Garnett ? Three years after Anderson County farmers and business people first embraced the concept of building an ethanol plant, construction has begun — at nearly twice the scale initially proposed.

The Garnett plant, about 47 miles south of Lawrence, will be the seventh ethanol processing operation in the state and the first in southeast Kansas when it opens in mid-2005.

East Kansas Agri-Energy LLC, a small corporation created by farmers in October 2001, originally planned an operation that could produce 20 million gallons of ethanol a year for use in gasoline.

By January of this year, when the corporation announced it had raised the $16 million in seed money required by lenders, the design had been revised so the plant would produce 26 million gallons a year.

It has since grown again. Last week, on the eve of groundbreaking, investors voted for a 37 million-gallon plant that would cost an extra $10 million to build, bringing the total cost to $47 million. The corporation’s major lenders agreed to the larger design.

Engineers suggested the larger capacity after a study showed a plentiful regional supply of corn and milo, which are among the grains processed for ethanol.

“They said we could do that without too much impact on the plant,” said Bill Pracht, a Westphalia farmer and rancher who chairs the board of East Kansas Agri-Energy. “It made sense.”

Pracht noted that the additional capacity won’t require a significantly larger payroll at the plant — about 32 employees, compared to the 30 that would be needed to run a plant producing 26 million gallons a year.

Construction is expected to continue through the winter if the contractor gets all the concrete poured during the fall, Pracht said.

After more than two years of effort to get the plant built, it’s a relief to see construction start, he said.