Supervisors show support for grant application for rail facility

The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors has approved a grant application in support of the construction of a trans-load rail facility in Emery between Mason City and Clear Lake.

Tuesday, Oct. 13 Supervisors gave their support to a $656,000 facility which would initially employ five persons.

Sanders Products, of Lawrence, Kan., serves biofuels manufacturing plants in north-central Iowa and southern Minnesota with the transportation of sulfuric acid used in making ethanol.  Sanders is proposing to construct a facility that would help ship more of the product through the rail system instead of having it off-loaded from rail cars into tanks and then trucked to the ethanol plants.

The project would include the construction of two tanks with a loading tower, plumbing and flow meters, and a containment area.

A majority of the facility’s cost would be paid for by the Iowa Department of Transportation’s new “Linking Iowa’s Freight Transportation System.” The program is intended to find ways to ship more things by rail to decrease the number of heavy-axle trucks on the roads.

A one-time grant through the LIFTS program would provide $520,000 for the project.   Sanders will pay the difference with matching funds.  No county money would be used for the grant.