The gang at SCDC (South Coast Devel­op­ment Coun­cil) are hot to aid and abet Ore­gon Resources Corp to begin strip min­ing for chromite and other min­er­als (sup­pos­edly no gold or plat­inum, they will put that back???).

The U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers has issued the defin­i­tive oper­at­ing per­mit, giv­ing the Portland-based firm approval to mine chromite, zir­con, high-iron and gar­net off Seven Dev­ils Road between Charleston and Bandon.

‘Every­thing fell into place,” said Dan Smith, Ore­gon Resources’ chief oper­at­ing officer.

Watch­ing the video of a Jan­u­ary 28, 2010 SCDC meet­ing shows Sandy Messerle (I think) absolutely gush­ing about 70 new jobs in the county as Smith down­plays the poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal issues, explains how badly they have been treated by the var­i­ous per­mit­ting agen­cies and mocks Ore­gon for hav­ing an inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion for being tough to strip mine in. He also empha­sized that fund­ing for ORC was being held up pend­ing per­mits and the future of the for­eign owned cor­po­ra­tion was in depen­dent upon expe­dit­ing the go ahead. One thing is cer­tain, not a sin­gle per­son present at the meet­ing even ques­tions the pos­si­ble long term effects if even the slight­est thing goes wrong with ORC’s operation.

Remem­ber the 12″ gas pipeline and that débâ­cle. The same movers and shak­ers pre­sid­ing over that mess are sup­port­ing this ven­ture despite a large local fish­ing com­mu­nity and the poten­tial to dam­age already dimin­ished salmon runs and wet­lands. [Photo cour­tesy of Larry Van Elsberg]

Jobs are crit­i­cal but of the 70+ posi­tions how many will be filled with local work­ers, how many are really fam­ily wage and what hap­pens in 18 years when ORC is done pulling pub­lic resources out of the ground? No one at the meet­ing con­sid­ered the 22 road work­ers laid off to afford the $450K cost of upgrad­ing a per­fectly ser­vice­able county road to ‘indus­trial grade’.

Also, dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 28 SCDC meet­ing, Port Direc­tor, Jef­frey Bishop dis­cusses the odd land lease arrange­ment with Wey­er­hauser. Did I hear right? Was the lease arrange­ment based on a future prop­erty value IF the LNG ter­mi­nal was built? If some­one has time to watch, please let me know what that is about.

**Received a note from a reader that cor­rectly noted the Port had a pur­chase agree­ment (actu­ally paid $25M?) and now they are in a pure option agree­ment (Wey­er­hauser gave back the money.. with inter­est???) So, did the port make a pur­chase of land based upon an appraised future value? Would a legit­i­mate appraiser do such a thing and would it be legal for the port to make such an arrange­ment with­out an appraisal? **

The funny thing about SCDC is I am sure if they believed there was a bil­lion bar­rels of oil under the ground they would fall all over them­selves try­ing to drill for it. There is the equiv­a­lent of a bil­lion bar­rels of oil under the ground in wind resource in this county and money to be made and saved in renew­able energy but these guys only want to enter­tain another Wey­er­hauser busi­ness model. They want to be depen­dent on some out­side plun­derer who will take the pub­lic resources and then pack up and leave tak­ing their jobs with them. It is not like it hasn’t hap­pened here before.