Alcoa makes case for Yadkin River dams

Alcoa will spend $10 million this year to spruce up its Badin Works site and is looking for new industry to locate at the old aluminum smelting plant, a company executive says.

The improvements will be made regardless of whether Alcoa keeps its license to operate a series of electricity-generating dams along the Yadkin River, said Kevin Anton, an Alcoa vice president and the international corporation's chief sustainability officer. The company also plans to donate 1,000 acres to Morrow Mountain State Park, Anton said.

Anton was interviewed after a closed meeting Wednesday in Mooresville with members of the Yadkin Riverkeeper watchdog group. That meeting and others are part of a new strategy for Alcoa, which is fighting to keep its federal operating licenses along the Yadkin.

The company recently lost the support of the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources after regulators learned of a series of e-mails that they believe show Alcoa consultants misled DENR about water quality in the Yadkin.

Alcoa needs the state to OK a new water-quality certificate for Alcoa to win a new 50-year federal license.

Anton said he has been in meetings around North Carolina with the company's supporters and detractors. He said Alcoa wants to listen to people's concerns and make the case that "we're committed to North Carolina, we're committed to Badin."

The company also plans to roll out a toll-free telephone number early next week so people can call Alcoa with concerns, he said. Many people in Stanly County, where the Badin Works was once the area's largest employer, tell stories of illegal dumping stemming from Alcoa's operations. Some believe there's a link between chemicals used at this plant and others Alcoa operates and cancer in former employees and their families.

Asked Wednesday whether Alcoa has been a good corporate citizen in North Carolina, Anton said environmental and workplace safety regulations have changed drastically over the decades that Alcoa has operated here. He said Alcoa "will continue to be on the leading edge of that" and will "take accountability for what our forefathers have done."

Dean Naujoks, the Yadkin Riverkeeper, said Wednesday's meeting was not productive.

Alcoa, he said, was promising compliance on various environmental issues, including the amount of dissolved oxygen in the Yadkin River. That's the issue the state jumped on late last year when e-mails came to light making it seem that Alcoa was hiding the fact that oxygen levels aren't always within mandated ranges.

Alcoa's dams pull water from deep within man-made lakes, where oxygen levels are lower. That water is sent downstream, lowering oxygen levels there, which is a problem for fish and other animals.

"It was good to get to tell them what we felt, how we felt about their dishonesty,'' Naujoks said about Wednesday's meeting. "But the meeting as a whole was not very productive."

Naujoks said Alcoa did provide a cancer study the Riverkeeper had been after, calling it limited progress.

Anton declined to comment on specific meetings or to say who else he has met within North Carolina. He spoke generally about the meetings, which he said started about two weeks before Christmas. That's about the same time Gov. Bev Perdue told reporters that she was through negotiating with Alcoa over its license. Perdue wants the state to win the right to operate the dams.

"Tell them not to call me," the governor said at the time.