From the Charlotte Observer (3/14/09): The Alcoa power company sued Stanly County on Friday, saying government officials have dragged their feet in responding to public-records requests.
Alcoa Power Generating Inc., which controls four reservoirs along the Yadkin River, is hoping to renew a 50-year federal hydroelectric license.
The county has spent nearly a million dollars fighting the renewal. It says the company has not cleaned up 90 years’ worth of pollution, a charge Alcoa denies.
In a complaint filed in Stanly County Superior Court, Alcoa says county officials have violated N.C. public record laws by failing to respond to requests for information related to the license renewal. Alcoa also accuses the county of improperly removing nonprivileged information from the documents it did provide.
Neither Stanly County Manager Andy Lucas nor Commissioners Chairman Tony Dennis could be reached Friday afternoon. County Attorney John Roberts said he and the county’s outside counsel had just received the complaint and were still reviewing it.
The company says in the complaint that it twice requested documents from the county, but that the county has made a “purposeful and concerted effort” to deny the requests.
“The County has failed to provide APGI with access to the vast majority of the requested records, and the few copies that it has produced have not been provided ‘as promptly as possible,’ as the law requires; to the contrary, they have dribbled them out in small batches occasionally over a period of several months,” the complaint says.
Alcoa says that it tried to narrow and prioritize its requests, but that county officials met these efforts “with obfuscation, foot-dragging, nonresponsiveness and untenable interpretations of the law.”
The company has asked a judge to determine which records are public and which are exempt from the law, to order the immediate disclosure of the requested records and to compel the county to pay Alcoa’s attorney fees.
Alcoa Power Generating controls four reservoirs – High Rock, Tuckertown, Badin Lake and Falls – and owns 38,000 acres on the Yadkin. The dams generate 215 megawatts of electricity, less than any of Duke Energy’s coal-fired power plants in the Carolinas. Alcoa’s expired federal license, awarded in 1958, was extended for a year as a new, 50-year license is considered.
The N.C. Water Rights Committee has recently promoted the idea of a state-held trust taking control of the Yadkin license, a solution Stanly County supports. The committee has said that the trust could manage the hydro project and use the profits to pay for economic development, conserve land and clean up Alcoa’s pollution.
by Julia Oliver, Observer Staff Writer