Let us revisit the matter of drilling for titanium dioxide in our Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge so that the world as we know it never runs out of toothpaste whitener.
Although you have strongly expressed your concerns to our intrepid public servants under the Gold Dome, and I have commented on the issue more than once, I will be the first to admit that not much has changed in getting a permanent ban on drilling.
Our irresistible force has not moved the immovable object. If you received any response at all from the governor’s office or your local legislator, it has been laden with political-speak.
(“Thank you for sharing your concerns. I will carefully consider them in dealing with this important matter.”)
Translation? Go pound sand.
A few weeks ago, I received a rebuttal from Drew Jones challenging my “assertions and implications” on drilling in the Okefenokee “that require correction.” It was a rather long letter, so I suggested he shorten it a bit, and then I would share it with you. As of this writing, I have not heard back.
It’s probably just as well. Incidentally, Jones is a Charlton County commissioner and lists his occupation as a forest land manager for Toledo Manufacturing Co. and WC Hopkins and Sons LLLP. He is also the nephew-in-law of Joe Hopkins, president of Toledo Manufacturing, who is viewed as the real immovable object behind the proposed ban.
Hopkins owns 50,000 acres in Charlton County and frames the issue as one of property rights. He argues that laws to protect the Okefenokee from mining would infringe on his property rights. The government shouldn’t be telling property owners like him what they can or cannot do with their property — like drag mining it for toothpaste whitener.
Attorney Josh Marks, who heads Georgians for the Okefenokee and worked to prevent mining near the Okefenokee in the 1990s when DuPont proposed mining, is a perpetual thorn in Hopkins’s side and says that’s a specious argument.
“Prohibiting mining along the swamp’s edge would in no way violate his constitutional rights,” Marks wrote in an email to The Current publication. “The fact that I can’t put a casino or commercial chicken house in my backyard doesn’t mean that my constitutional rights have been violated.”
Some people assumed that when the Conservation Fund bought out the woebegone Twin Pines LLC and took back 7,700 acres they had planned to mine, that this ended any threat to potentially damage the Okefenokee.
Not so. Though Twin Pines is gone, there remain large tracts of privately-owned land on Trail Ridge that are candidates for mining. At one time, chemical giant Chemours — a spinoff from DuPont — was thought to be a candidate to replace Twin Pines. Still, the company said it is shifting away from mining itself and will stick to processing minerals mined by others.
Of course, Chemours has other problems right now. They are being sued, along with other chemical companies and carpet manufacturers, by local Northwest Georgia governments and families for contaminating local water, air, and soil with “forever chemicals.”
That doesn’t mean other companies couldn’t come in and do a deal with Toledo or other landowners in the area to drag mine for titanium dioxide, as long as there is no law preventing them from doing so.
As I have said before, political decisions can be made in only one of two ways: by applying pressure or by not applying it.
So far, our intrepid public servants have felt more pressure from the timber barons than from those seeking a permanent ban on mining the Okefenokee. That may be about to change.
The Garden Club of Georgia, with 12,000 members in some 350 clubs, is asking its members to write their local legislators, urging the state to do something before “another landowner sells his property to a different mining company.” (If I may offer a suggestion: Call them. Their numbers are listed on the ga.gov website. Otherwise, you are just going to get the “Thank you for sharing your concerns” bromide.)
Gov. Brian Kemp, legislators, and assorted bureaucrats need to accept the fact that we aren’t going away. They may think they are the immovable object, but we are an irresistible force.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.