Staff Photo by Dan Henry — Soddy-Daisy resident Neville Lewis carries a gas tank he just filled to his fishing boat while at the On The Run Mobil gasoline station off Hixson Pike. The Mobil station switched over to carrying ethanol-blended gasoline just over a month ago.Englewood Enterprises suffered a setback Monday when a local planning board deferred for a month its plan to shift a Chattanooga ethanol transfer facility to Bonny Oaks Industrial & Office Park.
Kevin Condra, president and CEO of Englewood, said the facility would be the first of its kind in the Southeast. He hopes to profit from new EPA guidelines allowing gas stations to distribute a 15 percent ethanol mix to motorists with the new facility.
The plan is for trains to drop off ethanol, and trucks will distribute it to four nearby mixing facilities where it is blended with gasoline. The fuel then would be transported to gas stations.
Long term, Condra wants to install pipelines to pump the ethanol directly to the mixing stations.
“The whole key to this is to take the trucking out of it. It’s more cost effective, and it’s safer,” he said.