Iowa City ‘trashanol’ negotiations on back burner

IOWA CITY - Iowa City plans to step back from negotiations on a project that could turn trash into biofuel to see how related work unfolds in Marion and Blairstown.

After getting the City Council's blessing last December, Iowa City officials began negotiations with Maryland-based Fiberight LLC to explore alternative technologies for processing solid waste.

The company says it can make cellulosic biofuel, to mix with gasoline, out of food waste and contaminated material that cannot be recycled. It calls the product 'trashanol,” a nod to ethanol.

Fiberight has started work on converting an old ethanol plant in the Benton County community of Blairstown to make the biofuel.

The city of Marion already has signed on with Fiberight, and a facility will be built there to do the initial separating and sorting of municipal waste.

In a memo released Thursday night, Iowa City Public Works Director Rick Fosse said the city will monitor the construction of those facilities and then resume active negotiations with Fiberight as they prepare to go into production.

That could be the end of this year or early next year.

Fosse said Fiberight likely 'will learn a great deal during the construction and commissioning of these facilities” and that could have an effect on the proposed Iowa City project, which would be similar to what Marion is doing.

'This will also help to minimize expenses related to negotiations by providing a more firm scope of contract,” he wrote in the memo to City Manager Tom Markus.

Iowa City has received pushback for considering the Fiberight project from people who question whether it would be environmentally friendly and from union leaders concerned about the loss of city jobs.

Fiberight officials have said the company may be able to reduce the amount of solid waste going into Iowa City's landfill by up to 80 percent.

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