A proposal to build the nation's first commercial ethanol production plant using yard trimmings, paper, wheat straws and other green wastes was approved Wednesday by Los Angeles County officials.

Members of the county's regional planning commission unanimously agreed to issue a zoning permit to BlueFire Ethanol to build a $30 million facility in Lancaster, a desert community north of Los Angeles. BlueFire is based in Irvine, California.

Construction of the plant, to be built next to a landfill, could start in the fall if no one opposes the project. The public has until Aug. 6 to appeal the commission's decision.

"This is a significant milestone, it's history-making in many respects," said BlueFire's president and CEO, Arnold R. Klann.

Ethanol is an alcohol added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner and to make engines run more smoothly. Most gasoline sold in the United States is now mixed with up to 10 percent ethanol.

The majority of the 161 ethanol plants in the country produce ethanol from grains such as corn and wheat, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association for the ethanol industry.

Advocates promote ethanol as a homegrown fuel that reduces the country's dependence on foreign oil, though critics have blamed biofuel production for diverting edible grain and causing a surge in corn prices in the last year.

The BlueFire plant, which is the first to use green wastes, is the next step beyond using grains to produce ethanol, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the association.

"Think about the potential of turning garbage in huge cities like L.A. (Los Angeles), New York and Chicago into a renewable fuel," Hartwig said. "The environmental, economic and energy benefits are tremendous."

California currently has four ethanol plants, two of them use corn as the primary fuel source, one uses beverage waste and one uses cheese whey, said Susanne Garfield, a spokeswoman with the California Energy Commission. The plants produce 81 million gallons (306 million liters) of ethanol per year, and the state, which uses 950 million gallons (3,596 million liters) of ethanol annually, imports the rest from Midwestern states, she said.

BlueFire, which uses a patented technology that extracts sugar from straws, paper and other sources of cellulose to produce ethanol, expects to process roughly 170 tons (154 metric tons) of green wastes per day to make 3.2 million gallons (12 million liters) of ethanol a year, Klann said.

Plans for two other California plants are in the works, including one in the town of Mecca, southeast of Palm Springs, he said. The other location has not been announced.

Klann said his company wants to build 20 plants across the country in the next seven years, which would altogether produce more than 1 billion gallons (3.8 billion liters) of ethanol per year.

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