A Star-News headline promotes an adversarial tone: “Fight over Titan plan hits court.” Titan America isn’t fighting anyone. However, while going about its business, the affiliated company, Carolinas Cement, is being attacked. People who demand that government prevent the company from using its property to produce useful products persist in picking a fight…reminds me of school-yard bullies:

“Hey, kid. We want your lunch-box.”
“Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Yeah, so what. We’re gonna have big Butch take it anyway.”

Several nonprofit organizations—self-appointed to protect us from ourselves, surviving with public grants and getting attention by attacking private business enterprises—enlist gullible citizens, professional agitators and public agency activists in their mission to Stop Titan. The latest phase of their persistent attacks solicits legal bullies.

Last month Michelle Nowlin, “supervising attorney” with the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University, sent a 35-page letter to the chief of air permits, N. C. Dept. of Air Quality. The letter was “submitted on behalf of” PenderWatch & Conservancy and the N. C. Chapter of the Sierra Club. Much of it was packed with scare propaganda, misleading information, unfounded presumptions and legal gyrations designed to confuse officials and stall the permitting process.

This past week, Dec. 9, attorneys for the N. C. Coastal Federation (primary bully initiating this “fight”), Cape Fear Riverwatch and PenderWatch & Conservancy filed a petition in Wake County Superior Court to “prolong the permitting process.” The Federation website reveals a large gang of opponents, including the notoriously hostile to land development Southern Environmental Law Center, the anti-development Duke University Environmental Law Clinic and assorted state and federal agency activist biologists.

The N. C. Coastal Federation website spews fighting words. Under the heading, “The Titan Plant Could….” they spread fear about fictitious toxic emissions, assumed tons of particulates, bogus destruction of “irreplaceable” habitat and spurious withdrawal of “millions of gallons of water” from local aquifers. Where would all this water be taken? Water is never lost, it is naturally recycled.

Self-anointed savior of the local environment, Mike Giles, demands that the “public deserves to know how this project would effect their health and environment.” It will know, Mr. Giles, after the permitting process. Meanwhile the public deserves to know your motives and why you and your cohorts desperately fight against a company that has not harmed anyone.

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