Aug. 17--HOPEWELL -- Piles of contaminated soil, a change of contractors and a lack of barley from local farmers are a few of the challenges facing Osage Bio Energy LLC, builder of the ethanol plant in Hopewell.

John Warren, director of government relations and project management at Osage, said that the challenges will not cause any delays with the construction of the $150 million plant.

"We're still scheduled to begin production in 2010," he said.

Construction workers recently made some unpleasant discoveries.

"We did uncover some contaminated soil from preexisting conditions on the site," Warren said. He added that the contamination level is very low.

The soil now sits in piles on the construction site.

"We could not isolate the pockets of contaminated soil in order to take it to a regular landfill," Warren said.

Osage is now working with the state Department for Environmental Quality to analyze the soil and decide what to do with it. The soil possibly could be taken to a contaminated debris landfill, Warren added.

William Hayden, public affairs director at DEQ, said that the main type of contamination comes from the landfill and is primarily metal and concrete left in the ground from past practices.

"DEQ and Osage are still analyzing soils on the site, so we do not have any clear conclusions yet," Hayden said.

The state doesn't rule out that naturally occurring arsenic is in some of the soil.

"It is not unusual to find some arsenic in soil, but we do not know the extent of this or how much arsenic would be found in the soil under natural conditions," Hayden said.

Regardless of what is in the soil or where it came from, DEQ will be working with Osage to be sure that people are not exposed to it, Hayden added.

"All waste material is properly managed and the potential for human exposure is minimized," he said.

The contaminated soil is not the only challenge Osage is facing.

The ethanol plant, which is scheduled to open in May 2010, is expected to produce 65 million gallons of ethanol and food and fuel by-products every year. The plant will use winter barley to make ethanol, which is an additive to gasoline.

Earlier this year, Osage launched an effort to educate local farmers about the advantages of growing barley, as the company plans to buy its barely from within 100 miles of the plant.

But not everyone is excited.

"Farmers are known to be a skeptical bunch," Warren said at an information forum at Hopewell High School in March.