Bradley County officials seem to be taking a page out of Ronald Reagan’s 1980s Cold War playbook where it comes to Project River, a proposed industrial campus that could include a data center.
“Trust but verify” was Reagan’s phrase where it came to negotiating nuclear arms control treaties with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ironically had been taken from the rhyming Russian proverb “Doveryay, no proveryay,” which means accept someone’s good faith or word but check the facts to ensure safety and accuracy.
That, it seems to us, is where Bradley County is today regarding the $11.3 billion project, which would create a 1,000-megawatt gas plant and a 500-megawatt biomass plant fed by reviving the area’s logging of pine trees on 850 acres of land in northern Bradley County owned by the Wright family.
The promise of 2,600 jobs, tens of millions in new tax revenue and a multimillion dollar investment is generational but doesn’t come without significant eyebrow-raising, tut-tutting and the usual instilling of fear.
Lest we be misunderstood, any project of such magnitude should be examined with a fine-tooth comb, investigated for potential negative impacts on nearby residents and weighed for environmental consequences.