Alcoa

With North Carolina’s Budget Conference Committee meeting this week to iron out final details on the state budget, anyone who seeks a fair deal regarding the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project must urge officials to maintain a provision that establishes a study commission regarding the project.

Concerned citizens of North Carolina, act NOW to save your water rights. The N.C. Division of Water Quality is seeking public comments regarding an application for a water quality certificate for the hydroelectric power plant on the Yadkin River.

Front-paged for action!

If you cannot win your battles in print, why not put it into commercials? That appears to be the motivation behind Alcoa buying a heavy amount of ad space recently on radio stations in Stanly County. Alcoa has been fighting to have the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) grant the multinational firm a 50-year license for hydroelectric operations on the Yadkin River, one of the longest rivers in all of North Carolina.

Anyone living in North Carolina knows that the entire state is facing drought conditions which are not going away anytime soon. To combat this situation, the state is urging municipalities to consider allocating and transferring water resources to meet the needs of customers.

Frontpaged for discussion.

Did you notice, we're in a drought. Via Binker we see that REPUBLICAN Phil Berger has called for Governor Easley to not approve Alcoa's request for dominance over local water resources because they don't provide enough jobs to North Carolina. Go to Binker to read the letter to the Governor, I'll wait.......

Okay, I'll admit it, I don't see the angle. For a Republican to stand up to big business (anyone remember the NFL ALCOA commercials? "We can't wait, we can't wait, for tomorroooooooooooooow, Alcoa can't wait!") and ask the Democratic governor to yank their operations in North Carolina, for all intents and purposes, boggles the mind. Berger says that "In 1958, when its current license was issued, Alcoa provided a number of jobs to North Carolina's citizens; sadly, this is no longer the case. In 2002, Alcoa laid off hundreds of North Carolina workers and no longer provides employment for a substantial number of our people."

One can only imagine that the message is a shot across the bow of outsourcers - if you take jobs out of North Carolina, just take your ball and go home, because we ain't playing. Am I missing something here, is there some hidden neocon agenda to shutting down Alcoa in North Carolina or has the moderate Republican reappeared in North Carolina after a half-century. Or, is it just all smoke and mirrors and vague sightings, like the ivory-billed-woodpecker?