Commissioners: DeFazio overstated mining revenue
The Coos County commissioners would like to tell Rep. Peter DeFazio a thing or two.
At their Tuesday meeting, Commissioners Bob Main and Cam Parry took issue with remarks DeFazio made on an April 20 visit to Coos Bay.
After meeting with executives of Oregon Resources Corp., DeFazio told a Bay Area Chamber of Commerce lunch crowd that the commissioners should pursue an opportunity to lease county land to ORC for chromite mining. He said it could bring the county $1.6 million a year in royalties.
But Main said ORC has never offered such an amount to the county in its lease negotiations.
He said the county needs to know it will get more than $30,000 an acre, which he called the value of the county's timber. But ORC hasn't been willing to pay that up front.
In April, ORC agreed to pay a flat fee of $126,000 to mine a three-acre strip of county right-of-way inside a parcel it's leased from Weyerhaeuser.Later Coos County Commissioner Bob Main explains there may be confusion about the numbers:
"Coos County Commissioner, Bob Main says the number and offer is news to him."
"It's our opinion that we think the Representative was some how mislead by ORC. The most the have ever offered is 40,000 for 20 acres. No the 1.6 million that turns out to be about 80,000 an acre, which was supposedly offered."
Note - Coos Bay World has an excellent listing of past articles on the debate over Oregon Resources Corporations' black sands mining project.
