Published: April 11, 2008 08:37 am      

Let Alcoa use the water

Thursday, April 10, 2008 — First, the Stanly Commissioners cried that they wanted the money. Then came along the deafening banter that Alcoa was killing all the people in Stanly County. Now it’s the water.

Let me get this straight. Alcoa wants to generate electrical power for the Yadkin basin so we can have electric lights, increase our economic base and grow our area in tourism and as an amenable place to live.

That doesn’t sound too bad. Me thinks that the water routed to the generating mechanisms will spin turbines, then pass through one of several dams Alcoa built. Then, unless I’m wrong, the Yadkin water will continue on its course to other communities along the Yadkin/Pee Dee. I don’t see the electrical power generating taking or selling God’s water to other communities.

As Jason Sandusky wrote your paper some time ago, the biggest detriment to the Yadkin River is communities piping water out of the river and selling it to other cities in the Catawba river basin — to Concord to be exact. Let me remember, oh yes, it is going at the rate of 10,000,000 gallons a day by Albemarle.

If Messrs, Furr, Dennis, et al. really want to do something to protect “Our Water,” they should line up their buses at the courthouse and go up the street to the Albemarle City Hall and protest. If they really feel that the water is theirs and not of God’s nature, it would make more sense to try to stop the wanton discharge of the Yadkin natural resource.

Then Mr. Dunevant would be truly doing something, “...that might allow us to do something for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.”

I would appreciate it if these “learned” gentlemen would answer one question for me: Who is going to produce the electricity we need if they succeed in aborting the FERC relicensing? Mr. Furr? Mr. Dennis? Mr. Mahta? Mr. Myers?

Let Alcoa use God’s water to generate electricity. At least Alcoa is using it, not selling it abroad.

Thomas McCluskey

New London