Key players move from monorail to biodiesel

Key players move from monorail to biodiesel
Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA
Some of the key players in Seattle's doomed monorail project have re-emerged and teamed up on another project -- this time to build a biodiesel plant in Grant ...

Some of the key players in Seattle's doomed monorail project
have re-emerged and teamed up on another project -- this time to build a
biodiesel plant in Grant County.

Daniel Malarkey, the Seattle Monorail Project's former finance
director, is the president of a new company called Washington Biodiesel LLC,
which was among five companies granted state aid to build biodiesel plants in
Washington.

Joel Horn, the controversial former executive director of the
monorail project, is working as a consultant for the company.

And Kevin Raymond, the monorail agency's former lead lobbyist,
also lobbied for the biodiesel company this legislative session.

This week, company and state officials said the former monorail
officials' association with a project that turned into a debacle holds no
bearing for the company's plans to build a biodiesel plant in Warden near Walla
Walla.

"We're building a biodiesel plant," said Jeff Stephens, Washington
Biodiesel's vice president and co-founder.

The partnership is appropriate for the former monorail agency officials in some respects. Like the transportation project, which was supposed to get people out of their cars and into trains
soaring over the traffic, proponents of the biodiesel program say it's good for
the environment and helps lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
Like the monorail, which has been used only in a handful of cities around
the world, biodiesel is a growing but relatively new technology.

Tim Stearns, a senior energy-policy specialist for the state's
Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, said the project is
part of an initiative, approved by state legislators this year, to gradually
step up a requirement for fuel suppliers in the state to increase the amount of
biodiesel they distribute. By no later than 2008, 2 percent of the diesel fuel
distributed in the state will have to be biodiesel.

Additionally, Stearns said the state and its farmers are in a
race with other states to be suppliers of biodiesel fuel. Though details of the
plant Washington Biodiesel plans to build have yet to be made final, Stephens
said it would provide about 25 jobs.

Stearns said lawmakers set aside $23 million this year for
alternative energy projects, including $10.5 million in loans for five projects
that were deemed the most ready to go. Washington Biodiesel's plant was one of
those, and the Port of Warden was given $2.5 million in loans for the
project.

Stearns said the money is being lent to local governments --
which in turn enter into agreements with the companies -- because of the
constitutional ban on the state giving gifts and loans to companies.

State Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, chairman of the House
capital budget committee and a proponent of the program, said he was aware of
Malarkey's involvement with the biodiesel project, but not with Horn's, when
lawmakers selected Washington Biodiesel's as one of the projects to get aid.

Dunshee, like Stearns, noted that the projects are on the
leading edge of technology and involved less-established companies.

Given that, Dunshee said lawmakers built in safeguards by
offering loans and not grants and by requiring that private investors match the
public aid and that the money go through local agencies.

Malarkey and Horn's new venture brought a yawn from Geof Logan,
who'd been a vocal critic of the monorail plan. "I don't care what they do, as
long as it's not in Seattle," Logan said.

Malarkey did not return calls left at his office and at his home
seeking comment. Stephens said Malarkey was on
vacation. Horn declined to comment.

P-I reporter Kery Murakami can be reached at 206-448-8131 or kerymurakami@seattlepi.com.