Potash Corp drops plans for sulfur melter at Morehead City | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    So now we still don't know what their plans are

    Potash Corp has dropped plans to build a sulfur melting facility at the State Port in Morehead. Governor Perdue journeyed down from Raleigh to make the announcement to hundreds of cheering people at a meeting at the Port facility. In here announcement Perdue indicated that Potash would continue the construction of a dry sulfur warehouse, thus raising questions about where and under what conditions Potash would process that dry sulfur.

    Perdue blamed Republicans for weakening environmental regulations, without mentioning that the reforms she criticized were not in effect when this project wound its way through the permitting process. But she did take the opportunity to take a shot at local Republican representative Pat McElraft. Efforts to contact Rep McElraft were unsuccessful at press time.

    Perdue defended "PCS" saying they are a large customer of the State Port. She claimed that the process had been transparent and above board. Yet the Observer has made several attempts to get information from Potash Corp and no one has returned calls. We have been trying to find out if the sulfur treatment would now be shifted to Aurora and if so what they would mean for Beaufort County. If we ever get any information from them we'll let you know.

    Click here to read the Carteret Times-News report of the Perdue announcement.

    Commentary

    We have looked into this sulfur treatment issue enough to discover that there was much incorrect information circulating about it. But we believe Governor Perdue was absolutely wrong when she said it had been a transparent process. Too many people found out too little too late for that to be true.

    We are not as concerned about sulfur melting as we were at the start of this issue, but that is no thanks to Potash or the State. Better information should have been available and the process of educating the public should have been more effective.

    And we believe it was totally wrong for Perdue to blame H. 781 and Republicans related to this issue. H. 781 did not become law until this week and it has not been implemented even yet. Click here to read it for yourself. As for us, we don't see anything in H. 781 that caused this debacle to happen. On the contrary, we think this imbroglio fully illustrates that there are real flaws in the permitting process in this state, particularly related to informing the public about projects that are of public concern. The process is seriously flawed in many ways, as we have reported on a number of occasions and we would respectfully suggest the Governor and her staff would be better advised to examine what went wrong here and correct it before it happens again. And they should probably start at the Department of Commerce.

    Click here to read the N&O's take on the mess.