A company’s plan to build an ethanol plant at a south Denton industrial park won approval Tuesday from the City Council.

Tetra Point Fuels of Flower Mound plans to take soda, beer, sports drinks and other sugary liquids that have expired or have packaging defects and covert them to ethanol, a cleaner-burning renewable fuel often combined with unleaded gasoline. The facility would differ from the more conventional grain-based ethanol plants, which have been blamed for increasing corn prices.

Council members approved a permit to allow heavy manufacturing inside an existing building at the Granite Point Industrial Park at Interstate 35W and Metro Street. The company hopes to start ethanol production there by spring 2008, with an initial capacity of 4 million to 5 million gallons a year, said Tim Geiger, company president.

Denton is already home to Biodiesel Industries of Greater Dallas Fort Worth, which produces biodiesel fuel from recycled vegetable oils.

“This is one more cog in the wheel of Denton becoming a leader in recycling and reusing products,” Mayor Perry McNeill said of the Tetra plant. “These are products that have served a useful life and this company is proposing to covert these into fuel.”

Texas currently has one plant producing ethanol, in Cleburne, but a number are planned or are under construction around the state, said Russel E. Smith, executive director of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association. The industry is expanding at a time when Congress is considering raising the national standard for biofuel production, he said.

Texas oil refineries also are substituting ethanol for the gasoline additive MTBE in areas of the state that failed to meet federal clean air standards, including the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas, Smith said.

“That’s where a huge amount of fuel is consumed,” he said.

At the Denton ethanol plant, trucks will bring in liquid products discarded by the food and beverage industry, and otherwise destined for a landfill, Geiger said. The company will separate and recycle the containers while fermenting and distilling the liquids into ethanol, which is then sold to commodities buyers, he said.

Council members raised questions about potential odors and increased traffic on Metro Street and the I-35 frontage road.

Interim Planning Director Brian Lockley said large tanker trucks would visit the facility several times a day, but that other traffic would be minimal. Geiger said the production process would produce some odor, but nothing noxious.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com.

Also Tuesday, the Denton City Council:

* Held the second of two public hearings on a plan to annex 835 acres of mostly undeveloped land in Lewisville Lake’s upper floodplain, including the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center. The site, which the city leases from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, hosts science classes for area school groups, and city officials say they want to annex it to provide more police protection and to preserve the area’s natural state. Nearby residents again spoke out against the annexation, saying they worried it would harm their quality of life. A vote is expected Nov. 6.

* Appointed Denton lawyer Mark Burroughs as the city’s representative to the Denton County Transportation Authority board of directors, replacing Joe Roy, who has served since 2002. The city’s chief transportation officer, Mark Nelson, was appointed first alternate, replacing Burroughs. The two-year terms begin Nov. 1.

* Amended the city’s guidelines for naming and renaming parks and park facilities. The process will now include a public meeting, likely before the council-appointed Parks, Recreation and Beautification Board, said Emerson Vorel, parks and recreation director. The move comes after some people complained that the council changed the name of Civic Center Park to Quakertown Park earlier this year without enough public input.

—Lowell Brown