This is huge. The Souix City Journal is reporting:
By a solid 58 percent to 42 percent margin, county voters approved Hyperion’s request to rezone 3,292 acres of farm land for a new classification, Energy Center Planned Development.
“What happened tonight, we were not supposed to be able to do,” Phillips told a cheering audience. “Development projects like this are supposed to be outright rejected by residents and neighbors. But this project is a testament to our balancing the needs for growth and for protecting the environment.”
At stake was billions of dollars in capital investment and thousands of high-paying jobs. From the beginning, Hyperion executives said they would abandon its Union County site, just north of Elk Point, if a majority of voters failed to give their blessing to the rezoning.
There are idiots in every crowd, though…
While conceding defeat, opponents vowed to keep fighting the controversial project on every imaginable front, pressing on with a lawsuit it filed against the county over the zoning procedures and opposing Hyperion as it applies for a bevy of state and federal permits.
“We have strategies in place to slow or delay all the permit processes,” Ed Cable, chairman of the anti-Hyperion group Save Union County, said after the vote.
One would hope this would clear the way for more such development. Far as I am concerned, this is a national security issue. Justice would be served, in my view if the people who voted against this were never allowed to buy gasoline again.
As it is, however, they’ll benefit from this along with everyone else in the country.
In the whole, this is fabulous news, and the effects of this will be even larger going forward.
Tags: audience development, bevy, billions of dollars, capital investment, controversial project, defeat opponents, Development, development projects, Ed Cable, elk point, Energy, energy center, gasoline, high paying jobs, hyperion, national security issue, neighbors, phillips, protecting the environment, refinery, rezoning, Souix City, souix city journal, stake
