GIBSON CITY – An agreement is in the works between the Ford County Board and Eco Manufacturing LLC, a Massachusetts-based company that has proposed building the nation's first plasma-gasification waste-recycling plant in Gibson City.

The "host agreement" would include requirements that the company would "have to abide by to assure public safety and quality of life," according to county board Chairman Rick Bowen of Elliott.

For instance, Bowen said, the deal might restrict the company from using county and township roads to haul waste to the facility, as well as require Eco Manufacturing to pay "tipping" fees for bringing waste to the plant, which would convert hazardous and toxic waste into clean, renewable energy.

It also might require Eco Manufacturing to provide training to the plant's employees and to pay for training for the county's first-responders to handle a hazardous-waste spill, Bowen said.

The host agreement is still being drafted by the county, but Bowen said Monday that he hopes it will be finalized by the county board and submitted to Eco "within the next couple of weeks," after it is reviewed by State's Attorney Matt Fitton.

Eco Manufacturing would then have the opportunity to negotiate the terms of the agreement prior to approval by both entities, Bowen said.

"It would be nice to be able to get this done this month," he said.

Garrett Gates, vice president of business development for Eco Manufacturing, said his Cambridge, Mass.-based firm is willing to negotiate terms of the host agreement, which he noted is required as part of the county's solid-waste-management plan. The county board approved an updated solid-waste management plan last month to address issues surrounding the plant.

"It's required as part of the waste-management plan to either have a host agreement waived or complete a host agreement," Gates said Monday, "so we will meet that requirement."

Gates also confirmed that his firm – which recently withdrew its siting application for the plant, a document required by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency – is still planning to build its plant on Gibson City's west side.

"We're still planning on it," Gates said. "We like Gibson City. We like the town. And my discussions with the county have been good as well. So our intention is to stay in Gibson City, if it appears likely or probable that we will receive siting" approval.

Gates said his firm hopes to "submit a siting application as soon as a host agreement is signed."

Gibson City Mayor Dan Dickey has said he was confident the firm would reapply for an IEPA permit, even after Eco withdrew its site application in June and in August requested and received a refund of the $15,737 balance remaining from its $20,000 application fee.

Prior to the firm's withdrawal of its application, an adjacent landowner objected to the proposed plant site due to various issues she saw as gaps in the application, including questions of future property values, traffic safety and environmental concerns. The firm planned to address those concerns before revising its application and resubmitting it.

Dickey said he is confident Eco will move forward with the siting application, adding that the firm – which once had considered other sites in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky and Tennessee for the plant – is "not looking anywhere else."

Dickey said he believes the county's updated solid-waste-management plan has completed another necessary step for the company's plans to move forward.

Bowen said the host agreement, which is mandated by the solid-waste plan, calls for Eco to provide "education about recycling within the (local) schools or within special programs."

Requiring the company to only use state highways to transport toxic waste to the plant is also possible, Bowen said, but negotiable.

Eco Manufacturing announced plans to build the $70 million plant in Gibson City last November. At that time, company officials indicated it would likely be at least four years before the plant could be operational because of the lengthy permit processes.

Eco Manufacturing later signed an option to buy a 100-acre parcel of land near Gibson City's west side owned by Warfield Enterprises Inc. The city council then annexed the property into city limits, since the property must be part of the city before the siting application could be filed. The land was also rezoned from agricultural to commercial use.

The facility would recycle containerized industrial and chemical hazardous waste from manufacturing and university contracts already in place through its major shareholder, Triumvirate Environmental. The company's president, Jim Green, said the plant, Eco's first plasma-gasification facility, "would start small" by processing 200 tons of waste per day.

Plasma gasification is a means of reducing the amount of trash put in landfills and an efficient method of producing clean energy with emissions equal to natural gas, the lowest emitter for carbon-based fuel. Plasma gasification uses heat "hotter than the surface of the sun" to reduce waste to "almost nothing," according to an expert in the field.