Mar. 9--WASHINGTON -- A unique project near here will use locally raised grain to make ethanol and beef.

The cattle, in turn, will provide the fuel to run the ethanol plant.

Just as exciting to Washington Mayor Travis Kier is the 80 jobs that the project by Kansas City-based E3 BioFuels will generate for the town and Washington County.

"I don't see anything but a positive effect coming from it," he said.

The $80 million project involves a 30,000-head cattle feedlot and an plant that will produce 30 million gallons of ethanol a year, said Brian Barber, project manager.

The plant will use about 11 million bushels of corn and milo, while another six million bushels will be fed to cattle.

To power the ethanol plant, manure, courtesy of the critters, will be fed into an anaerobic digester that will produce methane gas.

Barber guesses methane power is "easily less than half" the cost of natural gas.

"One of the limiting factors for profitability is high natural gas," he said. "We'll be using the gas we produce. That's kind of the beauty of the system."

Once the starch is taken from the corn and milo, what's left over is stillage grain, a protein source that will be fed to cattle.

Another byproduct from the ethanol production is thin stillage, which resembles molasses, Barber said. It will also be used to make methane gas.

"They call it a closed-loop system," he said.

Ethanol plants are also big consumers of water -- three gallons for every one gallon of ethanol produced.

E3 BioFuels already has the necessary wells to supply the plant.

"We will recycle a lot of the water. It'll get used a couple or three times," Barber said.

Construction will begin this summer at the site three miles west of Washington off U.S. Highway 36, he said. The plant and feedlot will take about a year to build. Barber said he will be trained to manage the plant.

The firm intends to apply for industrial revenue bond financing from the city and county, and incentives from all levels of government.

The owner of a chain of grocery stores, including one in Washington, Mayor Kier said he's a project proponent.

"Whatever is takes to get these people to locate here, I'm going to entertain," Kier said. "Instead of recycling the same dollars within the community, which is important, it gives us a fresh injection of capital from the outside."