Op-Ed: Rescind Titan’s Incentives

It’s been nearly two years since our county commissioners offered Titan Cement 4.2 million of our tax dollars to build the fourth largest cement plant in the U.S. on the banks of the Cape Fear River. Since then, as the protest at the New Hanover County Courthouse this week showed, public opposition to this heavy polluting industry has grown dramatically. It now includes nearly 6,000 petitioners, 250 local doctors, the North Carolina Pediatrics Society, and scores of local businesses, business leaders, citizens groups, academics, and several governmental agencies concerned about Titan’s impacts on our coastal environment and our community.

In two years we’ve also learned a lot more about Titan Cement: 1) that it would be the dirtiest new cement plant in the U.S.; 2) that they’ve refused to include existing pollution control technology to make their plant cleaner; 3) that while they were telling our commissioners what great environmental stewards they were, their mining permit was being revoked by a Florida judge for impacts on the Everglades and Miami’s drinking water supply; 4) that they’ve done everything in their power to avoid a State Environmental Policy Act Review (SEPA), which applied to the project initially and then mysteriously was removed by state regulators after intensive lobbying by the company. Most recently we’ve learned that while Titan was lobbying state officials to remove SEPA, a local Titan officer paid twice the appraised price for an office building owned by two big-time fundraisers for former Governor Mike Easley—men with reputations for helping grease the skids for environmental permits. The State Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the Titan permit process for potential corruption and influence peddling.

It should be patently obvious by now that Titan Cement’s officers, lobbyists, and PR firm have grossly misrepresented this company to our county commissioners, to Wilmington Industrial Development, and to our community. But there are a few things the current county commissioners can do to rectify this mistake and help lift the cloud of controversy that now permeates the Titan project. 1) At a minimum, pass a resolution requesting Governor Perdue freeze all permits for Titan Cement until the SBI investigation is complete. 2) Better still, pass a resolution requesting that Governor Perdue require the Titan project be subject to the State Environmental Policy Act, which would hold all state permits until a comprehensive review of all the plant’s impacts is complete. And (3) most importantly, rescind the $4.2 million in incentives promised to Titan Cement. Some of the commissioners have expressed concern that rescinding the incentive would bring a lawsuit from Titan. It may, since we now know Titan has a reputation for suing anyone who stands in their way. But I bet that the majority of citizens in this county would much rather have their tax dollars used defending that decision than have one red cent go in the pocket of a company that not only has deceived us, but that would affect the health of our families, our economy, and our quality of life for the next 50 years.

The New Hanover County Commissioners have a simple choice. They can bury their heads in the sand, ignore the public, and hope someone else slays the dragon they invited here. By doing this they will continue to give the impression to the heavy polluting industries of the world that we are so desperate we’ll pay millions to whomever we can beg to come here–and bend whatever environmental regulations need bending. OR they can show some backbone and send a clear, powerful signal around the world that our future lies in the emerging multi-billion-dollar clean and green manufacturing and energy sectors, in the high-tech and health-tech sectors where we already excel, in the creative economy that we’ve said we want to incubate and where an increasing number of business leaders, such as those involved with the new Cape Fear Economic Development Council, want to take us. That’s a future that raises all boats, fuels our current economic engines, and that everyone can support. That’s a future that cherishes our coastal resources, our families, and communities, and makes them a powerful magnet for the businesses and industries of the 21st century—not a coal-burning, low-tech, heavy polluting industry of the past that will encase our economy and environment in cement overshoes for decades to come.

So gentleman, if you please, we’d like our money back.

Joel Bourne
President, Friends of the Lower Cape Fear/StopTitan.org
Ogden