Alcoa

After all that has happened, it's hard to believe Alcoa has a snowball's chance in hell of closing their deal to control one of North Carolina's great rivers.

But with Thom Tillis calling the shots in Raleigh, any kind of political scam you can imagine is truly possible.

Vigilance is the order of the day.

Alcoa Fails to Provide Job Guarantees, Blocks Clean Tech Deal
Governor Says No to Corporate Control of NC’s Yadkin River

Last week the US Supreme Court heard arguments from Montana and PPL, a hydroelectric power producer regarding who owns the riverbeds on three Montana Rivers. According to US law, if a river is "navigable" it is owned by the State and should be held in Trust for the people of the State. If the river is not navigable, then it is owned by the federal government for the people of the United States. The case began as parents of school children in Montana got tired of budget cuts to schools, and noted that the State had not been charging millions in riverbed rent for several rivers over the past several decades. They sued the state claiming the State had not been managing its public trust responsibly because it had not been charging rent for the use of the public land.

The Yadkin River is one of our state’s greatest wealth generators. For instance, a thirty-eight mile stretch of the river provides 940 million kilowatt hours of valuable hydro-electricity. Unfortunately, for the past decade, the majority of the wealth generated by the river has flowed out of our state’s economy rather than into it.

A federal appeals court has ruled against Alcoa in its bid to speed the process of granting a federal license to operate four dams along the Yadkin River in Stanly County.

Alcoa's bid to continue operating the dams, which it built along the river to provide energy for a now-closed smelting plant near Badin, is opposed by state officials and by environmental groups. Gov. Bev Perdue's administration has said it could attract new jobs if it were to operate the dams, which are along a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin River.

I guess the answer "No." won't be heard until they get tired of paying lawyers. Honestly, my google alert for news: Yadkin Alcoa has had no hits for months. The rusty wheels of justice turn very slowly.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/05/04/2271765/court-rules-against-...

To the few remaining North Carolinians who actually care about an informed electorate, it's time to bend over and kiss your collective asses good-bye, along with UNC-TV.

Senator Andrew Brock, the dickhead who founded Mary Kay Politics, is holding public television hostage because it questioned the rights of private companies, in this case Alcoa, to own North Carolina rivers.

The Yadkin River runs through the district of Republican Sen. Andrew Brock, who supports Alcoa's use of the river. He was confounded by the network's coverage last year. "We need them," he says of UNC-TV, "but we need assurances that they can't have the people who control their budget telling them to run a piece that was paid for by the opposition. We need assurances that won't happen again."

From Carter Wrenn, via Ed Cone, an excellent summary of the aftershocks of Alcoa-gate. Note to self: Whenever a multinational corporation promises they're telling the truth, it is safe to assume they're lying.

By the time Ms. Vajda finished playing her documentary Alcoa had gone from a victim of Socialism to a corporate villain. And, off balance, Alcoa stumbled again.

This entry was partially inspired by a rather lengthy discussion I had with my eldest son the other day, whose main mission in life (apparently) is to poke holes in my logic. When I held him as a baby and said, "You're going to be smart!", this wasn't what I had in mind, but...such is life.

He made a valiant effort in this recent set-to, but I emerged from this patricidal exercise still conflicted about the subject at hand. So I decided to bring more logic pokers into the fray by airing some of my opinions here. Feel free to poke away.

And it hasn't even been aired yet:

The subject of the documentary is Alcoa, which is seeking renewal of its federal license to operate hydroelectric generating stations on the Yadkin River. The Perdue administration has opposed the license renewal before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and wants the legislature to pass a bill that would create a way for the state to purchase the hydro plants.

This raises all kinds of questions about the relationship between branches of the government -- in this case, legislative versus executive, in that UNC-TV is an agency overseen by the UNC Board of Governors. And it also involves the power of the state versus the academy.

For those following the wild dispute over the Yadkin River Dam between We the People and polluting profiteers at Alcoa, you'll find Bob Geary's story in this week's Independent to be a sight for sore eyes. I'll share a few snippets, but you'll really want to read the whole thing, plus the two sidebar stories. It's good stuff.

Steering his boat on Badin Lake in front of the hulking smelter, Jimmy Dick recounts how in 1958, when Alcoa last came up for license renewal, the company argued that it needed the maximum allowable term of 50 years to ensure it could recoup its planned investments in a fourth dam and in doubling the smelter's capacity. In a legal brief, the company noted that the license was subject to "recapture" when it expired, at which point "the management of Carolina Aluminum could not rely on any assured source of power" for the plant.