As you all know, the Supervisor meeting that was originally scheduled for Jan 13th was cancelled; however, it is more appropriate to say that it was delayed.  Unfortunately, we are hearing from a number of people that they think Alliance Metals has withdrawn their application.  THAT IS NOT TRUE!  The meeting was simply delayed to a future date.

So what is happening?  Well, despite all of the opposition to this project, Alliance (more specifically Rose, both the law group and the PR side of the business) is trying to come up with some ideas that would make this project more acceptable to the community.  Good luck!

I, and another member of the community at the request of Duce Minor, have met with Alliance and Rose.  The stated purpose was so that Duce could better understand the pro’s and con’s of the project.  Kind of interesting since he was in receipt of the overwhelming amount of researched documentation by professionals and letters that the community sent to the county.  In any event, we took the meeting to help explain our opposition.  We have a follow up meeting next week and I will be able to tell everyone more afterwards.  My guess is that they will try and schedule the supervisor meeting sometime in Feb.

Here is the crux of the situation at this point.  Alliance has applied for an Industrial Planned Development zoning for their property.  They are trying to convince the county with that designation the county can put conditions on the project and it’s ongoing operations.  Well, as it is with many things that Alliance/Rose says, that is not the case.  Legally, the county can not put enforceable conditions on an IPD zone.  There is case law overturning such conditions so the county would find itself powerless to enforce any conditions that would be placed on Alliance.

When we talk about conditions we are talking of things that the county should do to protect themselves as well as the taxpayers of this county.  For example, a performance bond that ensures there is adequate money to clean up the site and to ensure that Alliance follows up with their promises, not using chlorine in their operation (they have now committed to this), road upgrades to handle the increase in traffic, etc.  The only way that conditions like this could be enforced legally by the county is with a Conditional Use Permit.  They had applied for one several months ago but withdrew it once they determined that passage would require a unanimous vote of the supervisors and they knew they would not get that.

Our goal is to get the county to understand this and reject the application.  That is what is being worked on right now.  Unfortunately, Duce still seems to support the smelter despite the overwhelming opposition to it.

This is what he has seen and somehow it has not swayed him or D.L.:

• Over 150 people attended the ADEQ meeting and all speakers spoke out against the smelter

• Approximately 325 people attended the P&Z meeting and all speakers spoke against the project and the mood of the audience was extremely obvious.

• Over 600 people have now signed the petition opposing the smelter.  Their petition still has only 31 signatures supporting them.

• The P&Z Commission voted unanimously to recommend that their application not be approved.

• The elected officials who serve on both public boards in Wenden passed resolutions to oppose the smelter.

• The community sent letters and documentation to the county that amounted to 3 1/2 inches of documentation opposing the smelter.

We  are prepared to take decisive action in the event that the supervisors do in fact approve this project.  We firmly believe that we can stop the smelter in the near term and have plans on how we can stop this and other similar projects from coming to our valley.  We will share more in the coming days and weeks about what these plans are.  We must protect our homes and the nature of the valley and keep out industrial development that could destroy everything.

We all must continue to fight this development and not become complacent!  For things that you can do please visit our updated “What can you do” page.  Please continue to visit the site frequently for updated information about the smelter.

Also, please let everyone you know that it is not over.  Our community is still at risk and Alliance Metals is digging in.