Progress, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. A case in point is the Hyundai automobile manufacturing plant in Bryan County. With affiliated factories, it is projected to provide thousands of jobs in the region. That will be economic progress, but all progress comes at a price.
Four massive wells are being drilled into the Floridan aquifer in Bulloch County to provide water for the Hyundai plant. Early statements assured that their impact would be minimal. Now agencies are crawfishing on the issue. In recent years, an onion farmer near my homeplace in Toombs County pumped so much water onto his fields that I had to pay to have the submersible pump in my well replaced and lowered 80 feet. Everyone within a three-mile radius had the same problem and he had one well much smaller than the Hyundai wells.
The normal water level in the Ogeechee River will likely drop. The possibility of salt water intrusion along the coast is real. Nobody knows! Bulloch County property owners know they are paying for it all with an unprecedented rise in taxes. Included are old folks like me who will never see any benefits from Hyundai progress and people near the lower end of the economic pyramid who strive to hang on to their homes and have no answer to new tax demands. Is it not possible to float bonds, which puts costs for development onto those who will benefit from it in the future?
I am all for alternatives to carbon-based power, not just because coal and petroleum burning pollute land, air and water, but also because they are finite. We are using them up. That’s why they have drilled in the North Sea, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes with disastrous results. Some push for drilling along the Georgia coast although there is no evidence to suggest that any petroleum exists there.
There is no panacea among the alternatives. Electricity from wind turbines sounds like a good option, but it takes many of these to equal one coal-burning unit. Wind turbine farms have proved to interrupt migratory routes of birds and butterflies. Solar panels now stretch over many acres and seem to be environmentally safe, but we do not know what their long-term impact might be. They shade the ground. They prevent the growth of plants that provide food for many species of birds and small animals. Like turbines, their electricity output is limited.
Hurray for Hyundai and other makers of all-electric vehicles, but is all of the world ready for them? The batteries that propel them have problems. They sometimes catch on fire. Will they be dangerous in wrecks? We already know that their weight pushes vehicles through guard rails. If widely adopted, how will used-up batteries be stored? They are not devoid of potentially-hazardous contents. Will they wind up like used but still deadly rods from nuclear power plants, too dangerous to store in caves and mines where earthquakes and cave-ins happen?
On a practical level, public charging stations are not the answer for keeping batteries charged. Obviously, people will prefer to juice up their fancy flivvers at home. What sort of electrical wiring will be necessary and at what cost? Of course, the homeowner must pay. There has been improvement in extending the trip limits of batteries, but that is an issue. When batteries run low, recharging is not like pulling into a convenient gas station. It is necessary to find a charging station and then charging takes time. What if time is critically important, like your mother is dying on the other side of the country? Since I do not travel a lot, I will stick with my gas sipper.
Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.