20070812 Ver 2_N.C. bill seeks new operator on Yadkin_20090330

N.C. bill seeks new operator on Yadkin
Subject: N.C. bill seeks new operator on Yadkin
From: Susan Massengale <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:08:08 -0400
To: DWQ Clips <[e-mail]>
From the Charlotte Observer
N.C. bill seeks new operator on Yadkin
Lawmakers' plan calls for state-created trust to acquire and run
Alcoa's hydroelectric project.
By Bruce Henderson
[e-mail]
Posted: Saturday, Mar. 28, 2009
A state-created trust could acquire and run Alcoa's hydroelectric project on the
Yadkin River under a bill filed this week with powerful bipartisan support.
It's the latest development in a running water-rights battle between the aluminum
maker and Stanly County, home of the company's now-shuttered smelter.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is poised to renew Alcoa's 50-year license
to control a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin, including four reservoirs, and has never
involuntarily taken away a hydro license.
Alcoa says it will fight what it calls the government seizure of a privately owned
business.
But Stanly County continues to gain high-level support for its argument that hydro
revenues from the Yadkin should benefit the river community. Alcoa sells power on
the open market.
Gov. Bev Perdue has already expressed personal sympathy for that point of view.
Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, D-Fayetteville, and Republican Whip Jerry Tillman
of Archdale are co-sponsors of the bill filed this week by Sen. Fletcher Hartsell,
R-Concord.
"I certainly think its prospects are good," Hartsell said Friday.
The bill creates a trust authorized to acquire the project. It doesn't elaborate on
how that would be accomplished if Alcoa remains an unwilling seller.
"The real issue here is the water, and who and how the water is controlled, and for
whose benefit," Hartsell said.
The trust would have authority to issue bonds to pay for the purchase, to be repaid
by revenues from the sale of electric power. The trust could sell power to utilities
within or outside North Carolina, as Alcoa now does.
A portion of electricity sales would be dedicated for regional economic development.
Alcoa says the trust would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The
company says it has paid $80 million since 1915 to buy land along the Yadkin. Alcoa
says is has also agreed to spend $240 million to upgrade dams and improve water
quality - terms it says the trust would have to honor.
"This has absolutely nothing to do with protecting North Carolina's water," Alcoa
official Gene Ellis said in a statement. "It has everything to do with the
government trying to take a privately owned business for its own benefit."
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N.C. bill seeks new operator on Yadkin
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