The Proposed Coal-Fired Power Plant in Rogers City, Michigan, Part 1

By Jennifer M. Kuznicki

Rogers City is a small town.   The  2000 census says there are about  3,300 people in the city limits.  You can look at the stats yourself , but basically the county’s population hasn’t changed much in one hundred years at about 14,400.

I moved here as a child of five when my parents chose to live a less hectic life here at home, rather than their fast-paced life in a fast-growing Brighton.  The town  has one major industry, now called Carmeuse Lime and Stone,  We just all call it Calcite.  It is a limestone quarry described as “crushed and broken” by Businessweek with a deep sea port on Lake Huron.  When I was a child, it was called the “Largest Limestone Quarry in The World,”  I don’t know if it still is.  Basically it is a huge hole, a man-made desert, where men blow down walls of rock using TNT, then use amazingly humongous loaders to load ginormous dump trucks that take the stone to the vast crusher to make small rocks out of big ones.  Why?  We don’t know.  Our limestone was once used to process steel.

The city of Rogers City has a newspaper that publishes once a week called The Advance.   It is a little annoying to read old news on Wednesday nights, (old news because the rumor mill is a lot faster,) but it is very accurate, professional and a great example of what newspapers should be.  I have spent some time at the local library to read past Advance’s  to refresh my memory of how Wolverine Power Company became a household name here.

In May 2006, Wolverine Power established itself as Wolverine Clean Energy Venture by securing an option to buy four hundred acres of desert from Calcite, (then owned by Oglebay Norton, or O-N.)  The idea of a coal-fired power plant here in Rogers City was a great shot in the arm for many, considering the county typically stalls at 12% unemployment, and 35% of the county’s workers

travel out of the county for work.  The buzz created by such an idea was tremendous.  With promises of 1000 jobs during the construction phase and 100 or more permanent jobs during operations, plus the unending opportunities of entrepreneurial offshoots, this was the biggest deal that ever came down the pike.  It seemed like such a perfect fit.  With our deep sea port on Lake Huron, already being used to ship rock to other states via the Great Lakes, one could just feel the boom when it may be one day possible to keep our sailors working steady carrying coal as well.   A Citizen’s Advisory Board was established shortly thereafter, to allow Wolverine a one on one conversation with a sampling of locals.  At this point, it cannot be more forcefully stated how much good will this possibility created, however short-lived.

The first salvo was fired by Bill Lewis.  Bill, unbeknownst to most people in the county, was a member of a newly-formed group called “Citizens For Environmental Inquiry.”   In a letter to the editor, Bill expressed his doubt on the scale of the drawing of the proposed plant that appeared in    the paper.  He was right, the first drawing, was tiny compared to a draft later sent to The Advance, but it is interesting to note that Bill was in favor of the plant, for the most part, unless there was any schmoozing or cover-ups or haste, (he entered these ideas into the conversation himself in one editorial.)

By the middle of June 2006, doubt started to seep into the leadership of the planning  commission.  In the June 23, 2006 issue of The Advance, the planning commission put on hold the special use permit sought by Wolverine to locate the plant on the property of O-N Minerals (now Carmeuse.)   The commission voted to put off the permit for thirty days to make sure they were not acting too hasty.

To be continued…..

click here to view Part 2