Can country living and a new EV plant coexist? Some Georgians say no.

The hummingbird-specked lifestyle and sometimes-brutal history of Morgan County, Georgia, are all wrapped up in a document drily called the “2017-2036 Issue Based Comprehensive Plan.” 

Focus groups used words like “boring,” “safe,” and “progressive” to describe a rural county dotted with hayfields, the stray housing development, and reservoirs thick with catfish. When they thought about the desired future of the region just a few miles east of Atlanta’s urban fall line, one word loomed above the others: “better.”

But what does that word mean? And where does automakers’ march toward electrification fit in? 

Plans by the California-based Rivian electric vehicle truckmaker to build a massive plant and battery assembly on a rolling, old farm here face unexpected pushback from a key bloc of rural Republicans concerned about environmental and social impacts – and the right balance between stewardship and progress.

As a result, the state’s biggest-ever economic development deal is testing the ability of rural communities to guide their own growth, especially when local values are pitted against national, even global, interests.

“The problem with how we address ... climate change issues is that they affect the entire world, but the costs of addressing them have to be paid at the local level,” says Emily Diamond, an environmental policy expert at the University of Rhode Island, in Kingston. The clash over the Rivian plant “is a perfect example of that tradeoff.”

“In our research, we heard a lot of rural communities prioritizing clean water and clean air ... but it’s really driven by this value of stewardship that rural communities tend to really prioritize – place-based stewardship,” says Ms. Diamond, a former Georgia resident who co-wrote a study on rural environmentalism in 2020.

At the same time, she says, communities that have maintained their land for generations tend to resent the “urban elite,” especially environmentalists, telling them what to do. “That contributes to this sense where rural communities don’t have a say … in these large climate change negotiations and policies that are being developed without their input and then done to them as opposed to with them,” she adds. 

Jobs versus country living

Gov. Brian Kemp in December announced the $5 billion Rivian deal. A $1.5 billion state investment helped coax what he said would become 7,500 jobs, millions of dollars in new taxes that would reduce residents’ property taxes, and provide fresh economic opportunity for one of the poorer parts of the state. 

Especially in an election year when Governor Kemp is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger, the announcement fit a long pattern of Southern states courting industry to help build economic and racial equality. The NAACP is firmly behind the plant, given its potential to boost wealth for rural Black communities.

“Ever since that [Nissan] plant went into Nashville [in 1983], the sweepstakes for Southern states is, Can we attract some kind of vehicle manufacturing plant?” says Charles Bullock III, an expert on Southern politics at the University of Georgia, in Athens. “If you [as the governor] can, you’ve won the Oscar, you’ve won the Tony.” 

Edwin Snell, for one, isn’t clapping.

The central Georgia businessman sees the plan as a backhanded way to pretend to “save the world” from climate change while turning his beloved Georgia backcountry into an “armpit.”

And many residents, he says, are deeply suspicious of the backroom politics, particularly permitting for what was supposed to be a residential reservoir that now appears to have been reserved for a company like Rivian – “a shell game in other words,” says Mr. Snell.

An environmental group has ranked the reservoir plan as one of Georgia’s top environmental disasters, given the amount of water it would quaff from one of the last virgin rivers in the region, the Apalachee River. The Northeast Georgia Regional Commission, an advisory body, has panned the plan as well, saying it poses a substantial risk to already scarce groundwater. 

Rivian did not respond to interview requests, but the region’s Joint Development Authority, which lured the plant from other suitors, including Texas, issued a statement saying, “All state and federal permitting requests will be met, and impacts to streams and wetlands will be mitigated as required by the Army Corps of Engineers.”

And Rivian itself, when pressed by investors before its public offering last year, stated its commitment to “responsible environmental, social, and governance practices.”

Not everyone in Rutledge is convinced. “If the Rivian plant goes through, basically what they are telling us is that all the long-range plans ... [are a] joke,” says Mr. Snell, whose family founded nearby Snellville soon after the Civil War. An outpost 18 miles from downtown Atlanta, the town still has some rural character, but probably not for long. A fast-growing suburb, it’s one of the few places in the state that continued to see upscale home construction through the Recession.

Mr. Snell doesn’t want that for Rutledge. “They want to do it here because we don’t have unions, they can get cheap labor, and they won’t have trouble with permitting, including to build slab houses and Section 8 [subsidized] houses for workers,” he says.

Two views of the rural South

In some ways, the political script has been flipped, revealing a crossroads in the climate debate, where environmentalists support industrial growth and conservatives cry conservation.

Downtown Rutledge is so small that instead of a stoplight, it has a traffic barrel festooned with stop signs. On a recent day, the traffic was so light that no one really noticed when a car accidentally backed into the barrel, setting one of the signs askew.

“The situation in Georgia is more of a NIMBY-situation,” says Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, referring to the term meaning “not in my backyard.” Describing residents’ thoughts, he says, “‘We’re a nice rural area. We want to keep it rural. We want the clean environment. And we don’t want these big changes.’” 

Indeed, Ms. Diamond at the University of Rhode Island found that rural voters are more likely than urban ones to identify with their surroundings, leading to “strong values of place-based identity, community, and stewardship of their land and resources,” which in turn can shape their views on zoning and environmental policy.

But for some, there are familiar rhythms to the opposition. 

When Phyllis Reed looks at who is wearing “We the People are pissed off” T-shirts, she sees “mostly older white men.” For her as a Black professional – she is a logistics expert at a big Atlanta firm – the racial and class aspects are unmistakable. A lot of the resistance, she says, is a function of white property ownership, much of which goes back to before the Civil War.

She bought a house in nearby Madison because she couldn’t afford one in Atlanta. Plus, she loves country living, save the nearly two-hour rush-hour commute to north Atlanta. A plant, she says, would both create new opportunities and cement the region’s relevance. 

“If you don’t grow, you will go away,” says Ms. Reed. “We can’t evolve that way.”

What’s best for the future?

If Ms. Reed represents African Americans who have struggled to stake fair claim and Mr. Snell represents those who can claim generational investments in this rolling land, Bruce Altznauer is a newcomer with a different view. 

A transplant from suburban Atlanta, he says he found his true home in Rutledge. Several years ago, he was elected mayor.

He sat on the commission that created the county master plan, which cites the area’s “small town character” as its most valuable commodity, framing it as an alternative “to the typical suburban lifestyle.” When addressing growth, the result of 18 community meetings demanded that the county “take into account impacts on transportation, natural resources, and our towns when considering economic development projects.”

He has reservations about the plant’s environmental impacts, but he says, “I trust Governor Kemp – he hasn’t steered us wrong yet. And I trust the experts. I think they will have people to give us an honest opinion of the impacts.” 

In his view, the plant and its promises could help keep a younger generation from abandoning their hometowns, thus ensuring that generational interests – and stewardship – continue.

“I’m not an ostrich,” he adds. “I’m not trying to put my head in the sand. My job is not just to protect the citizens who are celebrating the town’s 150th anniversary this year. I’ve got to make sure there’s a 300th birthday. I’ve got to protect the future as well.”