Since we last discussed efforts to drill in our Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge for titanium dioxide so that mankind will never experience life without toothpaste whitener, nothing has changed – except a lot.
What hasn’t changed?
Gov. Brian Kemp; state Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch (R-Dahlonega), Rep. Lynn Smith (R-Newnan), and bureaucrats in the oxymoronic Environmental Protection Division continue to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil of this audaciously lousy idea that has garnered overwhelming public condemnation.
What has changed?
Twin Pines Minerals, an Alabama-based company dedicated to ensuring our teeth are always whiter than white by dragging 580 acres on the edge of our Okefenokee, is sucking financial wind at the moment. On the personal property taxes for their equipment, they owed Charlton County $611,000 in principal, plus $52,000 in penalties and interest for a $663,000 total.
Twin Pines made a first installment of $300,000 and still owes $363,000.
On their real property taxes, the company owed $30,000, and the county had to file liens against them before they finally paid up.
Those small facts don’t seem to matter to the brave public servants on the Charlton County Commission.
Toledo Manufacturing Company employs one commissioner who strongly supports the teeth-whitening effort and is married to the owner’s niece.
Toledo Manufacturing is owned by Joe Hopkins, a timber baron and political power in the state. Toledo owns 30,000 acres immediately north of Twin Pines Land. Hopkins has led the opposition to the Okefenokee Protection Act, which had the support of over half the members of the Georgia House but never got a hearing in the House.
Lynn Smith’s Natural Resources Committee.
Toledo also opposes our Okefenokee as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the 1990s, DuPont leased 23,000 acres from Hopkins to do exactly what Twin Pines is trying to do now. That effort failed, thanks to the intervention of then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Gov. Zell Miller.
The rumor is that Chemours Corporation, which was spun off from DuPont in 2015, will buy out Twin Pines if the drilling permits are approved by the state EPD, or maybe even before. The more things change, the more they stay the same—only we don’t have Bruce Babbitt or Zell Miller around to help us today.
If Chemours does take over the effort, public pressure will be needed to dissuade them from draining our Okefenokee. Nineteen investors/financial service companies with nearly $800 million in assets under management have already sent a letter to Chemours CEO Denise Dignam urging the company to publicly commit to not drilling in our Okefenokee.
However, your letter will never cross her desk unless you are a significant stockholder or an influential politician, your letter will never cross her desk. However, you may get a bug letter from a designated underlying stating, “Thank you for writing. Your opinions are important. "
I suggest you instead go to the Chemours website at chemours.com, hold your nose past the self-serving platitudes (“We are guided by a commitment to do what’s good for people and the planet.”), and go to the “Contact Us” menu. You will be asked for your name and email, and then the most important box will be “inquiry.”
That is where you tell them to do the right thing and promise not to drill in our Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Then let me know what they say.
Since our state leaders continue to show us the Fickle Finger of Fate, I would urge you to contact our federal elected officials. But forget Congressman Buddy Carter (R), in whose district our Okefenokee is located. Remember, he publicly railed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s opposition to the drilling project.
This was after he signed a letter, along with six Georgia Democrats, urging the Dept. of the Interior to make the Okefenokee a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Like baseballer Billy Martin in the famous, old beer commercials, Mr. Carter seems to feel strongly both ways. He also received $2,500 of Joe Hopkins’ campaign dollars this past election cycle.
I have been around politics long enough to know there is a lot of nod-nod, wink-wink going on between the governor’s office and the local timber barons and the EPD, and I resent them treating us like simpletons as if we didn’t know that. This is not their Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. It is ours.
Yours and mine! I plan to stay on this issue. I hope you will, too.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.