Idle plant eyed as alt-fuel site

A New Canaan, Conn. startup has asked Yonkers officials to approve a biomass processing plant that will produce diesel fuel from waste materials in a factory building vacated two years ago by one of the city”™s former manufacturing mainstays, Precision Valve Corp.

Precision Valve employed nearly 200 workers at its Nepperhan Avenue site when it closed all but an administrative office there in 2009 and relocated its research and manufacturing operations to South Carolina after nearly six decades in Yonkers. The biomass processor expects to employ nine to 11 full-time workers in an approximately 34,000-square-foot facility vacated by the valve manufacturer.

The Yonkers Planning Board was scheduled to review a site plan submitted by Golden Renewable Energy L.L.C. at its Sept. 21 meeting. Nicholas T. Canosa, president and CEO of the Connecticut company, could not be reached for comment.

Attorney Alfred B. DelBello, representing the alternative-energy company in its Yonkers project, told city officials in the site-plan application that Golden Renewable would create cleaner-burning diesel fuel and methane gas, used to help power plant operations, from a liquefaction process that mixes waste fats, oils and grease with woodchips or sawdust. The plant will be capable of producing about 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel daily. Processed from fully renewable sources, the fuel burns cleaner and more efficiently than petroleum-based diesel fuels, according to the company.

The renewable-energy company is leasing the Nepperhan Avenue space from the real estate arm of Mile Square Transportation Inc., the Yonkers-based regional bus transportation company that in 2010 paid $10.7 million to acquire the approximately 247,000-square-foot Precision Valve complex.

In a related application before the Yonkers Planning Board, Mile Square Transportation wants city officials to approve the school bus company”™s use of a factory building that adjoins the proposed biomass processing facility as a vehicle repair garage and part of the plant parking lot for bus storage. The transit company in its application said the vehicle repair center will have 48 full-time employees.