BOARD01506

• Board Meeting Date: 5/12/1978
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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talk to those people five years before that started.
"You build the project, and we will take care of all
lems, and you won't have anything to worry about."

Everyone said,
these other prob-

The problem was and will be in most areas that no one did a thing until
the first day that we scooped that first shovel of earth at the Craig
station, and everybody got all excited and said, "Oh, my God: You're
going to have 1,500 or 1,800 workers here, and we don't have housing"
and all of those things." And it was very true.

But, basically, by closely working with the county governments and the
city, we were able to advance them money to get some water system improve-
ments and some very essential things. There was turmoil for a couple
of years, but I think they met the challenge pretty well.

In addition to that, we built Shadow Mountain village out there, which
was a 90-acre subdivision. We got a variance from the county to let us
use that as a mobile home park during construction, with the understand-
ing that all the mobile homes and all evidence of that as a mobile home
park would be removed and the thing would be turned over to permanent
housing. We have about five and a half million dollars in that, and it
is being used that way. This year, we are going to start building some
permanent housing.

I guess the best evidence of how we get along with these people is that
we have a resolution from the Chamber of COmmerce, from the city of
Craig, and from Moffatt County requesting that we proceed and construct
the third unit at Craig. NOW, that would indicate to me that those
people have gone through the process, the growth, and are able to cope
with it.

Let me just point out to you one aspect that they are beginning to
realize. Taxes in craig dropped on a normal home about $130 a year
just this year, and the taxes that they are collecting are just a frac-
tion of what they are going to get. We will have about 200 employees
running that station. There are about; 265 miners. But Moffat county
is going to realize about five to six million dollars worth of taxes
from that station. I think the total taxes that they collected up to
then was less than a million dollars.

So for some 400 employees, you are going to get a terrific boost in
taxes. And I think that is why they want us back. They want the thing
to continue.

Now, Si, we did have a problem, and, hopefully, we have it worked out.
I think the transmission lines are probably one of the worst difficulties
that we have. Our problem is that the Federal Government tries to force
us on private land, and they do everything to force us onto those lands.
The private landowner wants us off the private land and onto the federal
land. There isa constant conflict in western Colorado in this regard.
We try our best to locate the lines as best we can from an environmental
point of view without regard to who owns the land. But when you finally
get down to that last little bit, you run into difficulty~

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