Audio clip
Bob Colby
Volkswagen's initial air quality application was 600 to 700 pages long, and local Air Pollution Control Bureau officials believe it set a speed record issuing a permit for an auto plant in the United States.
"We issued it in 63 days," said Bob Colby, who directs the agency.
Mr. Colby told the Chattanooga Engineers Club that after VW picked Chattanooga for the assembly plant in July 2008, a lawyer for the automaker said it had never seen such a permit issued in less than 90 days.
"We had a pretty ambitious schedule," Mr. Colby said.
He said Cynthia McDaniel in his office, who spearheaded the permitting effort, put in 150 hours of overtime in 11/2 months. Another key employee, Alan Frazier, chalked up 75 hours of overtime. Neither employee got paid for the OT, Mr. Colby said.
After the permit that allows for plant construction and initial operation was issued, he said a VW attorney wrote to him that such quick work "confirms we couldn't have chosen a better location."
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Staff Photo by Patrick Smith
William Spuhler, left, and Greg Fowler of Southern Fabrication Contractors raise a beam inside the Volkswagen plant's paint shop on Monday. Raising the beam signified the beginning of the installation of equipment for the manufacturing facility, which is planned to open in 2011.
VW, which plans to start production of a new midsize sedan in early 2011, and the bureau face a more mammoth process when the automaker seeks a full operating permit, said Ms. McDaniel.
"VW's big permit, the one that will be most difficult and the most complex, is the operating permit," she said. "It's very, very detailed."
Mr. Colby said the state Air Pollution Control Division helped with its expertise in terms of VW's original permit for the $1 billion plant.
"They helped us with that to make sure we had a good draft permit coming out of the gate," he said.
No comments were received at the public hearing for VW's permit, and no environmental group objected, Mr. Colby said.
"That's how good of a permit it was," he said.
Mike Pare, the deputy Business editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has worked at the paper for 27 years. In addition to editing, Mike also writes Business stories and covers Volkswagen, economic development and manufacturing in Chattanooga and the surrounding area. In the past he also has covered higher education. Mike, a native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., received a bachelor’s degree in communications from Florida Atlantic University. he worked at the Rome News-Tribune before ...
PUFF & SPIN:
"That's how good of a permit it was," he said.
That cannot be determined since no one outside the process really got to see it.
"Some animals are more equal than others"
hail our new German overlords!
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