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Trenton finds winning an ethanol plant is a massive job, but worth the effort
by Betty Sayers
Ev Huddleson
Most business experts agree that entrepreneurs are found in only a small fraction of the population, yet they can have an outsized impact because they pioneer change and create wealth. Discovering one entrepreneur in a community may be akin to finding gold in the nearby hills.
Ev Huddleson and his wife, Jean are Colorado transplants. Ev retired from a career in title insurance in Denver and moved to Trenton, Nebraska in 1998 because they’d grown tired of metro traffic, crime and the hectic pace of living. They chose Trenton because it is more or less equidistant between children who live in Denver, Omaha and North Platte, and they also knew a few other former Coloradoans who are living contented lives in southwest Nebraska.
“We were looking for a small town with affordable housing,” says Huddleson. “I grew up in rural northern California, and I worked on a farm so I already knew and appreciated rural living.”
Huddleson quickly learned of the poor economic outlook for small communities in southwest Nebraska.
“Trenton is a small community with a declining population,” says Huddleson. “The ongoing coffee group discussion concerned finding answers to the perennial question, ‘What can we do to attract new businesses?’”
A plan of action
Huddleson encouraged the business leaders in Trenton to take action, and in January of 2001, the community invited Nebraska Senator Tom Baker to a Hitchcock County economic development meeting. Senator Baker spoke to the gathering, and nearly as an aside at the end of his talk, he mentioned that a company in Kansas was doing a study to see if they wanted to be in the ethanol business in Nebraska.
“We learned that the company was Berexco Oil in Wichita, Kansas,” says Huddleson. “We decided to contact them and find out what they were looking for.”
With Huddleson in the lead, the community took up the challenge of recruiting a company to build a $12 million ethanol plant — no easy task for a town of fewer than 1,000 residents
Huddleson contacted the CEO of Berexco Oil, and learned that he would be in McCook in 10 days to look at some property and talk to McCook economic development officials. “He told us, ‘If you have a plan for Trenton, meet us in McCook and we will look what you have to offer,’” Huddleson said.
A little help from their friends
Huddleson quickly gathered together a group of people willing to work on the project and went to work. They discovered a rich array of resources.
“Nebraska Department of Economic Development, Southwest Public Power and the Nebraska Public Power Department provided us with complete demographic reports for housing, labor, workforce and other statistical information and Senator Baker got people in the State Department involved,” Huddleson said. “When we had everything, two or three members of the committee met and put together a PowerPoint program.”
The committee arranged for the Berexco officials to meet at the school’s conference room in Trenton. They invited the State of Nebraska’s Superintendent of Highways, representatives from Kinder Morgan Natural Gas Co., Burlington Northern Railroad, Olsson Associates Engineering, Senator Baker, and local, county, state officials. Huddleson said, “We were not the experts, but we gathered people with the information that we believed would be helpful, and 27 different people were ready to answer their questions.
A winning presentation
“We were not a Madison Avenue firm, but everything we gave them was backed up in fact. Excellent discussion followed our presentation, and after a two-hour meeting, we visited three parcels of land, one of which was chosen as the existing site of the ethanol plant.” Berexco Oil said the Trenton presentation was the best they had heard.
Huddleson is a skillful communicator and following the presentation Huddleson and his committee stayed in nearly constant contact with Charles Wilson, president of Berexco.
“Berexco knew what they needed to build an ethanol plant,” said Huddleson. “We asked them to tell us what they’d need and we’d find it.”
Huddleson credits state, regional and local public service agencies with help in providing accurate information in a timely way to Berexco. One example: ethanol plants produce distiller’s grain, a product that may be fed to cattle, and Berexco needed to insure a market within 100 miles of the plant. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture, provided an inventory of every feedlot within 100 miles of Trenton along with the names and phone numbers and they soon learned that some 250,000 head of cattle are in feedlots within an 80 mile radius of Trenton.
Other critical elements of the project were natural gas, water, and rail access. The closest natural gas line was located in either McCook or Stratton and the cost of running a line to the plant was prohibitive. Research revealed an old oil line in Trenton which had been converted from natural gas but could be converted back. Burlington Northern Railroad agreed to build a spur at the proposed site and install a switch. The committee responded quickly to questions about water quality and capacity, and highway access. When development money became a concern, Nebraska Economic Development responded with economic incentives.
Indian burial grounds concerns
“We thought we had heard every question and responded to every possible concern when the State Historical Society contacted us,” said Huddleson. “They believed that the proposed site for the plant was too close to the Massacre Canyon battlefield. We arranged meetings with representatives of the Pawnee and Dakota nations to resolve their concerns about the burial grounds. We were relieved to find out that the burials were located three miles from the proposed plant site, and we overcame another barrier.”
June 17, 2003 with 300 people and the governor in attendance, Berexco Oil Co. broke ground to build a $46 million, 30 million gallon ethanol plant. In March of 2004, the Trenton ethanol plant was cooking corn mash and distilling alcohol. Since start-up, they expanded production from 30 million gallons to 50 million gallons, and are considering another expansion.
“It is a good operation, employs 38 people and has undoubtedly helped our local economy,” says Huddleson. The economic benefit was compounded when two local companies were contracted to haul grain. The trucking companies employ 40 drivers between them, and they buy fuel, purchase tires and oil, and pay salaries that benefit the local economy.
Huddleson attributes their success to the committed professionals in state and regional agencies and Nebraska Public Power who together helped solve every problem raised by Berexco.
“It seems like as we went along, we solved every problem, and we kept going and wouldn’t take no for an answer,” said Huddleson. And while many individuals played a role, Huddleson admits, the $20 million of Nebraska economic development incentives was probably the biggest help in landing the project.
Advice to development entrepreneurs
Through the process, Ev Huddleson learned a lot about economic development in small towns and offers this advice to future community development entrepreneurs:
- Take advantage of the public resources Nebraska has to offer
- Refuse to take “no” for an answer
- Find the positive people who really care and will volunteer
- Clean up Main Street, and clean up and beautify the community
- Don’t give in to negative thinking when barriers arise
- Constantly prepare for tomorrow
His last piece of advice is to design a community website; the Trenton site (www.trentonne.com) gets 5,000 visits/month.
Huddleson feels one of reasons rural towns decline is that leaders grow satisfied with the status quo. They admit the town is dying and say, “That’s the way it is.”
“People who say, ‘The community is alright, it is only coasting,’ are a problem,” Huddleson said. “The last time I coasted, I believe I was going downhill.
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