Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

NO! Aegis Decision Based On Ignorance, Too Few Jobs

Prescott's Health Committee will be recommending the Prescott City Council not assist Aegis Biomedical in setting up shop in the city.

This decision was made Friday, July 21, when three of the four members of the panel said the response they've gotten to the issue has been overwhelmingly negative.

However, the presentation by the company was only made Monday, July 17, with the health committee being formed at the Prescott City Council meeting.

The three committee members on hand Friday, Howard Austin, Dick Bright and James Cornelius, agreed it wouldn't be worth the trouble of trying to educate the public on how safe Aegis Biomedical is in the hauling of medical waste for treatment.

They said no one wants the business to locate near them, though Aegis asked for two acres near the old landfill on Wildcat Road.

Bright said most of those he talked with didn't understand what the company did and were afraid of having medical waste being hauled through the city.

"People aren't educated enough," Bright said, "to understand it. I don't see it being a benefit to the community."

Prescott Mayor Howard Taylor said if a public meeting was held, the response would be overwhelmingly negative and this wouldn't make the city look good. "We need to do what's best for the community," he told the panel. "If it were 200 jobs, it would be different."

Jon Chadwell, executive director of the Prescott-Nevada County Economic Development Office, said he fought a battle to change public opinion when he was director of the Camden Chamber of Commerce on getting a prison to locate there.

He said this issue ended up drawing lines in Camden people are still fighting over. "If it were 200 jobs, it may be worth it, but not for five."

Chadwell did say those people he's spoken to about this who work in the medical profession said it wasn't any problem.

Austin said if this business was a spinoff of something else it would be another matter, but Prescott doesn't need the negative feelings of basically having this business forced on it. "We don't need to get people irritated over a little project."

Taylor said Aegis may want to look at locating in Emmet or another small town in Nevada County instead of Prescott.

After the meeting, Chadwell said he would approach Nevada County Judge James Roy Brown about Aegis locating somewhere else in the county and see he has to say about it.

The major problem, the committee agreed, is the company deals with medical waste and people are afraid of having it hauled through the city and stored until it's treated.

Because of this, the committee will recommend the council not assist Aegis Biomedical in locating in Prescott in any way.