The Stanly County Board of Commissioners (www.co.stanly.nc.us) is commending the Independent Weekly for its Nov. 18 awning adventure on how the appliance by Alcoa Power Generating, Inc. (“Alcoa”) afore the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for addition 50-year authorization to absorb ascendancy of the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project will abuse North Carolina economically and environmentally. The article, accounting by Bob Geary, includes interviews with leaders for and adjoin Alcoa’s appliance for the Project, which includes dams and powerhouses alternating a 38-mile amplitude of the Yadkin River at High Rock, Tuckertown, Narrows and Falls Reservoirs in Davie, Davidson, Rowan, Montgomery and Stanly counties.
“Give Back the Yadkin” accent these specific arguments by the Stanly County Board of Commissioners apropos Alcoa’s relicensing, as apparent in excerpts:
1) Alcoa has acquired abuse at the Project, yet refuses to accept it. Geary talked with Gene Ellis, relicensing adviser for Alcoa, who conceded that Alcoa’s now-closed smelter that operated in affiliation with the Project for a lot of of the endure 50 years generated chancy contaminants that were break disposed on site. “Waste oils, PCBs and PAHs (polycyclic ambrosial hydrocarbons): They all were caked on the ground, into a lagoon next to the bulb or into the boondocks dump, he admits,” wrote Geary.
Yet if Clemson University baptize above able John Rogers, Ph.D., appear allegation this year that affiliated PCBs in the Yadkin baptize to those generated by the smelter, “Alcoa acknowledged Rogers’ findings, adage the PCBs in the basin were commonplace in industry and could’ve originated elsewhere.” However, Alcoa has not even agitated to conduct its own abstraction to prove that assertion.
Before that abstraction emerged, Geary noted, “the accompaniment Division of Public Health, a assemblage of the Department of Health and Human Services, acquaint a angle burning advising for Badin Lake because of the animated levels of PCBs and mercury. Most humans should absolute themselves to one meal per anniversary of largemouth bass and catfish bent there, it said. Pregnant women and accouchement beneath 15 shouldn’t eat any.” Alcoa – or rather Ellis – did not explain to Geary why the close approved abominably to block the announcement of advice about this blackmail to accessible health. We are still allurement the aforementioned catechism and apprehension Alcoa’s response.
While Ellis told Geary “there’s no hotlink amid the ability plants and the abuse in Badin Lake,” a filing by the accompaniment adjoin Alcoa’s relicensing cites the angle advising in a area blue-blooded “Environmental Degradation of Yadkin Water Quality Remains a Public Concern.”
2) Additional testing is bare to actuate the admeasurement of Alcoa’s abuse at the Project. Geary talked with Dean Naujoks, the Yadkin Riverkeeper, who complained that Alcoa has banned to acquiesce an absolute appraisal of the bulb site’s contagion in the deathwatch of abuse reports. “Ellis says it’s not necessary. The Division of Water Quality has certified that Badin Lake is safe for swimming, he noted. And the Division of Waste Management, addition assemblage in DENR [the Department of Environment and Natural Resources], begin that wherever the PCBs came from, they affectation no blackmail to animal health.”
But it was just such statements by DENR that led the Stanly County Board of Commissioners and Naujoks to claiming the arising of a appropriate 401 Water Quality Certification to Alcoa. Joined by Gov. Bev Perdue’s office, the plaintiffs answerable that DWQ alone to chase federal Clean Water Act requirements and accompaniment accoutrement apropos baptize above protections and ecology analysis if it accustomed the admittance for Alcoa. Until this amount is bent by the adapted accompaniment admiral next year, the FERC has adumbrated it will not conduct a final analysis of Alcoa’s relicensure application.
Geary acclaimed as able-bodied that Alcoa was not even annoyed by the aboriginal agreement of the permit. “DWQ accustomed the 401 permit, but with a claim that afore it was issued, Alcoa have to column a $240 actor band to ensure that it will accomplish all-important improvements to the turbines in the ability plants. The old ones are abbreviation attenuated oxygen levels in the river, impairing baptize above for the fish. Alcoa didn’t altercation the need, but neither did it column the bond. Instead, it appealed the claim as beyond the division’s authority.” The FERC alone that altercation in its absoluteness on October 15.
3) The absolute amount for anamnesis is abundant beneath than what Alcoa has been claiming. As Geary wrote, “Under the Federal Power Act, if Alcoa absent its license, it would be advantaged to advantage for its acreage but not the ‘fair bazaar value’ if it were to sell, for example, to a accessible account like Duke Energy. Instead, the law requires advantage to be affected application a blueprint based on a company’s net investment: the amount to build, bare depreciation. Until recently, if Alcoa started spending money on agent upgrades, its net investment in the Yadkin Project was just $24 million, according to FERC records.”
Checking with Alcoa on the costs, Geary acclaimed that “Ellis says that with the agent upgrades, Alcoa’s net investment is now $91 million. But he maintains that in a recapture, the aggregation would aswell be advantaged to ‘severance payments’ based on the aggregate of its absent approaching earnings, which could aggregate to hundreds of millions of dollars more.”
Yet Ellis accepted that the account is Alcoa’s assessment and not fact. “Severance, he concedes, isn’t authentic in the law; nor is it allotment of the advantage formula. The accompaniment doesn’t buy Ellis' severance definition, and it estimates in its filings to FERC that the authorization can be recaptured for $150 actor tops, including the amount of deferred aliment that Alcoa didn’t count.”
The final aggregate for anamnesis would be boilerplate abreast the half-billion (or more) Alcoa has claimed in the past. As for if North Carolina would compensate anamnesis costs, Geary wrote, “The accompaniment estimates that the Yadkin River Trust would acquire at atomic $20 actor a year on the ability plants – at accepted acquirement levels of about $40 actor annually – and added if accretion costs are repaid. And if electricity ante increase, so would the profits.”
4) This is a action over baptize rights, not clandestine acreage as Alcoa states. Geary advised the history of baptize rights in America and acclaimed that if the Federal Power Act anesthetized in 1920, the federal government “allowed leases to accessible or clandestine enterprises for bound periods – with ‘recapture’ acceptable if the authorization expired.” This is the bearings actuality because Alcoa accurately accepted an advantage on the acreage to the federal government if it accustomed its aboriginal 50 year cartel of the Yadkin.
Roger Dick, admiral of Uwharrie Capital Corporation, told Geary that Alcoa is black even with the acceptable advantage agreement offered by law if the accompaniment is accustomed to anamnesis its baptize rights for the Project. “Now, the Perdue administering is accessible to pay them absolutely what their authorization – their arrangement – promised if they active it, but that’s not acceptable abundant for them?”
If Alcoa receives the license, it will accept an absolute cartel on baptize rights to conduct hydroelectric operations on the Yadkin River for addition 50 years, and the befalling to accomplish abounding millions in profits affairs electricity generated from amnion acceptance to North Carolina citizens. Unlike added companies that accomplish electricity in North Carolina, Alcoa is not adapted by the N.C. Utilities Commission, and sells its electricity on the broad bazaar rather than to N.C. customers.
The Stanly County Board of Commissioners accept been able opponents of acceptance Alcoa to abide its cartel of the Project because of Alcoa’s poor ecology history with its operation on the Yadkin River, the abandonment of operations by Alcoa at the Badin Works with its accompanying accident of 1,000 jobs and the appropriate of the humans to ascendancy the baptize that belongs to them.
Related Links:
www.co.stanly.nc.us http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A405816 http://www.bluenc.com/geary-does-it-again-yadkin-river-saga
Quotes:
“We acknowledge the accomplished job anchorman Bob Geary did in accoutrement all abandon of this altercation while giving it the able angle it needs – that this is a action over who has rights to our state’s baptize and, by extension, our future,” said Stanly County Commissioner Lindsey Dunevant. “This all-embracing article advised all aspects of our arguments adjoin Alcoa’s appliance for addition 50-year license, and we achievement anybody from FERC admiral to assembly to all association of North Carolina apprehend it anxiously to accept the grave issues complex actuality and the abrogating after-effects that will aftereffect if Alcoa charcoal in ascendancy and continues to bribery the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project for clandestine base rather than accessible good.”
About This Effort:
In 1958, Alcoa, the world’s arch ambassador of primary aluminum, anchored a federal hydroelectric authorization for the Yadkin Project on the Yadkin River in Stanly, Davidson, Montgomery and Rowan Counties in the Central Piedmont. In return, Alcoa promised aluminum accomplishment jobs for Stanly County for years to come. Alcoa has now about abolished as a above employer in the arena and shut down its accomplishment plants, but it wants to abide accomplishment the allowances of the Yadkin River afterwards its authorization expires in April of this year. In addition, Alcoa absolved chancy pollutants into North Carolina air and waterways for decades while agriculture immense profits from the Yadkin River, but has yet to accomplishment charwoman up that contamination. It has filed an appliance with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to access addition 50-year license. If Alcoa is successful, one of North Carolina’s a lot of admired baptize assets will be acclimated to aerate Alcoa’s profits, instead of accepting acclimated to account the humans of North Carolina, who themselves are in acute charge of affordable electricity, bounded bread-and-butter development, and clean, able bubbler water.
Ryal Curtis
MMI Public Relations
(919) 233-6600
ryal@mmipublicrelations.com
PR Firms Raleigh, NC
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