After years of halting and unsuccessful efforts by the Town of Amherst to sell the fertilizer produced by its sewage treatment plant, the Town Board finally approved a deal Monday to sell the black pellets in bulk to a Virginia-based fertilizer producer.

The agreement, which could be short-lived, is considered the most lucrative the town has managed to secure in its 13-year pellet-making history.

“This is something that has gone around the block several times now,” said Supervisor Barry Weinstein. “I’m happy to see it resolved.”

For years, the town had hoped to make big bucks off its $8 million investment in the pelletizer program started in 1996. But the trouble-prone pelletizer never lived up to expectations, resulting in hundreds of tons of pellets being wasted each year.

Now, after nearly a year of negotiations, the town has finally managed to secure a deal with Nutrients Plus to sell the company 1,500 tons of pellets at $30 a ton, resulting in annual projected revenue of $45,000.

The most the town had received in the past was $10 a ton for its pellets. Over the past several years, however, the town has simply been giving away or throwing away the pellets it made.

For some time, a sticking point in the Nutrients Plus deal involved the amount of insurance the town and the fertilizer company would be required to carry in order to seal the deal. That issue was recently put to rest, said Purchasing Director Lawrence Graner.

The current arrangement with Nutrients Plus represents a breakthrough in the ability of the town to meet its green recycling goals and generate any substantial revenue from its fertilizer- making process.

The agreement may not have a lasting impact, however.

Given the town’s ongoing negotiations with the Buffalo Sewer Authority to incinerate all the sludge produced from the town’s Wastewater Treatment Plant at relatively low cost, the town’s pellet-making operation could come to an end as early as next year.