Using 2.5 million gallons of water per day, Sumitomo will by itself increase that wastewater-treatment cost burden by about 17 percent.
Despite the city's fast-tracking of the project, the work public officials and local businesspeople put into getting the company to come here, and the rhetoric to the contrary, the fight over Sumitomo may not be over.
Chris Estes' coalition is working with the city, he says, trying at least to nail down some aspects of the deal (such as environmental permitting) before construction begins. If all else fails, the coalition will sue--on grounds that the city didn't follow public-disclosure rules as it worked to bring the company here. Whether his group can stop the process before ground is broken, he doesn't know.
"The problem that we have is that environmental concerns aren't even addressed. They were never even brought up. We want the city to go back through the process, to do it right this time for the citizens of this city," Estes says.
To say that there was no significant public input into the process is an understatement. Changing Sumitomo's site from residential to industrial zoning required an amendment of Desert Ridge's general plan and a rezoning of that specific parcel. Both were done.
The city, however, had entered into an agreement with Sumitomo that the company's name would be left out of zoning matters until the last possible moment. When the rezoning and the change of the general plan were considered, the Phoenix City Planning Commission was listed as the applicant, not Sumitomo. And state land officials acknowledge that they worked on the lease for the site for months without even knowing whom it was for.
The city's willingness to keep the Sumitomo move a secret is made abundantly clear in a July 20 agreement between the Phoenix Development Services Department and the company. In it, the city promises: "All rezoning applications and fees have been completed and paid by [the developer] and/or the City. Sumitomo-Sitix and their representative ... will not need to participate in the rezoning process and will not be identified as part of this process."
Also, the Phoenix City Council approved the tax and infrastructure subsidies for Sumitomo as "emergencies." Use of the city's emergency clause, which relaxes public-notice requirements for council action, is reserved, by law, for measures that are necessary for the "preservation of the public peace, health and safety."
The Sumitomo incentive measure came to the city council after only one day's notice--a notice that was posted at City Hall, but nowhere near the affected neighborhoods.
Estes says the effort Phoenix exerted in keeping the deal a secret as long as possible is evidence of both the foolishness of the city's financial offers to Sumitomo and the potential environmental dangers the factory poses.
"They knew that this area is under a lot of scrutiny," he says. "You have to ask the question: If the emergency clause is about public safety, what does that have to do with the infrastructure deal for Sumitomo?
