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Smelterville

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"Are you really surprised?" asks a bemused Tom Kerr. "They've alleged from the beginning that I'm the only one against the smelter. They don't care that there are hundreds of other people who don't want this deal. It's good old boy politics. Who is going to stop them?"

Lately, several C4 members question whether the "good old boy" network extends all the way to Jefferson City. "We've been in contact with the attorney general's office from the beginning, and at times we thought they were going to act," says C4's Jill Thomas. "Are they too busy? Or do they not want to get involved because Attorney General Jay Nixon's old law firm is assisting the city in the purchase of the PPG property? I think that's a very relevant question."

The small-town politics don't end there. In December, C4 tried to get a judge in Jefferson County to issue a temporary restraining order against the city that would block the sale of the PPG property. Mayor Schilly's wife works for the Jefferson County Circuit Court, and several judges recused themselves from hearing the plea right away. Now the C4 group is asking the court to assign a judge from outside Jefferson County to hear their lawsuit.

But it's not just the courts that are tied to Crystal City. In September Jill Thomas says several C4 members witnessed Mayor Schilly and other city officials shredding papers in city hall that they believe were related to the smelter deal. When they called the attorney general's office to report the incident, Thomas says they were told to call the Jefferson County sheriff. But Sheriff Oliver "Glenn" Boyer (who is married to Schilly's sister) refused to get involved or send any of his officers to investigate.

"Yes, the mayor is my brother-in-law, and I told them it would be a conflict of interest for me to get involved," concedes Boyer. "But I'm the one who then told them to call the attorney general's office, not vice-versa. That's them bending the truth on that one."

Jim Kennedy wears his dark-brown hair parted boyishly across his forehead Rod Blagojevich style and favors a uniform of khaki shirts and blue jeans. A graduate of Kirkwood High School, Kennedy jokes that his wild behavior as a teenager had him on the "five-year plan." "I was completely out of control," says Kennedy, who would later find discipline in the U.S. Army Special Forces.

"When I got back from the military I went to Meramec [Community College] and then Washington University, and from there a Fulbright scholarship for graduate school," explains the 43-year-old Kennedy. After college Kennedy spent more than a decade working as a securities analyst for his father's Kennedy Capital Management, a Creve Coeur-based financial firm that specializes in managing pensions and foundations for clients such as Washington University and the 3M Company.

In 2000 Kennedy left the family business and purchased a hunting retreat in Bourbon, Missouri, an hour's drive southwest of St. Louis. A year later, Kennedy bought the nearby Pea Ridge iron-ore mine in Sullivan out of bankruptcy. The mine, Kennedy says, is the largest and highest-grade magnetic ore deposit in North America.

"I bought this thinking that maybe in twenty years it would pay off," says Kennedy. "Then in 2005 the price of iron ore increased 70 percent and we began looking at ways to open the mine sooner."

Kennedy believes the vein of metal below his Pea Ridge property contains enough reserves to annually mine 3 million tons of iron ore for 100 years. Once the mine is in operation, Kennedy plans to transport the raw iron ore to Crystal City, where it will be processed into pig iron and loaded onto barges. Kennedy estimates the smelter will eventually cost $1 billion and employ 650 people at wages up to $40 an hour.

And those are just the direct jobs associated with the smelter, posits Kennedy. "The indirect employment — from suppliers to transportation — could be five times that," he says. "This is going to be a tremendous investment in the community. You'd think people would be happy about that." Kennedy pins the source of the opposition squarely on Tom Kerr and what he describes as a tiny but vocal minority. "If I in any way thought the C4 group represented a small amount of Crystal City — even 10 percent — I'd have packed up and left a long time ago," says Kennedy.

Part of the problem, he concedes, is the Chinese investment in the project. Kennedy maintains that the relationship with Minmetals is strictly financial. Minmetals, a Fortune 500 firm, has the resources to provide the financing for the project but will have no ownership in the final project, says Kennedy. Instead, the company will demand a percentage of all iron ore processed at the smelter and sold to U.S. steel mills.

Kennedy takes particular umbrage at what he terms the "race-baiting" and "xenophobia" of people trying to stop the deal. This fall members of C4 contacted the Department of Homeland Security over concerns that the Chinese government would acquire an inland port as a result of the smelter. Kennedy says he's also heard comments about the rumored Middle Eastern ties of his wife, Nina Abboud, who's of Lebanese decent.

"You can't call Homeland Security screaming that the commies are coming," says an indignant Kennedy. "I mean, Red Communist China? Richard Nixon — he hunted commies for a living — he didn't even have a problem with them anymore."

In November, Tom Kerr presented Crystal City officials with more than 200 title exceptions his engineer discovered that could impact the sale of the PPG property. The engineer also identified what Kerr believes is firebrick scattered about the PPG property. Used as insulation in kilns and furnaces, firebrick can be a source of chromium-6 — the highly toxic element made famous in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich that starred Julia Roberts. (In the wake of the firebrick discovery at least two C4 members have sent the real-life Brockovich a letter soliciting her help. Brockovich has yet to respond.)

"This is fear-mongering, plain and simple," replies an exasperated Kennedy. "Tom Kerr is throwing money around like a drunken sailor. It's just a bunch of desperate attempts to derail this."

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