High Rock board sides with Alcoa for relicense

The Lexington Dispatch has reported that the High Rock Lake Association Board of Directors “unanimously passed a resolution last week confirming the board’s support of a relicensing settlement agreement that would keep the company in control of the Yadkin River and its four hydroelectric dams.”

“We feel the Division of Water Quality withdrew that water quality certificate more out of frustration with the ongoing judicial hearing than because of any real reasons for lack of information,” Len Strong, vice president of the High Rock Lake Association, told the Dispatch. “The information that they’re (state) claiming wasn’t there in fact was there … two years ago. Alcoa made that information totally available to our board as well as to the general public. But the state is claiming, ‘oh we didn’t know.’ So our feeling is this was a political maneuver.”

Strong later added, “There is a gut issue here. More delays means that all of those agreements relative to shoreline management, relative to water levels and so on, are up in the air and not really enforceable. We feel the lack of having that relicensing agreement is depriving all of the property owners and stakeholders from those agreements they worked so hard to get.”

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Lexington Dispatch: Decision on Yadkin water quality permit "should remain free of political pressure"

The Lexington Dispatch ran an editorial Wednesday saying that “Legislators need to pause and think carefully about the path they’re heading down. If they take over this private business, what’s to keep them from doing it to others? And should they do that and then allow another business to operate it, then that would be a particularly troubling development. Certainly reasonable safeguards that ensure water access are justified, but the license already covers that ground.”

In addition, the editorial stressed that Alcoa’s pending application for a water quality permit should remain free from political pressure: “Finally, politics shouldn’t come into play on the water quality permit. That decision should be based on the technical aspects alone. If legislators truly want to take over the project, they can attempt to do that through legislation. State regulatory bodies should remain free of political pressure to issue a certain decision.”

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