Supporters of a proposal to build a $4 billion aluminum plant at the Port of Inola aren’t packing town hall meetings.
They aren’t cheering on the attorney general’s lawsuit to try to block the development.
They aren’t booing Gov. Kevin Stitt’s calls to reduce America's reliance on foreign metal.
They’re quietly running the local school district and nearby Career Tech center.
Or they’re retired now and hoping a major new company could increase local tax revenue and maybe even bring in some new restaurants.
They aren’t engaging in public rhetoric, but they do exist.
“This is controversial times 100,” said Jeff Unrau, superintendent of Inola Public Schools. “I’ve seen lifelong friendships severed in the last few months just over the thought of an aluminum smelter being built here, and it hasn’t even happened yet.”
With emotions running high in his community, Unrau said he prefers to deal in facts. And he believes the aluminum smelter is coming to Inola regardless of local opinions.
“There are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed,” Unrau said. “I’m an Inola guy; I want my cake and I want to eat it, too, but I don’t want money at the expense of the environment or people’s well-being. I want it, but I want it to be clean.”
The fact of the matter is, Inola Public Schools stands to benefit the most, eventually, if investors at Emirates Global Aluminum and Century Aluminum go through with their plan to construct the Oklahoma Primary Aluminum plant by 2030.
Other recipients of local property tax revenue that stand to see their coffers grow to a lesser degree are the Town of Inola, Rogers County and its health department and fairgrounds, and Northeast Technology Center.
Unrau’s office is in the space once occupied by the second-grade classroom he attended as a child. While being the school superintendent in his hometown is his dream job, trying to literally keep a roof over students’ heads in outdated school facilities in constant disrepair has been anything but.
Local voters failed two school bond issues before a third try, in April, narrowly passed. That effort will soon yield $60 million to update and expand Inola’s elementary school.
A rapidly expanding tissue paper manufacturing plant in Inola, run by an Italian company called Sofidel, has also begun boosting annual revenue for the school district.
But the aluminum smelter and additional related businesses expected to be built in Inola have the potential to hike local property tax collections to a degree that a small-town guy like Unrau finds difficult to comprehend.
“I think it’s going to be a windfall,” he said. “Before Sofidel came in six years ago, we were very state aid-dependent. I believe in a few years, if this smelter happens, we could be off state aid (for public schools).”
“Here’s the turmoil we’re all in”
Controversy arose when Inola area residents started researching how an aluminum plant works.
Because pure aluminum doesn’t exist in nature, an intensive extraction process is the only way to produce the strong, lightweight metal that is in ever-increasing demand for infrastructure, technology, food packaging, and the automotive, aerospace, defense, and energy sectors.
Smelting involves large, hot vats of chemicals and requires a massive, continuous jolt of electricity to produce pure liquid aluminum that can be cast into various shapes and products. Local concerns center on hazardous solid waste and toxic air emissions, including hydrogen fluoride and perfluorocarbons, produced during the process.
So, who is it that wanted a smelter to be built in Inola, a town of about 2,000 surrounded by verdant hay fields and cattle ranches? And why?
To hear Gov. Kevin Stitt tell it, the idea originated with President Donald Trump, as a way for the U.S. to become less reliant on a so-called hostile nation.
“President Trump believed that Oklahoma was the best state to center this effort when he chose us to build the first aluminum processing facility since 1980,” Stitt said in a new video posted to his social media accounts on Sunday. “Every little thing that depends on aluminum currently depends on China …. Every time China tightens its grip on aluminum supply chains, they threaten our ability to defend our nation. President Trump understands this is a national security emergency hiding in plain sight.”
Spurred by concerned local residents who have organized under the banner of Stop the Smelter, Oklahoma Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Gentner Drummond filed a lawsuit last week in district court seeking to block construction of the smelter, which would occupy about 350 acres along the Verdigris River.
One of those concerned local residents is Joleta Ingersoll, who runs the 11,500-acre McFarlin Ingersoll cattle ranch founded in 1918 by her great-great-grandfather. It’s 10 miles from the proposed smelter site.
She said Oklahoma’s environmental protection laws and regulations are designed for the oil and gas industry, so she has no faith in the government protecting families or cattle, including hers, from smelting toxins.
She also believes local leaders were misled by economic development promoters’ early sales pitches for a metal processing plant, which she said was a gross oversimplification.
“Nobody knew anything until they voted and that includes our city council,” Ingersoll said. “Then when it came out as a smelter when the NDA was released, we were like, `You all just bought a big fat pig here when you did not know what you were buying.’ And now here’s the turmoil we’re all in.”
Stop the Smelter is consulting with attorneys and pushing the town council for a six-month moratorium. But Ingersoll hasn’t given up hope that somebody with much greater political power will reconsider.
“If I could call President Trump today and say, ‘I know we need another aluminum plant, but look around this area!’ If he could see Inola, I truly believe he would say, ‘Let’s get her moved out of here.’ It’s that bad.”
Ingersoll’s sister, Wendy Keener, is president of the local school board, so she has had to weigh the pros and cons through that lens, as well.
Parents have been contacting her with questions about whether it would be safe for their children to continue playing in the dirt and grass at recess, or even just to breathe the air at school, since the school is three miles from the proposed smelter site.
“It’s concerning as a parent,” Keener said. “It’s absolute fear. I haven’t talked to anyone who will admit they’re for it.”
Keener said the school board has only received official accounts about how beneficial the smelter would be for Inola Public Schools’ bottom line.
But her own inquiries into how a smelter operates ultimately informed her opinion on the matter.
“There’s no doubt the school district would benefit from the TIF, upfront and down the road,” Keener said. “And the school really needs the budget help. But my stance is it’s not worth it to jeopardize our community, our livelihoods for something that’s not safe. The superintendent, the town leaders, they’re put in a difficult spot. But once you start learning what an aluminum smelter actually does, it’s like, `Whoa!’ It’s not something you can take back. It’s really scary.”
“This firestorm has hit”
Local leaders developed a tax increment financing plan for the proposed $4 billion aluminum smelter. The plan calls for a $429 million economic incentive package that would capture a portion of local property and sales taxes, plus utility franchise fees generated by the plant to fund civic infrastructure, port and school upgrades.
Inola Town Administrator Scott Devers said he sees no downsides to the proposed smelter after extensive meetings with aluminum company representatives.
“People around here don’t understand this will be the lowest-emitting smelter in the world based on best available technology, which is what the company will use,” Devers said. “They still don’t know how efficient this thing will be. It breaks my heart that we have a community that is divided; it’s almost like a civil war. We have families and friends that are divided over this one issue, and that makes me sad.”
In Devers’ view, opponents to the Oklahoma Primary Aluminum plant are really opposed to growth but have cloaked their argument with environmental concerns.
“They’ve been here for decades as an agricultural, ranching community, but that lifestyle has not allowed our kids to stay here,” Devers said. “They have to leave here to get an education and they have to leave here to get a job. They don’t want us to grow and they’re using the environmental thing as a crutch, is my opinion.”
A global engineering firm is designing the smelter plant according to the specific size and shape of real estate in Inola that developers have optioned. That design work will inform future applications for required permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.
Among their most ardent supporters willing to speak out are the very first local residents and leaders who scrutinized and ultimately greenlit the idea of establishing a TIF incentive plan to support the smelter development at the Port of Inola.
The nearly dozen members of Inola’s Local Development Act Review Committee included representatives from each of the public entities that have agreed to defer new tax revenue from the plant for a number of years.
But their review work had drawn no public notice until now.
“This is the first time I’ve been asked about that committee!” said Derek Beller, superintendent of Northeast Tech. “This firestorm has hit after it was voted on and the city council approved it. I don’t know what else they can fight for other than environmental concerns.”
Beller and other officials at the local Career Tech center are supportive of the TIF incentive plan and the aluminum plant development, in general, because of the potential to train new workers and for new ad valorem revenue from housing, restaurant and retail development they think will follow.
“It’s the stimulus that gets everything started,” said Beller. “Without that plant, we are sitting on undeveloped land at the Port of Inola that is collecting almost nothing.”
Beller’s outlook is also informed by his personal experience of living just one mile from the sights and sounds and smells of CF Industries' Verdigris Complex, which makes ammonia and is the second-largest producer of urea ammonium nitrate in North America.
“It has never crossed my mind to worry about it because EPA is involved,” he said. “I’ve become used to it. For Northeast Tech and who we train in construction trades — electricians, carpenters, welders, heavy equipment operators — those are the people who will just flourish from this new aluminum plant.
“From that workforce development perspective, it was a no-brainer to put the trust in the EPA and other environmental groups to ensure this is going to be viable and safe for the community,” Beller said.
Northeast Tech Board President Rosalie Griffith has lived more than 50 of her 79 years in Inola. She is a retired accountant who served 20 years on the Inola school board and now serves on the town’s rural economic development and chamber boards.
She believes her neighbors engaged with Stop the Smelter are relying on outdated environmental impact studies from plants built in the 1970s and 1980s.
Last week, when Attorney General Drummond came to town to explain his reasons for filing a lawsuit, she went to hear the man out. But after clocking the event at eight minutes, in total, she was left with the impression that the legal maneuver was a political stunt intended to garner Drummond votes in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
“Technology has come a long way and we have laws we have to abide by as far as emissions from these companies that come in and build factories, so you’re going to have to prove to me it’s going to be detrimental to the community,” Griffith said. “I’ve heard the criticisms that the main developer is foreign-owned, but Sofidel is out here and they’re a foreign-owned company that has been great for the community. I just want Inola to grow and flourish.”
TIF incentive review committee member Leroy Johnson, 83, moved to town in 1968 and commuted to his job at American Airlines in Tulsa for more than 32 years before retiring.
His three children and most of his grandchildren graduated from Inola, and one of his great-grandchildren is a student there.
His experience with weighing budgetary matters and even some divisive policies as a member of the local school board from 1979-1999 prompted him to attend recent Inola town council meetings to listen to both officials and his concerned neighbors.
“We have to trust the EPA, and a lot of people don’t,” Johnson said. “They're not going to let us put anything that’s gonna kill cows five or 10 miles down the road. That’s the reason I’m still for it. Some people I consider my friends, I’ve put my arms around their neck and told them I just wouldn’t vote for anything that would hurt anybody.”
Johnson also said he believes it is past time for the rural town, which serves as a bedroom community to Catoosa, Broken Arrow and Tulsa, to embrace opportunities for growth.
“We don’t even have a decent place to eat,” he said. “This will benefit the school district, even though that’s probably five or 10 years down the road before it’s on the books. I’m for it for the total community.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
