SARATOGA — The owner of Lake Auto Parts near Ballston Lake said business this year has been so good at a junkyard he owns that he has purchased another junkyard in Saratoga.

Phillip Heitmann was granted a six-month permit to operate the LaPointe junkyard with anticipated annual permits to follow. Town officials are hoping to see the Saratoga business cleaned up.

He told the Saratoga Planning Board he hopes to repeat the success he’s had with an operation on Route 146A in Ballston Lake near the Clifton Park border.

He said he made more than $1 million from his southern operation last year, which was five times the amount the yard made five years earlier.

Heitman isn’t the only one reaping the benefits from the bull market for scrap. Saratoga County Recycling Coordinator Joseph Miranda said the market for scrap metal has increased in recent years with much of the supply being shipped to Asia.

He said the price the county receives has risen from $65 per ton in January 2004 to $351 per ton at the Port of Albany this month.

The market for scrap metal has become so lucrative that commercial waste haulers for the most part now bypass the county recycling system and longtime auto scrap businesses and junkyards are being emptied for their metal value.

Heitmann said he intends to erect an 8-foot-tall fence around the Hayes Road site in Saratoga, and he promised to clean it up.

Town Supervisor Tom Wood said he’s interested to see progress at the yard.

“We have never had a lot of complaints about LaPointe’s, but the new guy has a pretty good record and he’s planning to bring in a bigger operation,” Wood said.

A neighbor of LaPointe’s, Todd Masten, told the board he’s already happy with changes Heitmann has made. The former owner, he said, had heavy equipment running late into the night.

“We like his hours of operation,” Masten said. “We like and encourage the fencing [so that] we can’t see what goes on there.”

Heitmann said he will remove a mobile home from the property and put in a parking area for customers as well as improve the turn-around space for tractor-trailers hauling cars to and from the lot.

Heitmann drains and recycles fluids from junked cars before they are scrapped. Some of the fuel is then used in his own vehicles, he said.

Although Heitmann said he has no plans to buy scrap metal, he will accept old appliances, grills, lawn mowers or other metal that will be recycled.

Heitmann said he will also be recycling tires at his Hayes Road operation.