SILOAM SPRINGS — The Board of Directors here heard recently from two companies selected to choose a site and build a gasification plant should the city decide such a plant is its answer to burying waste.

Public Service Director Jason Davis told the board at its June 26 meeting he and city staff submitted a request for qualifications and spoke with several companies about gasification.

Davis said the city settled on The Progress Group and Olsson. Matt Loos, representing Olsson, and John Reardon, representing The Progress Group, spoke at the meeting.

Loos said he would help with site-specific issues and work with The Progress Group to produce the facility. Reardon spoke about his background working in biomass gasification since the early 2000s and the cities where he had set up gasification plants.

Gasification is a process that converts coal and organic materials such as agricultural waste, animal waste and organic municipal solid waste into energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Unlike incineration, gasification does not use fire to break down the materials, which releases pollutants into the air. It heats waste to temperatures above 1,300 degrees and leaves behind carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen that can be contained and used for energy. Piles of waste are reduced to rock-like byproducts called slag, which are easier to contain than ash from incineration.

Director Mindy Hunt asked what was expected from the city board at this point. Davis said right now the board was just being asked to listen to the presentation, but there would be a study needed in the future.

Reardon said the study would look at the feasibility of the project and its associated costs.

City Administrator Allan Gilbert said he and Davis have spent the past couple months looking at options because of the rising costs of dumping trash at the Eco-Vista landfill. Gilbert said the city is looking at finishing this year having spent “anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000” for dumping trash at the landfill.

“And then for the next four years we’re looking at anywhere from $350,000 to $400,000 more just in the extra costs on that five-year contract.”

Officials are looking into gasification because of rising costs and the eventual closure of the Eco-Vista landfill in Tontitown, Davis said.

The city hauls its trash to the landfill, but it is filling up, and Tontitown Mayor Angela Russell does not want to expand the site, Davis told board members.

“We’re looking (at) anywhere from 10 to 15 years that landfill being closed down,” Davis said. “In the grand scheme of things, that’s not that far away.”

Davis initially brought up gasification at a meeting Jan. 3. No community in Arkansas has a gasification plant, but Chicot County in southeastern Arkansas recently broke ground on such a plant, Davis said at the time.

The cost to build a gasification plant in the city could be between $30 million to $50 million with an annual revenue of $6 million to $8 million, Davis said at the January meeting.