It is in the Guard because our local paper can’t always be bothered to inform their readers of all details. In addition to not telling the reader everything they deserve to know to make good choices, The World also took shots at the lone voice of reason on the BOC, Bob Main, and it is nice to see the other side being given.
Main, the county commissioner, argues the county shouldn’t risk its renewable timber resources for a short-term promise of jobs.
“I’d like to wait four or five years and see how they do, what kind of neighbors they are, how many people they actually hire,” Main said. “They want a long-term lease, and to lock up thousands of acres of county forest. I have an uneasy feeling about it.”
What also makes Main uncomfortable, he said, is Smith’s past involvement with Iluka Resources, a titanium mining outfit that set up a strip mining operation in Georgia in 2003 that wound up shuttered after less than three years.
The Georgia project didn’t work because there wasn’t enough titanium in the ground to justify the cost of extracting it, Smith said.
“For every 100 tons we mine, we had to put 98 and a half tons back in the ground,” he said. “Here, of every 100 tons we mine, we only put 60 to 70 back in the ground.”
Main and other opponents say they are still concerned because of the Georgia experience. “They promised 20 years of jobs,” he said, “and went bankrupt in two and a half years.”
