Fort Madison, Iowa — Lee County has finalized the deal for the $1.4 billion nitrogen fertilizer plant to be built by Orascom Construction Industries/Iowa Fertilizer Co. in the county. That came at a special meeting Friday, Feb. 22, when the County Board of Supervisors gave its enthusiastic final approval to all of the terms of the financial assistance that will be provided by federal, state, and county governments. “It will be a big economic boost,” Lee County Auditor Denise Fraise declared. “Everybody is very excited about the prospect of a total of 3,500 workers over a period of three years on the construction alone. It was a team effort with our supervisors and the economic development, and also the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission.” Terms of the contract include that assistance from Lee County is coming as “in kind” contributions through tax incentives. $1.61 million would come from the Grow Iowa Values Fund. The bulk of the award is coming from the federal government in the form of Midwest Disaster bonds, which will give the company more than a billion dollars to use to construct the plant south of Wever. The OCI deal also was in the legislative spotlight Feb. 26, when Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) Director Debi Durham appeared before the Senate Ways and Means Committee and received tough questioning over the incentives given for the new plant and the scope of the due diligence that was used in investigating OCI. At one point Durham admitted that she didn’t know that an OCI subsidiary was involved in a federal lawsuit even though the information had been uncovered by members of her staff. Authority spokeswoman Tina Hoffman told Green Markets that while Durham wasn’t personally aware of the lawsuit, the IEDA finance team came across it and noted it in the file. Senate critics were happy to get the jobs, but were concerned over the incentives.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain