A company that hopes to build a strawboard plant on the Palouse has leased nearly 350 acres in LaCrosse, Wash., and is pursuing building permits for the project.


The company, Columbia Ag Fiber Inc., chose LaCrosse for its plant site because of its proximity to highway, rail, and water transportation systems, says Gary Young, its president. LaCrosse is located about 80 miles southwest of Spokane.


Columbia Ag Fiber is leasing the property from a private owner there and has an option to buy the land, Young says.


He says the company still is seeking the about $53 million in financing that it will need to build the plant. The plant would produce a particleboard-type material and a wallboard material, as well as a biodiesel fuel. A byproduct of the biodiesel-fuel operation would produce enough energy to power the plant, Young says.


Columbia Ag Fiber has been working with a financing group that also is backing strawboard operations in five other states, and Young says hes very certain the company will be able to obtain financing for its planned operation in LaCrosse. He declines for now to reveal the name of the financing group, but says its a different source than he had hoped to tap for financing when he first announced the project nearly a year ago.


Columbia Ag Fiber is pursuing permits to begin construction of the plant in LaCrosse, Young says.


We have been told the project is clean enough that it could be permitted reasonably soon, he says.


Donald Dorman, mayor of LaCrosse, says the town agreed last month to annex the property where the strawboard operation is to be located because that will make it easier for Columbia to obtain the necessary permits than if the land had been located in unincorporated Whitman County.


Dorman says hes about 90 percent sure the strawboard project will come to fruition.


Young says construction of the first part of the plantthe biodiesel operationcould get under way in coming months, and would take six to eight months to complete. The particleboard plant would be built next, with the wallboard operation coming on line last. It would take up to three years to complete the entire complex, he says.


When its finished, the Columbia Ag Fiber plant could employ 150 people, Young says.