In the past week or so, we’ve gotten some good news about Central Nebraska’s ethanol industry. As the Aurora News-Register first reported last week, Aventine Renewable Energy has announced its plans to finish the Aurora West ethanol plant sometime in 2011.

The completion would come five years after ground was broken in late 2006. The plant is expected to produce 113 million gallons of ethanol per year once it’s finished, but construction has halted since late 2008, and Aventine filed for bankruptcy soon afterward. The project’s contractor, Kiewit Energy Corp., canceled its engineering, construction and procurement contracts for Aurora West and an Illinois plant in early 2009.

But Aurora Cooperative president and CEO George Hohwieler announced at the company’s annual meeting that Aventine officials had informed him that they plan to re-emerge from bankruptcy and have the plant finished in 2011, according to the News-Register.

In a news release today, Nebraska Ethanol Board administrator Todd Sneller confirmed those plans.

I’m no lawyer, but based on a few documents filed in Delaware federal bankruptcy court, here’s what appears to have happened: Kiewit filed an objection to Aventine’s reorganization plan in December, in which it said it’s still owed about $15.2 million for Aurora West construction.

Kiewit’s attorneys objected to several aspects of the plan, including the following: One, Aventine laid out three options for reorganization but didn’t say which one it would choose; two, Aventine didn’t say how it would treat Kiewit’s secured Aurora West claim; three, Aventine’s plans for revenue depended on the plant being built by early 2012 but didn’t commit to finishing the plant and didn’t say what would happen if it wasn’t; and four, Aventine’s stated liquidation value of the plant dropped to about $2.4 million to $5 million without an explanation to Kiewit.

Aventine filed a new plan Jan. 13. In another document filed the same day, Kiewit’s objection is said to be “resolved in [principle], subject to documentation.” The document also says Aventine modified its plan in several ways to meet debtors’ objections. (How exactly this 104-page plan changed to appease Kiewit is where the I’m-not-a-lawyer part comes in. Sorry.)

All of which is to say, Aventine and Kiewit seem to have come to some sort of an agreement that will allow the plant to be finished in 2011. And that would mean 113 million more gallons per year of ethanol produced in Nebraska and one less unfinished eyesore for Aurora.