Mississippi
Mississippi lawmakers approve nearly $247M in state incentives for aluminum plant, would bring a thousand jobs – WFIN Local News
Mississippi lawmakers met in particular session Wednesday and rapidly authorised almost $247 million in state incentives for an aluminum plant that’s purported to carry 1,000 jobs to the northern a part of the state by 2029.
Many legislators voted on the incentives with out realizing the identify of the corporate. At a information convention because the session ended, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves acknowledged the aluminum mission is being developed by Metal Dynamics Inc., an Indiana-based firm that already operates a metal mill close to Columbus, Mississippi.
“They’re a incredible employer within the Golden Triangle at the moment,” Reeves mentioned.
The Golden Triangle space encompasses Columbus, Starkville and West Level, close to the Alabama border.
Reeves had beforehand mentioned a nondisclosure settlement prohibited him from publicly naming the corporate till the deal was achieved. Home and Senate leaders mentioned they deliberately didn’t discover out the identify as a result of they didn’t wish to let the data slip out early.
Throughout a debate Wednesday, Home Methods and Means Committee Chairman Trey Lamar mentioned the corporate is “an present employer there within the space.”
MISSISSIPPI GOV. TATE REEVES CALLS SPECIAL SESSION TO CONSIDER INCENTIVES FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Solely the governor can name a particular session, and Democratic legislators questioned why Reeves has not known as periods to handle different points, together with funding for Jackson’s troubled water system or for struggling rural hospitals.
“Many Mississippians are struggling and dying. However none of this stuff, regardless of being issues of literal life and demise, compelled the governor to name a particular session,” Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez mentioned Wednesday throughout a Democratic Caucus information convention. “So, what compelled him to carry us again once more? A victory lap being portrayed publicly as an emergency? However this feels much more like a marketing campaign occasion, a political pep rally, than public service.”
Mississippi governors usually have fast timelines to push incentives packages via the Legislature for big financial improvement initiatives, and it’s common for them to attempt to hold firm names secret till offers are full.
Metal Dynamics Inc. introduced in a information launch in July that it plans to develop an aluminum mill within the Southeastern United States, “based mostly largely on rising demand from the automotive and sustainable beverage can industries.”
Reeves introduced Monday that he was calling the particular session to start two days later. He mentioned in a information launch that the mission contains “a flat-rolled aluminum manufacturing facility, biocarbon manufacturing services and sure different industrial services.”
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Joe Max Higgins Jr., CEO of the Golden Triangle Improvement Hyperlink, mentioned the salaries that include the mission are “an enormous deal.”
“Mamas and daddies should purchase four-wheelers and bass boats and take their children to Orange Seashore, have cash to go to school,” Higgins mentioned Wednesday on the Capitol.
Republicans maintain large majorities within the Home and Senate. On Wednesday, payments handed with broad bipartisan help, with just a few votes in opposition within the Home. Just one senator voted “current,” which was neither for nor towards the payments.
Reeves mentioned the common wage on the aluminum plant can be $93,000 — considerably larger than than the common pay for jobs in one of many poorest states within the U.S.
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The proposed state incentive package deal contains $155 million in direct contributions, about $25 million for roads in and across the mission website, cash to assist buy land and revenue tax rebates, Reeves mentioned.
“Mississippi is open for enterprise, and that’s the message that was despatched to each job creator in America at the moment,” Reeves mentioned Wednesday.
The governor mentioned the corporate would spend $2.5 billion, which might be the most important up-front funding so far for an organization in search of state incentives to find in Mississippi.
The earlier report was in 2016, when Continental Tire introduced a $1.45 billion funding to construct a producing plant in central Mississippi. The German firm promised 2,500 jobs with a median pay of about $40,000 a yr.
Throughout a 2016 particular session, legislators authorised $263 million in borrowing for Continental, together with $20 million to be repaid by Hinds County. With different tax breaks and assist, The Related Press estimated the worth of all incentives to Continental would exceed $600 million. The Continental plant opened in 2019.
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Reeves mentioned conversations concerning the new mission started lower than 4 months in the past.
He mentioned the state could have “aggressive” provisions to recuperate its funding if the corporate doesn’t fulfill guarantees.
Mississippi
Mississippi Aquarium ramping up for summer season, 1 millionth guest
PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) – The Mississippi Aquarium is ready for the unofficial start of summer.
The aquarium folks stopped by WDAM 7 Friday to introduce us to a couple of its residents: Lapis, the blue-tongued skink; and Ashley, the box turtle.
The skink is a native of Australia and feels right at home with Mississippi’s warm, weather.
Of course, box turtles are native to the South, and can be familiar sights around homes and property.
The aquarium’s staff said they are ready to welcome visitors this summer and anticipate welcoming its one millionth visitor before the end of the year.
Staff members want people to know that there are a lot of opportunities to have safe animal encounters
“You can get up close and personal with not only the ambassador animals, but some other animals, like the dolphin encounter and the penguin encounter,” said staff member Nice Matz.
The MIssissippi8 Aquarium will be open for the long Memorial Day weekend.
Military members and veterans get in free.
Looking ahead: Come Father’s Day, all dads will be admitted free as well.
For more information, please click here.
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Copyright 2024 WDAM. All rights reserved.
Mississippi
Mississippi high school teacher arrested
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WTVA) — Police have arrested a high school teacher in Mississippi who is accused of inappropriately touching children.
Officers arrested Kelvin Stanfield, 51, a teacher at Starkville High School, on Thursday, Starkville Police announced.
The purported crimes happened at Starkville High School between March and May; this according to four of his alleged victims.
Starkville Police released no more details about the alleged crimes.
Starkville Oktibbeha School District Director of Communications Haley Montgomery said the school district does not have a statement to release at this time.
Montgomery could not answer any questions about Stanfield’s employment, citing a personnel matter.
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Copyright 2024 WLBT. All rights reserved.
Mississippi
Mississippi River refuges get $10 million for nature-based solutions to climate change
A Nonprofit is working to fight climate change through tree cloning
The Archangel Tree Archive nonprofit is cloning trees across the country and replanting them around the world in hopes of reversing climate change.
A $10 million investment will fund seven projects aimed at making national wildlife refuge lands along the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers more resilient to climate change, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced earlier this month.
The projects, which span all five states that border the upper Mississippi, will emphasize nature-based solutions — in other words, working with the river ecosystem instead of trying to control it — to blunt the impacts of some of the river’s major problems, like flooding and drought. There are 11 national wildlife refuges along the two rivers, the largest of which is the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
The funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act. Part of it was rolled out last year to support projects on state-owned lands, including in Wisconsin.
The upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers are seeing the consequences of a warmer, wetter world, and the human-engineered infrastructure built decades ago, like the lock-and-dam system and levees, isn’t able to keep up. In particular, an almost unprecedented amount of water flowed through the rivers over the last decade, killing trees, degrading fish habitat and threatening to breach levees meant to constrain them.
These new projects are meant to help land managers think through those climate threats and adapt to what’s happening now, said Tim Miller, who manages the La Crosse District of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
Here’s what to know about what they’ll tackle.
Floodplain forests are a priority
More than $1 million will be dedicated to the project, “Building Resilience in America’s Big River Forests,” and an additional half-million will go toward restoring bottomland hardwood forest in Missouri.
Bottomland forests, also called floodplain forests, are located along major rivers. As their name indicates, they flood seasonally when the river floods. But along the upper Mississippi, more water flowing through the river and longer-lasting flooding events have inundated these trees more than they can handle, causing hundreds to die.
More: What to know about floodplain forests, a struggling ecosystem on the Mississippi River
More: A new technique could help save the Mississippi River’s floodplain forests: raising the forest floor
Work is ongoing to save them, but this money will allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the range of that work to all 11 national wildlife refuges along the river in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Miller said.
Staff will be curtailing invasive plant species that have moved into areas where larger trees have died and planting tree species that are better suited for today’s wetter conditions.
The funds will also help staff labor-intensive projects like these on refuges that have very few employees, Miller said. The national wildlife refuge system has struggled with chronic understaffing in the past decade.
Other projects will make room for the river
Some river engineering structures will get a facelift, or even a total overhaul, to deal with high waters. That includes Guttenberg Ponds in Clayton County, Iowa, where a levee protecting a wetland area from the river’s main channel has been degrading over time, repairs for which have been costly. The project will allow the degradation to happen and turn the area behind it into floodplain forest, Miller said.
“Instead of fighting the river with these levees we’ve had, we’re allowing it to naturally degrade over time,” he said. “It’s kind of a neat way of looking at it.”
Other engineering changes include replacing or raising the elevation of water control structures, which regulate the flow of the river, so they can hold more water, easing stress on the river, Miller said.
Wisconsin project focused on fish habitat
One of the projects funded is specific to Wisconsin: restoring Sam Gordy’s Slough in Buffalo County. Floods and high flows have brought more sediment into the backwater channel, making the area shallower and less suitable for fish and effectively cutting it off from the river’s main channel.
More: Climate change imperils the upper Mississippi River backwaters. Now nature needs human help.
The project will reconnect the backwater channel to the main channel by dredging, and install a sediment diverter so sediment can’t keep piling up, Miller said.
Work will start on most of the projects this year, he said, with the exception of the Guttenberg Ponds project.
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at (920) 996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.
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