It doesn't appear the Mead County Quarry is off to a very good start at bringing jobs to the local economy. A quote from a letter to the editor posted on their website " MCQ has started to identify talent and skill within your local community. It is our sincere intention to hire as many folks from Meade County as we can". If you are to believe there are no engineers or local legal advice available in Meade county then you can understand the Chicago investors use of the following firms for their services.

(1) For the legal work they have used:
Michael F. Tigue with the firm of ,
Middleton Reutlinger, P.S.C.
401 South Fourth Street, Suite 2600
Louisville, KY 40202-3410

(2) For the engineering proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers they used:
American Engineers Inc
2500 Nelson Miller Pkwy.
Louisville, KY 40223

On August 20th 2009 the Chicago investors held a job fair in front of the court house just before a hearing to determine the change to heavy industrial of a previously zoned agricultural piece of property. Could this have been a plan to bring as many people there to support the zoning change but with no hope for a job in the near future? As the economy went into the pits all the Chicago investors push to get their project on the road came to a screeching halt. As things have started to pick up they have re initiated the project. I hope all those submitting their job applications found more secure employment elsewhere. Not much job security there.

With the switch of a good number of power plants to natural gas it seems that the demand for that special limestone will be drastically reduced. With several quarries supplying the current demand it seems like this will put the proposed quarry at an extreme disadvantage. I wonder what this will do to the job security of any future employees.

On the MCQ web site they pictured several other quarries in the vicinity for the justification of just one more. You can easily see from their areal picture that all the others were set back from the river and didn't require the destruction of the rock palisades along the river bank. The others were also on straight sections not susceptible to potential navigational hazards.

In this world of profit and loss, some times finical loss in an investment is of an advantage to stockholders but never to the employees.

If the Army Corps of Engineers decides to hold a public hearing on the Chicago investors request to strip mine the Ohio river front I am sure you will see another "job fair" held on steps of the court house like the one pictured above held in August of 2009. Lets hope no one is naïve enough to count on this twice as a reliable fast track to employment

Broken Promises