to corn and employ 30-50 people at a pay scale well above the Nebraska standard.
It does not look that way now.
Corn prices have dropped from their $7 highs, but they’re still well above where they were in late 2006. That’s when a 2005 federal mandate to produce billions of gallons of ethanol started to assert itself.
Many companies that got an early start on construction and kept construction at a steady pace were able to cash in on those circumstances. Others farther back in the pack in Nebraska and elsewhere have had more of an uphill climb as the cost of making ethanol rose and the overall economy weakened.
Even though crews from AllState Erectors in Hallsville, Mo., and the Ken Bratney Company in Des Moines, Iowa, are putting the finishing touches on a huge building meant to store the Wahoo ethanol plant’s grain byproducts, that will apparently bring an abrupt end to those contractors’ participation in a project just northeast of town.
“We’re just going to finish the building and we’re gone,” said Jeremy Pierce of Bratney ranks.
Kevin Morse of AllState said that might take a month.
“And then this place will be empty,” Pierce said.
Judging which way Wahoo’s ethanol future was headed has never been easy based on telephone calls to principals or on what you could see by visiting the construction scene.
As the pickup bearing Pierce and Morse disappeared toward town in a cloud of gravel dust Thursday, earth-moving equipment still rumbled across the vast expanse behind them.
A steady stream of trucks moved past security guard Heath Rippentrop of Yale Enforcement Services in Omaha and past concrete pads meant to accommodate huge metal tanks.
But local sources say the latest earth work is meant to remove tons of rock aggregate and restore the ground to farmable condition.
Rippentrop cheerfully agreed to carry a request for an interview to the nearby E-85 trailer. But the only result was a sticky note with a Virginia phone number written on it.
If E-85 is indeed on its way out, it is of some consolation to know that it is not leaving stacks of unpaid bills behind. Unpaid debts were a much bigger part of the story at nearby Mead, where E3 BioFuels descended into bankruptcy last year.
Tim Bern, owner of the Wahoo Building Center, had been among those feeling nervous about getting his money. Of course, that was only one of many emotions felt by people used to selling goods and services in smaller transactions.
“I’ve never seen anybody spend money like that before,” Bern said as he perched on a pile of 2 x 4s at his business near the Saunders County courthouse. Along Wahoo’s main street, assessment of more recent circumstances is marked by words like hearsay and speculation.
But in the absence of a definitive announcement from E-85, there also seems to be a growing base of facts to suggest that Wahoo is losing its latest ethanol suitor long before the first gallon of ethanol would be made.
Bern, for example, noted the feedback he’s gotten from the four companies that opened charge accounts at his business.
“They all told me, basically, it’s done,” he said of the project’s outlook.
The Otte family has been invited to bid on the possible purchase of three tanks at the ethanol plant site, the largest capable of holding 74,000 gallons.
Steve Gerdts, president of Wahoo Metal Products, is back to believing that there is not an ethanol plant in Wahoo’s immediate future.
How come?
“Just from the mere fact that I saw many, many tons of stainless steel out there for their project,” he said, “and it’s gone.“
And now what happens to the property?
“It doesn’t lend itself to too much right now other than an ethanol plant that I can see,” Gerdts said.
Greg Hohl, president of the Wahoo State Bank and part of the local economic development group, listens patiently to questions in his second-floor office.
Hohl has a great view of the flow of commerce in a small town. But his view of the local ethanol future -- whether that’s E-85 or somebody else -- has become much more obstructed by much bigger economic forces.
“As a banker, I think I tend to try to see the positive sides of projects, especially community development projects,” Hohl said. “And so, from that standpoint, I’m still optimistic it will happen.“
The federal mandate for renewable fuels remains a big source of momentum.
“The government made a big, big commitment to it,” he said. “I can’t believe they would pull the rug from underneath this industry.“
Wahoo is certainly not the only town where an unfinished ethanol project seems to be on its way to gathering dust. And this community has plenty of other things going for it -- a new hospital, a new jail, a new library, its proximity to Lincoln and Omaha.
But with all that said, there’s still some sting to recent ethanol events.
“This was a big deal,” said propane dealer Ott. “There was talk about getting the railroad in there and a siding. It was really big, a lot of jobs and a lot of money for the economy. And farmers, them the most.“
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