A GREENIE "SUCCESS"

This bit of Greenie-inspired bureaucracy has so many laughs in it that I think I will just post it without comment (Excerpts):

"It's not that easy being green. But it is easy to spend it. Northampton County learned that expensive lesson south of Cape Charles' harbor, where it has spent about $9.1 million over nine years in hopes of creating hundreds of decent jobs for its low-income residents. So far, it's gotten about nine, spending about $1 million per job. Erected five years ago, the solar-powered Building 1 of the Cape Charles Sustainable Technology Industrial Park is still two-thirds vacant. The building's sole tenant, Wako Chemicals USA Inc., employs a handful of workers from May to November to draw blood from horseshoe crabs for various biomedical uses. At least Wako may soon expand and take half the building.

This isn't how it was supposed to work. In 1995, Northampton County's then administrator dubbed the park "the future of the Eastern Shore." Another county official said: "This will be America's prototype industrial park as we enter the 21st century, and its initial phase is projected to create more than 900 jobs."

Today, the 140-acre environmentally friendly business park remains more fantasy than reality.... With the county's support, the Joint Industrial Development Authority of Northampton County and its Incorporated Towns has decided to cut its losses and liquidate. The IDA has neither the resources nor the staff to market and develop the industrial park, said Wehner, an economist and former investment banker, who retired to the Eastern Shore four years ago to establish a vineyard.

Some town politicians still want to see the type of economic development the park originally promised. "We're getting a lot of residential," said Cape Charles Mayor Frank Lewis. "It seems to me like there's going to be a need for things besides residential. Not heavy industrial, but light industry and other businesses."

The Clinton-era President's Council on Sustainable Development selected the proposed Cape Charles Sustainable Technology Industrial Park in 1994 to showcase ecologically sensitive development and business practices. In sum, the project has collected about $3.9 million in federal and state grants. The remaining $5.2 million was paid for by the county, partly through a bond issue that must be repaid from the proceeds of any sale. Plans called for a conference and business development center, plus 800,000 square feet of space for offices, research and manufacturing facilities. The buildings were to be solar-powered, to recycle water and be surrounded by man-made wetlands, lakes and trails. A document was drawn up outlining the covenants, conditions and restrictions to building in and operating in the park to ensure that its use was ecologically sensitive, economically viable and socially just.

"It's social engineering," said Ray Otton, the park's current project manager. To lease in the park, a company cannot create, ship or store hazardous waste and must recycle its manufacturing byproducts. Tenants could reduce their rent by hiring local people, paying more than the county's average income, providing benefits and educational opportunities, or doing community service. They could also get rent breaks by doing research on sustainability, using "alternative'' transportation for employees and producing no pollution. "This thing has won all sorts of awards for being the best sustainable development park in the country," Wehner said. Then, noting the lack of progress, he added: "I guess it must be the only one."

Wehner is far more blunt. "The very thought that we could fill a 140-acre park in a county with 12,000 residents is ludicrous," Wehner said. "This was a good-faith effort by the county to help the community. However, it's not easy to transfer money from one group of citizens to another. This money would have been far better spent in the school system."

Still, Lewis is not ready to give up on the park. "I'd like to see them not give up on the covenants and restrictions and the zoning because I think it still has a chance," he said."

More here. (Via The Shallow End of the Gene Pool)

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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