Biodiesel supply terminal opening in weeks

In the next few weeks, when the final 800 feet of rail track is put down, a new biodiesel-supply terminal will open at Enterprise Park at Calverton, creating about 30 jobs and taking about 2,500 trucks a year off the Long Island Expressway and other roads.

The Metro Fuel Oil Corp. facility will be the first to use a major new rail spur on Long Island in more than a dozen years, according to the New York and Atlantic Railway, which runs freight operations on the Long Island Rail Road's tracks.

More than a dozen people, from Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter to Nebraska soybean farmer Mark Caspers, attended a symbolic ribbon-cutting Wednesday for the terminal.

Gene Pullo, president of Metro, said 100 railroad cars a year will replace those trucks, and that the Calverton facility will then service customers as far away as Montauk that will range from municipalities to marinas to private businesses and homeowners.

The initial 30 jobs at Calverton could increase down the line if Metro's plans to expand the biofuel market are successful.

Metro is completing work on its biofuel-processing plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a 110 million-gallon facility that will be the largest in the country, Pullo said.

Metro officials decided to buy land at EPCAL and build the terminal because of promises the 2.65-mile rail spur -- not used since the Grumman Corp. built Navy jet fighters at Calverton in the 1990s -- would be reactivated.

Walter praised both the state and federal government for providing about $5 million in stimulus aid to pay for the rail spur, and said that in January he will introduce a resolution calling for all town trucks and other heavy equipment to convert to biodiesel, a fuel that can be made from everything from collected restaurant grease to soybeans.

The fuel has a golden brown color and a scent reminiscent of buttered popcorn.

Caspers, the Nebraska soybean farmer who serves on the United Soybean Board, said that biodiesel made from soybeans -- about 20 percent of the crop can be used for fuel after soybeans are processed for animal feed -- would help free the nation from its dependence on oil from the Middle East.