After a lukewarm turnout for the initial two public hearings by the NC Division of Air Quality held Tuesday, an energetic and eclectic crowd of more than 350 showed up Thursday night at Kenan Auditorium for the final public hearing on the proposed Titan Cement plant’s draft air permit. Of 89 residents and activists who signed up to vote, all but 14 took the podium to speak.

Throughout the hearings a diverse cross-section of New Hanover County shared their views, including students from UNCW, CFCC, and Hoggard High School, business leaders, doctors, schoolteachers, lawyers, former cement plant workers, parents, pediatricians, fishermen, construction workers, scientists and even a New Hanover County beekeeper and oyster farmer. Several UNCW professors also spoke, and the presence of state assemblywoman Carolyn Justice drew hearty applause from the Stop Titan supporters, who created a veritable sea of red shirts throughout Kenan Auditorium.

Last year, environmental activists under the umbrella of the Stop Titan Action Network (STAN) successfully lobbied for state regulators to force Titan Cement plant to submit to a full comprehensive environmental review, as mandated under state and federal law for certain new polluters receiving taxpayer funds. In response to the appeal, Titan returned the $4.2 million dollar incentive originally offered to the Greek corporation by the New Hanover County commissioners, as well as a half million dollars from the state. According to the company, this was in order to avoid dragging the permitting process out, though many of the speakers at the public hearings alleged that Titan was not being truthful about the real environmental costs of building and operating the facility.

The main difference, according to STAN coordinator Sarah Gilliam, is that the current piecemeal trajectory that Titan has chosen will not require the same stringent examination of environmental impacts necessitated by a comprehensive review. “All [the regulators] have to do is ensure that Titan is able to meet the air, water and land use requirements individually, without having to address the overall cumulative effects,” said Gilliam.

Tuesday’s public hearings were relatively muted, although not without words from notable heavies on both sides. Local business leader Bob Warwick, who heads the Coalition for Economic Advancement, a group founded in response to Stop Titan, expressed his support for the project. “We need to decrease our taxes and increase our tax base,” he said, adding that “if [Titan] can comply with the law, they ought to be able to build that plant.”

Several members of the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) were present, and ran well over the three-minute time limit with detailed scientific and legal arguments that outlined the case against granting a permit until a comprehensive review is conducted. Michael Clebone, an associate with SELC, spoke at length about the additional sulfur dioxide pollution that the cement plant will emit. He argued that the company could generate a net job loss because New Hanover County, with levels currently at 110 parts per billion, is legally required to bring its ambient atmospheric levels down to 75 ppb. With Titan adding to current levels, he warned that job losses would be likely elsewhere as other area industries are forced to cut back.

His colleague at SELC, Erin Lett, also took the podium for several extra minutes as she listed various environmental violations at Titan’s Roanoke, Va. facility. According to Lett, the violations include “discharging waste washwater into the Elizabeth River from unpermitted sources…discharging waste water into a drinking water source rather than the authorized receiving waters…exceeding the production volumes of an air pollution permit…[and] incompliant operation of its air pollution control

 equipment.”

Speaking outside the CFCC McKeithan Auditorium during the hearings Tuesday, Bob Odom, Titan America LLC’s General Manager of Development for the Castle Hayne plant, insisted that the violations at the Roanoke facility were merely paper infractions, opposed to serious ones, and that all of those violations were immediately corrected. He added that no serious damage had been done to the environment by the violations in Roanoke.

Prior to the start of Thursday’s hearing, Corporate Communications representative Kate McClain said that Titan’s strategy that night would be mostly limited to basic messaging. If the pro-Titan delegation seemed to lack the energy and enthusiasm of its opponents, Tom Mather, a spokesman for the DAQ, offered a possible explanation. “[If] we find something we may have not known about or previously overlooked, we will take that into consideration. But usually a company will only get to this point in the process if they have demonstrated that they can meet the standards.” He added that the DAQ rarely denies an air permit to a company that has already received a draft permit.

Within the first hour of the hearing on Thursday, the auditorium erupted in a standing ovation following an emotionally-charged speech by Kayne Darrell, a Castle Hayne resident currently being sued by Titan Cement.  She urged citizens of the community not to be bullied by the company, which earlier this year launched slander lawsuits against her and an area pediatrician, Dr. David Hill, for comments made at a draft air permit hearing two years ago. In her speech she denounced the legal actions as SLAPP lawsuits, which stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a legal device sometimes used by large companies to silence other would-be opponents. The logic of a SLAPP suit is that a company situated with relatively large legal resources at its disposal will suffer far less, even if it ultimately loses, than will an average citizen suddenly saddled with astronomic legal fees. Darrell implored her fellow activists not to be silenced by the specter of such a lawsuit and vigorously asserted her opposition to the construction of the plant.

For the most part, however, air quality was the focus of the vocal anti-Titan majority of speakers that night. Most of them, including over a dozen members of UNCW-based ECO, specifically asked that Titan be held accountable to the comprehensive review, which the DAQ has the power to order. They stated that any short-term economic benefits to the local economy as a result of the plant would not be worth the resulting damage to the environment and other local industries, such as tourism and fishing. A recent report by the EPA showing New Hanover as having the second worst air pollution of all 100 counties in North Carolina was a focal point of the protests, and Gilliam said that STAN had stressed that its speakers try to focus specifically on the issue of air quality, since emotional appeals, economic arguments and other comments would generally not affect the DAQ’s decision.

On the other side, however, most of the Titan supporters reiterated Titan’s potential boon to New Hanover’s depressed economy. While some of those who spoke took aim directly at the issue of air pollution, even some of the Titan executives kept their comments centered on the issue of job creation, including Odom, who spoke outside the hearings.

“This plant will provide 160 permanent full-time jobs, as well as over a thousand construction jobs for the first two years.” He added that the construction would bring in $120 million a year to New Hanover County, and that as many jobs as possible would be filled by county residents. The expertise needed for many of them, however, will likely require bringing in outside help. Odom mentioned the possibility of training residents for the positions at nearby universities, but pressed further, he was unable to give any specific details. Asked if Titan would be paying for college courses to train local employees, he responded, “I hope so.”

Dan Link, a senior at UNCW studying marine biology, voiced a different theory on Titan’s potential for job creation.  Basing his comments on his experience growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Link gave the closing speech to the fifty-odd diehards still left in the auditorium by the end of the final hearing. “Hey, maybe Titan will bring in jobs in the long run. Maybe New Hanover County hospital will have to add a new branch for cancer and asthma treatment,” Link said.

The comment period for New Hanover County residents to submit written comments to the NC DAQ will last until October 31.