LOS ANGELES – A proposal to build the nation's first commercial ethanol production plant using yard trimmings, paper, wheat straws and other green wastes was approved Wednesday by Los Angeles County officials.

Members of the county's regional planning commission unanimously agreed to issue a zoning permit to Irvine-based BlueFire Ethanol to build a $30 million facility in Lancaster, a desert community north of Los Angeles.

Construction of the plant, to be built next to a landfill, could start in the fall if no one opposes the project. The public has until Aug. 6 to appeal the commission's decision.

“This is a significant milestone, it's history-making in many respects,” said BlueFire's president and CEO, Arnold R. Klann.

Ethanol is an alcohol added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner and to make engines run more smoothly. Most gasoline sold in the United States is now mixed with up to 10 percent ethanol.

The majority of the 161 ethanol plants in the country produce ethanol from grains such as corn and wheat, according to Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association for the ethanol industry.

Advocates promote ethanol as a homegrown fuel that reduces the country's dependence on foreign oil, though critics have blamed biofuel production for the surge in corn prices in the last year.

The BlueFire plant, which is the first to use green wastes, is the next step up from using grains to produce ethanol, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the association.

“Think about the potential of turning garbage in huge cities like L.A., New York and Chicago into a renewable fuel,” Hartwig said. “The environmental, economic and energy benefits are tremendous. It's exciting if you think about all the garbage that we have.”

California currently has four ethanol plants, two of them use corn as the primary fuel source, one uses beverage waste and one uses cheese whey, said Susanne Garfield, a spokeswoman with the California Energy Commission. The plants produce 81 million gallons of ethanol per year, and the state, which uses 950 million gallons of ethanol annually, imports the rest from Midwestern states, she said.

BlueFire, which uses a patented technology that extracts sugar from straws, paper and other sources of cellulose to produce ethanol, expects to process roughly 170 tons of green wastes per day to make 3.2 million gallons of ethanol a year, Klann said.

Plans for two other California plants are in the works, including one in Mecca, southeast of Palm Springs, he said. The other location has not been announced.

Klann said his company wants to build 20 plants across the country in the next seven years, which would altogether produce more than 1 billion gallons of ethanol per year.

“Right now, most of California's ethanol is imported from the Midwest,” Klann said. “With our technology we're able to produce it for the local market.”

The Lancaster plant would provide jobs to some 500 construction workers and about 30 plant workers once the facility is up and running, he said.