Jackson Free Press

Jackson Attorney David Watkins, who is a partner in King Edward Revitalization Co., along with Deuce McAllister and other investors, said the King Edward redevelopment is still ongoing, despite the absence of cranes and hard hats around the hotel lately.

Developers held a groundbreaking in August, but little has happened since then. Watkins said on a JFP blog that work is expected to begin this December and attributes delays to paper-work problems.

"After the bid was awarded, we had to get the city to prepare the contract with the successful bidder, give the required statutory notice to (Department of Environmental Quality) and … wait the obligatory 10 days after the contract was awarded to allow DEQ to inspect the site. Then, we had to wait on the bonding company to say grace (over) the city's contract … but the legal department couldn't track down the mayor to sign the city contract until last week," Watkins said.

Watkins acknowledged that the delays have set production back several months and that he continues to be "somewhat frustrated with the pace of progress."

Environmental remediation work will take three to six months, he says, and other pre-development work, such as architectural and engineering drawings, selection of a contractor and financial closing, will likely take another three to four months.

"At the present time, we're still planning on using the name King Edward something or other," Watkins said. "I know it's not very original, but I think it's important to keep 'King Edward' in there somewhere."

Our Very Own Strategic Oil Reserve

The U.S. Department of Energy announced last week that an immense underground salt dome outside of Richton, Miss., is the front-runner for a new strategic petroleum reserve location.

The U.S. government, with heavy influence from U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss, and Gov. Haley Barbour, intends to dig a hole down to an ancient salt deposit and use water from the nearby Leaf River to melt away a reservoir big enough to contain 273 million barrels of oil brought in from other areas.

The federal government has been pushing to expand its strategic oil reserves since the 9/11 attacks.

Richton Mayor Jimmy White told The Clarion-Ledger that the announcement was "fantastic news," but Mississippi Sierra Club Conservation Chairwoman Becky Gillette said the development, which will cost more than $1 billion and take about nine years to complete, will have serious environmental impacts.

"It's a hugely damaging project, building that many pipelines," Gillette told the JFP. "One of the largest concerns is the amount of water needed from the Leaf River in order to bore out the salt dome. The creatures that live in that river would probably like to have that water."

Gillette said she also feared the pipes carrying brine wastewater down to the Gulf waters will damage soil wherever they leak. "Brine is very toxic stuff," she said.