VIDALIA &8212; A long awaited rubber plant is finally coming to Vidalia, bringing with it as many as 135 new jobs.

Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said Wednesday the town has cleared all but the final hurdle in bringing a plant that will recycle used tires into new rubber to the town. The plant will be owned and operated by LIEL, a research company looking to open a manufacturing plant for its product.

&8220;We&8217;re at the point now where we&8217;ve gotten all the environmental impact documents done, so no agencies object to it,&8221; Copeland said. &8220;We&8217;re waiting for the loan package to be approved by the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), which I&8217;ve been assured is a formality.&8221;

A formal announcement will be made sometime in the next month.

Attempts to reach LIEL Wednesday were unsuccessful.

The plant, a 50,000 square foot building on 25 acres to be constructed in the Vidalia Industrial Park, will open with 60 employees, making an average of about $30,000, Copeland said. More employees will likely be hired after the plant goes into full production. Construction is slated to begin sometime in spring 2006 and finish in about 12 months.

LIEL, the company planning to build the new plant, has a patented process for taking used tires and recycling about 80 percent of them into usable rubber, Concordia Parish Economic Development District Executive Director Theresa Dennis said. Previous processes netted only about 10 percent of the used tire mass.

The plant will shred used tires, removing the metal belting and fiber in tires and separate the rubber into different categories. New rubber, either in pellet form or in sheet form will be the final product. The rubber made from this process is cheaper than newly manufactured rubber because of lower transportation and production costs, Dennis said.

The rubber can then be used to make a wide variety of products, including car bumpers, truck bedliners and shoes, Copeland said.

&8220;In fact, we hope this plant will help us attract companies that use the rubber in their products,&8221; Copeland said.

Unlike facilities that manufacture new rubber, this plant should have virtually no emissions or toxic waste products, Dennis said.

&8220;The smell will be like walking into a tire store, that&8217;s all,&8221; Dennis said. &8220;All the environmental agencies are on board with this because this keeps used tires out of landfills and prevents the kind of problems new rubber plants have.&8221;

Vidalia first started working to bring the rubber plant in more than two years ago. LIEL, originally called TXEL, had plans to open plants in both Texas and Louisiana, Copeland said. The company abandoned its plans for a facility in Texas.

&8220;When we first started, it was with a previous administration (under Gov. Mike Foster),&8221; Copeland said. &8220;We had discussed project, and had an agreement all the way round on incentives. With the change of administration, we had to start all over again. That&8217;s why the project has taken so long.&8221;