Greenco cancels public forum
Greenco Environmental principals Tim and Melia Lesko have canceled the public forum they had scheduled for Friday at the Barnesville Civic Center to explain their processes and why odors are emanating from their composting facility on Roger Brown Drive.
Face it folks, try as hard you might, this isn't Peachtree City, McDonough, or West Point. Your transportation infrastructure doesn't lend itself to the "light and clean" industry that everyone thinks they want.
Either you take what comes or watch as your textile based job market continues to fade away.
Clearly it was a bad, desperate deal that our county and Industrial Authority made in the first place.
And while Barnesville may not be the most desirable place for industry to locate, recruiting or accepting this type of industry, or the "green power generation facility" I keep hearing about that will be pumping smoky pollution and increasing truck traffic to bring the wood chips to the plant, will only make it that much harder to get better industry to locate here.
Clearly this compost facility does not provide nearly enough benefit for our county to make it worth it when we try to get other industry in to the county.
Sometimes you are better off without adding a business if it affects the long term desirability of adding other businesses.
Perhaps our county officials and the Industrial Developement authority should consider that before accepting any undesirable industry like they seem to be courting. And by the way, just because that industry locates here, does not mean the jobs created go to Lamar Co citizens--we are probably lucky if 25% of them are Lamar Countians at best.
So your advice to "take what comes" only leads to an eroding quality and life and makes if even harder to get other industry to locate here even when the economy improves and more opportunities present themselves. As a person who works at a business in the Industrial Park I can tell you for sure any potential employer who visits when the compost facility is reeking will certainly not locate here.
So as you urge we can take the crap we get and wallow in it or show some foresight and restraint and seek industries that will make the county better, not worse.
I blame our industrial authority and county officials more than I do Greenco. After all they were just looking for suckers as they have to when running that type of business.
How much of this smell was preexisting from that?
As for the IDA and the Industrial Park, let us not forget the cluster**** with the junkyard that attempted to locate there. Barnesville Illuminati Kenny Roberts magically found "environmental concerns" with the site they had sold to the scrap dealer after the flour mill complained about "appearance" issues.
Scoop really dropped the ball on covering that nonsense. The IDA offered a site further away from the flour mill, but failed to realize scrap metal is shipped by rail and the location selected was beside the RR for a reason. B'ville lost the industry to Griffin along with the jobs and tax revenue.
Barnesville is in competition with other Georgia communities for industrial development. There are significant negatives for this area that already put strikes against coming here. Add in hostile attitudes such as are continually on display here and any potential industrial concern has every reason to move on. Anyone else remember all the grief Rayonier received for the "noise" from their facility. Never mind it was located right beside an equally "noisy" sawmill.
Doesn't it give you a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that such bright lights as these are planning the future of this town/county?
Your "Quality Of Life" point will fade away as younger people in search of work move away and the "old money" fossils continue to die off.
I must not. Only two miles from it. How much of your smell is coming from the TRASH DUMP behind it?
The "freshly sawn wood" smell is burning bark Jordan uses in their lumber drying kiln operation. That's right, all the hand wringing about the new biomass power plant pollution neatly overlooks Jordan's current use of bark to fire their drying kilns. Buckeye used sawdust before that.
Little known facts for CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything..) dwellers.
Now, get busy and run Jordan out of town!