Neighbors of Ford BlueOval City seek Community Benefits Agreement

A community meeting held by BlueOval Good Neighbors Committee in Mason, Tenn. (Photo: Submitted)

Ford’s BlueOval City will forever change West Tennessee. Our community is mostly rural, including the mega-site location in Stanton, TN, which has a population of less than 1,000 people. Folks here and in the surrounding area know their way of life may irrevocably change when the project is complete.

It’s no secret the Ford battery plant will bring in thousands of jobs and economic growth. The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Impact estimated the project will generate 27,000 new permanent jobs and 33,000 temporary direct and indirect construction jobs. In addition, the plant is projected to be nearly six square miles, about the size of five football fields.

It won’t end there; real estate speculation has already started and more development will follow. With massive growth comes a need for new schools, transportation, and infrastructure. Folks are wondering how all of that will get paid for and how our day-to-day lives might be disrupted.

We’ve attended town hall meetings around West Tennessee and the same concerns remain. Our neighbors are concerned about the encroaching infrastructure including new power lines, sewage lines and big plots of land going to commercial projects versus existing agricultural uses.

Members of the BlueOval Good Neighbors Committee meet in Stanton, Tenn. (Photo: Submitted)

People are worried about the cost of housing, as, in some cases, rent has already tripled. One community member, Betty Watkins-Lee, says one of her biggest concerns is “the apprehension in the community because we don’t understand how massively we will be impacted and we’re not hearing from anyone about it”. She added, “community involvement is important because we know the community, we need to be at the table.”

Our communities are tight-knit and everyone knows each other. Now we have an influx of big money and new people who seemingly have more power than we do when it comes to how our communities will grow.  And that’s why we formed the BlueOval Good Neighbors Committee so that those of us who have been here have a meaningful seat at the table to make sure this process happens with community members, not to community members.

The best way we can assure the needs of our community are being met are for Ford to enter good faith negotiations with us on a legally-binding Community Benefits Agreement that addresses some of the concerns of such rapid and large-scale impact in our communities.

We are calling for community investments around affordable housing, environmental protections and workforce development. At our most recent town hall in Mason, Blue Oval Good Neighbors shared with local residents our calls for community investments and educated attendees on what a Community Benefits Agreement is.

One participant in the town hall, Jill Cox, said that “this is the community being proactive, not reactive, about Ford’s BlueOval City Project and the impacts that it will have on our communities.”

Given that Ford’s Blue Oval City Project will change our towns forever, this is our chance to make sure everyone benefits from this development, not just big corporations.

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