Yadkin Hydroelectric Project

Alcoa Comments On Public Comments Do Not Add Up

by Patty

The theory goes that if you keep saying something other than the truth, eventually it will replace what actually happened in people’s minds. Apparently that is what Alcoa, or officially Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (APGI), is trying now in order to explain why it withdrew its original application withdrawal-of-401-water-quality-certificate for a required 401 water quality certificate from the N.C. Division of Water Quality for the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project on May 9 and submitted a new one in its place that same day.

What is known is that Alcoa pulled its original request after the DWQ informed APGI it had questions about contamination in Badin Lake, one of four lakes that make up the system of hydroelectric stations, dams and reservoirs along a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin River in central North Carolina known as the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project. These questions arose during the two-week public comment period that ended May 2. No one involved in the situation dispute those facts. But Alcoa has denied the reason behind the switch.

Many observers, including us, believe that a detailed report submitted during the public comment period by John Rodgers, Ph.D., a noted water quality expert with Clemson University, was key in convincing the DWQ that there are substantial environmental hazards at Badin Lake associated with Alcoa’s past and present operations there.

Yet Alcoa, or more specifically its local spokesperson Gene Ellis, APGI licensing and property manager, has dismissed the report and its impact in repeated interviews. For example, in a May 14 article in The Winston-Salem Journal, reporter Michael Hewlett wrote that “Ellis said that the report reveals nothing new.”

Really? If we who opposed the application did not provide anything new, and Alcoa was so confident, then why did they pull their application? And why in the same article did Hewlett write that “Robin Smith, the assistant secretary for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources (which oversees the DWQ), said that state officials needed more time to consider new information” regarding the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project?

The comments from Alcoa do not add up. They deny the reality that the report raised damaging concerns that water used for drinking and recreation by Stanly County residents is environmentally hazardous, and that it is because Alcoa has handled hydroelectric operations on the Yadkin River for decades. If Alcoa has failed to recognize that fact in its second filing for the certificate and explain how it will address the ecological problems, it will face a rude awakening when the DWQ denies the application and thereby prevents Alcoa from pursuing a 50-year license to continue its exclusive use of the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project.

And that’s one new outcome even Alcoa will not be able to deny.

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