During Monday night’s Richmond County Board of Commissioners meeting, commissioners came face to face with a harsh reality.

“While Richmond County has good infrastructure it’s not as good as some place like Charlotte, and while it may come in time, it won’t come anytime soon, ...” said CSX Regional Development Manager Russ Smitley. “This is not a location we’d want to put an intermodal facility.”

Smitley gave about a 10 minute speech during the meeting, letting commissioners down as gently as possible, dashing any hopes the county had of becoming an inland port for CSX.

And intermodal facility is basically a large terminal that enables cargo and goods to be consolidated into economically large units, optimizing use of specialized equipment to drive the speed of cargo transfers, using a minimum of labor to increase logistic flexibility, reduce consignment times and minimize operating costs to efficiently move goods from one point to another.

This type of facility helps take the load off the highways by reducing the number of tractor trailers transferring goods.

Commissioners have hoped for a while that CSX might expand its North Carolina operations by building a new terminal in Richmond County, but Smitley said Monday night that Richmond County is “not economically viable” for CSX because Richmond County lacks the population and business needed to drive an inland port.

“We believe Richmond County has excellent potential for light manufacturing,” Smitley said. “But in terms of intermodal, we don’t see that in the future of Richmond County.”

Smitley said the only way something remotely close to an intermodal facility would happen in Richmond County would be if a private business constructed and operated one, then CSX would use it and bring business in that way, but that too is probably a long-shot because it’s not a cheap or easy operation.

Commissioner Pam Dillman, who brought up the subject of an inland port during the October meeting, asked if there was anything the county could do to entice this sort of operation in the county in the future, but Smitley said there’s never really any guarantees because the railways are driven by market demands.

Chairman Kenneth Robinette thanked Smitley for being so candid with the board.

Also during Monday night’s meeting County Manager Rick Sago gave an update on Safie Mill and said that if the county wanted to clean up the site, they needed to approach it like they had the other derelict properties in East Rockingham that have been demolished and cleaned up — by first asking the property owner to do it, then cleaning it up themselves and putting a lien on it.

During board discussion, Commissioner Thad Ussery said, “We want to clean it up and we want to do it at the most reasonable cost.”

“The Cole Foundation money is supposed to be used to clean up East Rockingham and that won’t be clean until we clean this up,” Robinette said.

The board took a vote and agreed to clean up the Safie Mill site, the tract owned by Nordstrom LLC. Sago said he would take it from there.

Sago also said he is still meeting with Municipal Engineers to discuss the expansion of the county’s water plant, but that right now, it’s not a financially viable option.

“The USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) says now is a good time for grants but it’s an $11 million project and there’s a potential it would put us $6 million to $7 million in debt, so we’re still just discussing it,” Sago said.

The Lumber River Council of Governments’ Executive Director, Jim Perry, spoke to the board Monday night, requesting their support for the Ellerbe Wastewater Regionalization project.

“I think this is a great opportunity for Richmond County to open up the Highway 220 Corridor to future economic development,” Robinette said. “In the scheme of things, the cost is minimal when you weigh the benefits.”

“It’s certainly a worthwhile project,” said Sago.

But Sago added the cost of the project, now up to $1.5 million from the county’s end of things, was not in the budget, and there wasn’t an extra $1.5 million lying around.

“But we can commit to it and try and come up with that money,” Sago said. “That’s something we can all strive to do. It’s a huge amount of land and a huge opportunity.”

The Lumber River Council is asking the county to participate in the project by providing gravity sewer service along Highway 220. Ellerbe will use a force main to tie into the City of Rockingham, which will achieve the goal of eliminating its wastewater problem, while also opening up the 220 corridor to additional development. The City of Rockingham signed on to the project during its October meeting.

“Economic development is what we’re all about and this is going to bring it to us,” Dillman said.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime, I’m for it 100 percent,” Robinette added.

Ussery made the motion the county support the project with $500,000 and the Lumber Council help find the remaining $1 million through grants.

In other business, the county approved the airport’s 2010-2015 transportation improvement plan, appointed Tonia Hildreth to the Juvenile Crime Prevention council, appointed Richard Adams to the Pee Dee Region Workforce Development Board, approved change orders to the judicial center’s construction, approved two resolutions in support of Farm City Week and Veteran’s Day, and authorized Richmond County Aging Services to apply for a Cole Foundation Grant to fund its annual Christmas party.

n Staff writer Eren Tataragasi can be reached at (910) 997-3111 or at etataragasi@yourdailyjournal.com.