Apr 17 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Alice Thrasher The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.

A Pennsylvania company announced Wednesday that Sampson County will be the site for its first North Carolina electrical power plant fueled by chicken and turkey litter.

The plant is projected to provide 100 jobs and increase the county's tax base. The total investment in the plant and equipment is expected to be more than $200 million, said Michael Freeman, development manager for Fibrowatt LLC of Langhorne, Pa.

Sampson County officials are expected to approve a tax-incentive package for Fibrowatt worth $2.5 million over 10 years. The vote is scheduled to be taken Monday after a public hearing at 3 p.m. at the Human Services Building.

The board previously approved a $1.5 million incentives package, but it proposed more when neighboring Duplin County offered a $3.5 million package to locate in that county.

The Sampson County plant is scheduled to be in operation in 2011 and will be the second plant of its kind in the nation, Fibrowatt officials said. The first was built in Minnesota. The company built three plants in England and has since sold them.

John Swope, the director of the Sampson County Economic Development Commission, said county and Clinton officials worked for two years to get the plant. He said Sampson County visitors to plants in England and Minnesota reported that the facilities did not produce any odors.

The Sampson County plant will be built on about 100 acres near the intersection of Interstate 40 and N.C. 403 near Faison.

Sampson County commissioners voted April 7 to acquire an option on 300 acres at the site. The land will cost about $1.75 million, according to County Manager Scott Sauer.

Fibrowatt will buy land for its plant from the county, Sauer said. The county will take money from its fund balance reserve to pay cash for the land, he said. The leftover land could be used for future industrial development, he said.

The county also has agreed to provide water and sewer service to the plant site, Sauer said. The closest water and sewer lines are within a mile, said Freeman. Sauer did not know how much the water and sewer line extensions will cost.

Construction on the plant is scheduled to begin in 2009, Rupert Fraser, president and chief executive officer of Fibrowatt, said at a news conference at Sampson Community College.

Getting rid of litter

The plant will help poultry growers from Sampson, Duplin and other nearby counties get rid of litter from the chicken and turkey houses.

Growers would get a few dollars per ton for litter that the power company would haul to the plant. Litter now is mostly spread on farmland as fertilizer.

Litter would be mixed with wood chips, corn stalks or other vegetative debris and burned in an incinerator. The incinerator would heat water that would produce steam to run turbines.

Electricity produced by the turbines would be sold to large utility companies.

A Progress Energy high transmission line runs near the chosen plant site, Fraser said.

The power line was one of the site features that attracted Fibrowatt, he said. Good transportation and the proximity to poultry producers were pluses, as well.

Fraser said he could not pinpoint any one factor that made his company choose the Sampson site over the Duplin site, one mile south of Warsaw.

In Sampson's proposal, Fibrowatt would pay property taxes each year. Then the county would make a grant back to the company if certain benchmarks are met.

Grants for the first five years will be $300,000 per year. Between the sixth and 10th years, the grant will be $200,000 per year.

The plant is expected to create about 35 jobs in the plant with an average salary of about $40,000 and about 65 hauling jobs, Swope said. Over 10 years, the county is projected to collect about $10 million in taxes from the company, he said.

Fibrowatt is considering other sites in central and western North Carolina for two other plants, he said. Moore, Montgomery and Stanly counties are in the running for one of the other plants.

Swope said the plants use a negative pressure system to keep air from escaping the plant when trucks unload litter from poultry houses.

Sauer, the county manager, said he visited the company's first U.S. plant in Benson, Minn., in October. "It does produce steam, but there is no odor whatsoever," he said.

Staff writer Alice Thrasher can be reached at thrashera@fayobserver.com or 486-3569.