Alcoa Power Generating Inc. issued two new items on its blog today aimed at dampening support for a bill in the legislature to create a Yadkin River Trust to operate the hydroelectric plants on the Yadkin for which Alcoa is seeking new federal licenses. Alcoa's N.C. property manager Gene Ellis posted one from a businessman who is so concerned about the prospect of the state gaining control of the dams that he says he's planning to move to South Carolina if the bill passes. He likens the prospect of the state taking over the project to the nationalization of private property by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Here’s a link.
Richard Glenn of Glenn Underwater Services said, "It started very small just like the forced acquisition of Alcoa’s Yadkin projects and ended up with a country that is now state run and has evolved from a healthy democracy to an almost certain dictatorship. During that time, Chavez was using terms such as ‘this would be best for the citizens,’ these companies are ‘sending profits overseas,’ and so forth. These exact phrases are now being used by politicians in North Carolina.”
Adds Ellis: “The government is trying to take our business and that’s an unprecedented attack on our private property rights. North Carolina doesn’t simply want to take our license away. It wants to take our dams and the land around them.”
In another blogpost, Alcoa takes issue with the N.C. Water Rights Committee's assertion that the Yadkin project may produce as much as $80 million in income. Ellis said that figure is absurd, and concludes, "The profit numbers being floated by the N.C. Water Rights Committee are pure fantasy. But if anyone out there can tell me how to create an $80 million profit from a business that only generates about half that in gross revenues, please give me a call."
