Here is a quick update on Osceola, AR. I’ve written about it in the past (Osceola waits for better times). Now it looks like one of the triggers that could breathe life into the small Delta city has taken a baby step forward.
This week the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission lifted a stay on the building permit for the $1.1 billion Big River Steel plant clearing the way for some preliminary work to begin. Continuing delays were making investors uneasy about complying with the provisions needed to acquire $125 million in funding from the state legislature. The project still needs final agency approval.
Meanwhile just down the road Indigo Oil is poised break ground on a new port facility on along the river. The port will unload Bakken Crude and Canadian tar sands oil from rail cars onto barges and ship it south to Louisiana.
It’s a hand-in-glove relationship for the two businesses. Big River produces all manner of steel pipe and other fabrication services and Indigo needs all manner of pipe and fabrication services.
Environmentally it poses all manner of problems.
In January, citing an increase of over 400 percent since, 2005 and several fiery accidents, The National Transportation Safety Board joined with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to issue a joint safety alert warning about the volatility of shale oil. “The large-scale shipment of crude oil by rail simply didn’t exist ten years ago, and our safety regulations need to catch up with this new reality,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman. “While this energy boom is good for business, the people and the environment along rail corridors must be protected from harm.”
Loading and unloading dilbit on the banks of the Mississippi has it’s own risks. There has never been a successful cleanup of dilbit on water and the river supplies drinking water to millions of people.
Meanwhile, Osceolans worry about their bills and wait for the jobs.
