Stop the Inola Smelter
Foreign-owned. Polluting Oklahoma.
Your town could be next.
The largest aluminum smelter in America is headed for Inola — less than three miles from our schools, our homes, and our hay fields.
The facts — in plain English
A foreign-government-owned company wants to build the biggest aluminum smelter in the country on 350 acres at the Port of Inola — right on the Verdigris River, in the middle of what people here have called the hay capital of the world. Smelting aluminum from raw ore is one of the dirtiest, most power-hungry industrial processes there is. Here is what that actually means for the people who live next to it.
350 acres
Of industrial build-out
< 3 miles
From Inola schools
425 tons
Of fluoride, every year
1,000+ MW
Of power, drawn 24/7
The smelter is a joint venture called Oklahoma Primary Aluminum. Sixty percent of it belongs to Emirates Global Aluminum — a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates. Century Aluminum holds the other forty. Oklahoma has put more than $250 million in taxpayer incentives on the table to bring it here.
The air permit application projects roughly 425 tons of hydrogen fluoride a year — a substance the EPA classifies as extremely hazardous — alongside sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulates carrying heavy metals, venting from seventeen-plus stacks around the clock. The plant sits directly on the Verdigris River.
Fluoride does not wash off. It settles on forage, cattle eat fifty-plus pounds of it a day, and it builds up permanently in bone — worn teeth, lameness, deformities, failed pregnancies. In 1979 a smelter emitting about 300 tons a year collapsed herds within five miles on Cornwall Island. Inola is permitted for 425.
That it was good for the economy? That a foreign government’s profits mattered more than our air, our water, and the ground our families have worked for generations? This is our land. It is how we make a living. Add your name.
