Dodge City ? A judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit that accused Ford County officials of not following protocol in granting developers permits to build a proposed ethanol plant.

“We always did what the county instructed us to do,” said Gary Harshberger, president of Boot Hill Biofuels, which plans to build a 110-million gallon per year ethanol plant east of Wright. “Plans are going forward and they’ve never really stopped.”

The plaintiffs, landowners around the planned plant site, said they were considering their options.

“We’ll just have to talk it over,” said Rodney Helfrich, one of nine who took part in the suit.

Helfrich and the others filed suit last January in Ford County District Court against the Ford County Commission, asking that the commission’s Dec. 18 decision granting Boot Hill a conditional-use permit to build be voided.

But Magistrate Judge Daniel Love turned back the plaintiffs’ contention that Boot Hill’s permit application was lacking and that the required paperwork wasn’t filed with the county in time.

He said county officials followed proper procedure in handling Boot Hill’s application and affirmed the Dec. 18 decision. Critics of the process “were afforded adequate notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” Love wrote.

Boot Hill’s plans, one of two ethanol plant proposals in Ford County, call for a start to construction on Aug. 1. The $185 million plant would employ 45 to 50 people and have an annual payroll of around $2 million.

Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have expressed opposition to Boot Hill’s plans because of the water the ethanol facility would use and the truck traffic it would generate, among other things. But those issues didn’t figure in the lawsuit.