GARY | Indiana Ethanol Powers LLC officials explained their proposed waste processing facility as garbage in and earth-friendly byproducts out.

They spoke Tuesday night to a skeptical audience of members of the Sierra Club, Save the Dunes, Environmental Justice Coalition, Interfaith Federation and Revitalization First Collaborative, who questioned the safety of the process.

Pat Jackson, Interfaith director, said the environmental groups hope to soon reach a consensus on whether Lake County should host one of the nation's first garbage-to-ethanol plants.

The forum Tuesday comes as Indiana Ethanol and Genahol-Powers 1LLC, both of Evansville, are negotiating contracts with the Lake County Solid Waste Management District to build plants.

Jeffery Langbehn, the county's solid waste management director, said he expects to have contracts by mid-May. The county's 19 municipalities would then opt in or out of the ethanol processing.

The solid waste district's consultant favors Genahol-Powers' gasification process of heating organic waste as more commercially feasible than Indiana Ethanol's process of fermenting organics in gravity pressure vessels, lengthy tubes in underground wells.

James Titmus, who said he invented the gravity pressure vessel design, and Zig Resiak, construction coordinator for Indiana Ethanol, said their approach uses a minimum of chemicals and no smokestacks.

They said worse odor would come from the hundreds of trucks carrying garbage daily into the plant, which would cover between 12 acres and 18 acres.

Once inside, garbage is shoveled into water tanks where metals and other inorganics sink and plastics float to the top, leaving a middle layer of discarded food, paper and other cellulose materials to be pumped into the gravity pressure vessels.

Heat, pressure and weak acid dissolve the cellulose into ethanol, to be sold as fuel.

Conventional recyclable materials would be sold too. The remaining waste -- 10 percent of the garbage -- will be removed to a landfill. Titmus said his passion to capture and sell mercury and other toxic metals for industrial purposes will ensure the plant doesn't pollute.

Resiak said the plant would be profitable alone on the fees it collects to dispose of the garbage and sale of recyclables.

They repeatedly assured the audience their process is safe for both workers and neighboring residents. "We are something entirely new," Titmus said.