About Us

In 2024 our founding team attended an eight week class entitled Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.  The goal of this class was to learn the history of the founding of our great country, and understand the principles that formed our Constitution. If we do not know our rights as citizens, then we also do not know when they are being taken away from us.

The first words of our country’s Constitution declare that We the People are ultimately the owners and leaders of our country, and it is our responsibility to see that it is run properly, following the Constitution, and respecting We the People. With that in mind, we began asking questions about the Green Energy Projects that were being built in our community, such as the StarPlus battery plant.

Five or six years ago our city made the decision to welcome a new lithium-ion battery plant in northern Kokomo. It was a decision orchestrated with the help of the IEDC – Indiana Economic Development Corporation. This is a board appointed by the governor who appear to have an unlimited budget in purchasing property throughout the state, and facilitating deals between the city/county governments and the business partners. In this case, the deal was made with an American company, Stellantis and a South Korean company, named Samsung. They created a new company called StarPlus.  If you were like the rest of us, we were busy with your lives and didn’t notice the headlines, or consider the ramifications of such industry in our community.   Fast forward to the end of 2024 when the battery plant was about to open and we suddenly found out that there were multiple supporting businesses and residential housing, including a hotel, being planned to create a much larger footprint in northern Kokomo. That’s when we decided to ask our questions in order to be informed, Biblical citizens.   We learned that an EV Commission was created by Rep. Mike Karickhoff to look into the EV Industry a few years ago.  The scope of this commission was limited to the following issues:

1. Do we have property available to build a plant?  Yes.
2. Do we have a work force available to work in the plant?  Yes.
3. Do we have the educational opportunities to train the workers?   Yes.

Answers we have not been able to find with certainty, is who made the determination that Kokomo had enough resources to support this industry, and were the potential safety concerns with the significant amount of chemicals these plants will produce ever considered?   From what we can tell, it was the interested parties, those who are invested in the project, and the Federal government who looked into the environmental issues and felt the project should go ahead. Further research raised even more concerns and questions about the amount of water needed for the projects and how that might impact our individual lives. Potential contamination and concerns about proper construction codes being followed caused us to realize that it was time to let others in Kokomo know about those concerns. We needed to share this information with others in our community.

Our first endeavor was the Water Forum on October 22, 2024.  You can view it in it’s entirety HERE, or under Past Events.

Our group has also attended multiple Kokomo Planning and Council Board meetings to express our concerns. At the December 10, 2024 Planning Commission Meeting, one of our members spoke up and crystallized what our group desires to accomplish with our voices. You can view the entire meeting here  or fast forward to 26:17 minutes for his speech.   Here is the transcript below if you do not want to take the time to view the video:

ROB:   “I have 40-45 years of experience in the water and wastewater industry. I had to vet a lot of these projects for the communities that I managed. I think part of the big push back on this battery plant and everything else that’s taken place since it was publicly announced is the fact that a large portion of this facility was not vetted like a normal project would have been, because of the dollar amounts, and the people involved, and the lack of public input. If they had vetted this project they would have known that they did not have adequate water supplies for what they wanted to build there. They had enough water supply for one plant, not for two. That’s why they are out scouring the countryside trying to find water. And there are wastewater issues as well. So the reason why you are getting some public push back and inquiries is because of how this thing was all started. It is obvious that it was not done properly, I mean there is nobody in their proper mind who would have picked this site knowing that they didn’t have water availability for the total of the project they wanted to build.

(The President of the Board interrupts and explains they have no power to do anything other than change the zoning.)

ROB CONTINUES:  This is the starting point. We want to voice our concerns. I understand you guys can redesignate this for other development but there needs to be something said at the very beginning otherwise we go up 2 or 3 levels and all of a sudden it’s approved and we are right back to where we were with the battery plant and not knowing for sure what it’s going to impact with our community and future development. If we don’t have enough water for two plants how are we going to have enough water for additional housing and other developments. .. It’s almost like we’ve jumped out of an airplane without a parachute on and we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to land. Everybody’s scrambling. We had to scour the country side (for water); they had to put a gas pipeline in for it; Duke Energy is scrambling to try to upgrade their facility so they have ample power for it. Even the contractors out there are behind the 8 ball constantly because it wasn’t well planned. And that’s our main push back. It wasn’t well planned. And now we’re throwing more money at it and we haven’t even found the resources for the initial phase of the project.”

Our desire as a group is to provide information to further this discussion in our community to ensure that wise decisions about our resources are being made by those we have elected to represent our interests.

To see other videos of We the People in Action, please see our links under the Resources menu.