Anthony NM Plant Creating Thousands Of Gallons Of Biofuel

Hundreds of vehicles in New Mexico and El Paso, Texas are being powered using vegetable oil. Best of all, it’s coming from a locally owned company.

Rio Valley Biofuels in Anthony makes about 2,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel a day.

“It’s 2000 gallons of fuel that is being produced locally that isn’t coming from overseas,” plant operations manager Jed Smith told ABC-7.

Smith said that fuel is sold to entities all over the state and across the Texas border, including Holloman Air Force Base, the University of Texas-El Paso and the city of Las Cruces.

The fuel is made from the vegetable oil waste from local restaurants and food processing factories.

“You’ve got a product here which would’ve in the past been thought of just completely as a waste, used vegetable oil, and now it’s being used as the feed stock for biodiesel,” said Judy Canales, deputy undersecretary for the Rural Development at the United States Department of Agriculture.

The USDA awarded the company more than $40,000 dollars in federal grant money in September 2011. Using that money, Smith said they’ve doubled their daily production and hired a few more workers.

Las Cruces Transportation officials told ABC-7 they spend almost $30,000 a month to purchase biodiesel fuel for the government-owned diesel vehicles. They said it’s helping keep the city green by lowering fuel emissions.

“We have diesel service trucks, fire engines and off-road equipment, so all together I would estimate we have about 400 to 450 diesel vehicles,” Las Cruces fleet analyst Mike Baker said.

Baker said it’s likely the city will bring in more sources of alternative fuel in the future.

As for Smith, he said he wants to help the state become less dependent on fuel sources from outside the country by providing his locally produced biodiesel fuel.

“That was our hope from the start of this business to be able to supply local businesses with fuel and keep the local economy going by supporting the local government and them supporting us,” Smith said.

The biodiesel company is also helping Las Cruces and other cities stay in compliance with state law that mandates all state agencies, political subdivisions and public schools to operate on at least a 5-percent mixture of biodiesel fuel. Las Cruces uses a twenty-percent mixture.