Almost everything was ready to go last summer, including the financing and detailed construction plans. There remained only one last permit for nearly $200 million in a 100-million gallon ethanol plant in Belle Fourche.

But delays under state law for a formal answer to the Butte-Meade Sanitary Water District, based in Newell, sent the project past the financing window.

"The project's shelved," ProEco president Dale Barker said this week. "It's too bad we got pushed out of the original funding window that we had."

The Butte-Meade delay, questioning water use from a well out of their service area, "did it," Barker said.

With that kind of cash involved, he said, "timing's everything."

The Belle Fourche native, who has spent his professional life in the petrochemical refinery industry, said the concept isn't dead, but it is on a back shelf.

"I think what's going to take place with the investors right now, number one, they need to find out where corn's going to settle," Barker said. "That will probably tell the story about the future of corn-based ethanol production."

Right now, he said, venture capitalists are putting their bets into the fuels futures markets. "Nobody else seems to get money for the ethanol side."

East River, in Mina, the Glacial Lakes Energy 100-million gallon plant that was on about the same schedule as ProEco's in Belle Fourche is up and running.

Barker said in Belle Fourche, the chamber of commerce and Belle Fourche Development Corp. were great help.

But, he said, "Some advice for the community is, when a new business comes to town, go visit with them and work out your differences like people do."

"The way you approach those businesses that want to come to Belle Fourche is going to make all the difference."

He said: "Instead of playing a game with them, just sit down and visit. You'll probably find out the reason they want to be here is the same reason you're living here."

Barker said his family will be back in Belle Fourche by the beginning of the school year. "We still have our place here. This is still home. We're determined to live here."

On the other hand, he said, "We just have to heal a little bit. We spent nearly $1.5 million here, and you can only afford that mistake once or twice in your life."

According to then-Butte County Director of Equalization Shannon Rittberger, who has recently taken a similar job in Pennington County, the ProEco plant would have been the basis of a huge increase in tax revenues in the county, not only from the plant itself, but also from housing and business increases from about 75 well-paid jobs.

The increase in paychecks alone was estimated at as much as $2 million or more - now lost, at least for a number of years, to the Northern Hills community.