By Loren Barton
Vice President, Alliance Metals USA —
La Paz County has a great opportunity to attract new jobs and business investments that will generate needed tax revenue for our local schools, community colleges, fire departments and flood controls.
It’s an opportunity the county should not miss.
Our company, Alliance Metals USA, wants to bring construction and permanent jobs to a planned aluminum manufacturing facility located between Wenden and Salome.
The site is a vacant, closed-down cotton gin. We plan on investing $30 million in the jobs producing facility.
Our goal, our promise is to be a good neighbor who will create jobs and tax revenue while safeguarding the environment in a beautiful part of Arizona.
We will be an environmentally responsible steward of the property. We are going through all the necessary and required government and environmental permitting processes and will satisfy all the required environmental safeguards and regulations.
Alliance Metals USA will install mitigation infrastructure and technology to curtail emissions and ensure air and water quality. We must achieve approvals from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in order to operate.
Our innovative operations will make our processes environmentally friendly. The cotton gins that previously operated on the same site produced 1,000 particulate emissions per day during ginning season. Our facility will also use a very small amount of water. We will take significant steps to protect water supplies.
There will only be couple of trucks per hour passing through the facility. We want to be a responsible neighbor. We will be providing more plans to La Paz County showing the minimal impact on traffic.
We know La Paz County is an outstanding place to live, raise a family and retire but the county and McMullen Valley also need new jobs and investments.
Our new jobs and investments will generate important tax revenue for local schools, community colleges, the region’s fire districts, as well as La Paz County overall.
There are skeptics and foes to the jobs and investment. Some of them are fueled by social media conspiracy theories and biased new stories that have had to be corrected because of factual errors. We have always been transparent about our plans for the property.
Alliance Metals USA, a new property owner in the county, is ready to be a community minded employer and a good neighbor. We will safeguard air and water quality and bring new jobs to La Paz and the McMullen Valley. We want to answer our neighbors concerns and questions as the approval process for our facility moves forward.
We hope our investment will also open the door to more employers bringing jobs and investing in La Paz County.
We know that economic development is a priority for the Board of Supervisors and La Paz County’s small businesses, workers and residents.
We hope to be given a chance to earn the trust and confidence of the community as we generate critical jobs and tax revenue that will benefit all.