LOD: Titan’s America: We Know Best

Titan America is back in the news, winning a draft air pollution permit for its proposed cement factory near Wilmington. Citizens in southeastern NC have kept up a vigorous campaign to force the company to play fair, but Titan apparently believes the free market means its competitors should shut up and trust them to do the right thing. The Wilmington Star News says that government officials are largely going along, even though Titan has a record of making misleading statements, if not lying. The NC environmental agency says it “had to issue the draft permit, based on state law and scientific models of the potential impact,” because computer models “showed that plant emissions would not exceed health standards outside the plant’s property line.” But why trust Titan to supply correct information to go into those models? Says the newspaper: “Titan’s actions during this process speak for themselves. In an interview shortly after plans for the plant were announced, Titan officials told the Star-News Editorial Board that it would comply with the new federal standards, even though they had not yet been announced. After the stricter limits were finalized, the Portland Cement Association challenged the rules. Titan’s president is head of that association. More recently, the company filed a slander suit against two vocal critics of the proposed Castle Hayne plant in what has all the appearances of an attempt to bully opponents into silence.”