Feasibility study gets financial boost
By Suzanne Werre
Editor
The possibility of a greenhouse that could be a boon to McLean County’s economy is one step closer as the North Dakota Agricultural Products Utilization Commission (APUC) recently awarded Houweling’s Tomatoes $136,000 to conduct marketing and feasibility research.
It was not quite a year ago that Great River Energy announced it would be joining forces with Houweling’s Tomatoes, which has greenhouses in Camarillo, CA; Mona, UT; and Delta, BC, to build a state-of-the-art greenhouse at Coal Creek Station near Underwood.
The greenhouse, which would be located adjacent to the cooling towers at Coal Creek Station, would utilize the waste heat from the power plant and the CO2 from the ethanol plant to grow tomatoes that will be grown from Non-GMO seeds.
The feasibility study should be done within about six weeks, according to Houweling’s Tomatoes owner Casey Houweling, and if it gets the go-ahead, construction of the 30-acre greenhouse could start next summer.
“Now we start thinking about the marketing plan because we have got to research where we’re going to sell the product, what’s the interest, and everything else,” said Houweling.
