CROWN POINT | An Evansville businessman said he is still trying to find a Lake County community willing to let him pay millions of dollars in new taxes and put hundreds of residents to work.

"It just doesn't make good sense," Earl Powers, president and chief executive officer of Powers Energy of Evansville, said this week as his search for a site to build a $211 million garbage-to-ethanol plant enters its seventh month.

The Lake County Solid Waste Management gave Powers a contract last year to build a factory that will heat municipal waste into a gaseous state that distills into the alternative automotive fuel.

He said some communities have shown interest. "I guess they are looking for employment. It's really kind of ridiculous that we can't put 300 to 400 construction workers to work and 165 to 200 permanent people full time to work."

He said the money would be good for the city or town government, too. "The overall package is about $15 million to the community a year counting real estate taxes, personal property taxes, employment taxes and everything else," he said.

However, the project has been stalled by a number of problems. "So many of the sites we have looked at in Lake County are in a 100-year flood plain, and we cannot do that," Powers said. He said it would cost him $15 million to make a site near Kankakee River in Schneider feasible.

He said he is looking at five other sites around the county that are not flood-prone but have other issues. "In one case annexation and zoning are needed. On another, there is a zoning concern," Powers said.

An annexation or zoning change requires public meetings that could become forums for opponents. Environmentalists argue his process is commercially untested and worse for the environment than putting garbage in landfills.

Lowell town officials and Powers backed off a site near that town when residents complained they didn't want truckloads of garbage hauled past their homes.

"We want to get a site finalized in the next two weeks. If we don't, we won't be in the ground this year," Powers said.