An EV Battery Factory Is Dividing A Michigan Town

GREEN CHARTER TOWNSHIP, Mich. ― Jim Chapman is a former police officer, a grandfather and a Republican. Until recently, he was also the relatively uncontroversial, twice-elected supervisor of this rural town, where his family roots go back five generations.

But that was before the war over Gotion.

Gotion (rhymes with “motion”) is the U.S.-based subsidiary of a Chinese company that manufactures lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. It wants to build its next factory on a parcel of land in Green Township ― where, supporters promise, it will bring 2,350 workers to a region that’s been bleeding people and money, while producing material essential for the fight against climate change.

Discussions appear to have started sometime last year, leading to negotiations over what financial incentives state and local officials were willing to offer. Approval required a series of votes, including a September resolution that Chapman and the rest of Green Township’s board supported unanimously. Chapman called Gotion a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

But the project kicked up angry opposition as the process moved forward. It started with concerns about the company’s ties to China, followed by skepticism over all the promised economic benefits. Then came the fears ― legitimate, unfounded or somewhere in between, depending on who you ask ― that the components and solvents of battery-making would contaminate the local water supply or pollute the air.

Opponents may not be able to stop the project at this point: Gotion can break ground as soon as it gets permits, which the state environmental protection division and other agencies have authority to grant on their own. But residents angry about the plant have gathered enough signatures to force a November recall vote for the Green Township board.

They’ve also made it clear how they feel ― most memorably in a two-hour-plus April town hall that the board had to move outside, next to a playground amid darkening skies and falling temperatures, to accommodate the large crowd and their protest signs.

At the meeting, streamed online by the right-wing media site The Midwesterner, some Gotion opponents literally screamed. Others spoke more deliberately, relying on prepared text.

“You should feel sick to your stomach for what you are doing,” said one speaker, a veteran wearing a “Top Dad” T-shirt who mentioned that his land was just east of the Gotion site. “When that thing goes off, who’s going to be sucking on them toxic fumes? I’ll tell you who: my two little girls.”

Several people accused Chapman and his counterparts of misrepresenting community sentiment when promoting the project to state officials, and of accepting bribes (a charge Chapman has strongly denied). “It’s very clear that, from the start, you intentionally tried to railroad this project past us,” one opponent said. “We count on you, our elected officials, to look out for us. But instead, you have all chosen to completely betray us.”

It’s impossible to know whether opponents like these outnumber the plant’s supporters, or whether they are simply more vocal ― just as it’s impossible to tell how much of the opposition began organically, or how much was stirred up by outside agitators with their own political agendas. But the debate has created a deep rift in the community ― dividing neighbors, friends and families, spawning protests and maybe even an act of vandalism.

It’s a case study in just how complex the realities of implementing a green economic agenda can be, and the political effects for next November and beyond.

One year ago, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, of which the single most important piece is a projected $350 billion investment in clean energy. The law is part of broader federal and state efforts to slow climate change while rebuilding America’s industrial base, in a key part of what’s come to be known as “Bidenomics.”

The early results are impressive. The public investment, and the private capital it’s attracted, are financing everything from wind farms to EV charging stations, along with research into hydrogen as an alternative energy source. The projects are one reason unemployment is hovering near a half-century low, and why environmental groups are so hopeful that the U.S. is making progress toward reducing planet-warming gases.

But “decarbonization” will require more than starting projects. It will also require finishing them, and doing so quickly enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Among the biggest complications is simply that all of this clean-energy infrastructure has to be built somewhere ― taking up large swaths of land, potentially disrupting communities and starting up industrial processes that can have their own negative effects on the environment.

Those possibilities are fueling local backlashes everywhere from Indiana, where farmers are trying to block a planned solar array the size of Manhattan, to North Carolina, where residents are fighting plans to mine the precious lithium that goes into EV batteries. One recent report, by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, tallied up 293 renewable energy projects across 45 states that had run into tough opposition, making for “a potentially significant impediment to achievement of climate goals.”

Frustrated proponents of the new projects see this opposition as a combination of NIMBYism, or not-in-my-backyard sentiment, and political opportunism, chiefly by Republicans and their allies who don’t believe in or simply don’t care about climate change. Local opponents, meanwhile, frequently say they are trying to protect natural habitats and the character of their neighborhoods, while bringing up substantive questions that officials and many experts prefer to avoid.

The fight is already reverberating across national politics and the 2024 presidential campaign. But it’s in places like this rural corner of Michigan where the conflict between economic and environmental progress versus their shadow selves feels most immediate.

The dashboard of Chapman’s red Ford F-150 has a collection of trucker hats that paint an almost-too-on-the-nose picture of his roles in public life. There’s one from his work as town supervisor, and another for his work as a volunteer fire captain. Last month, while he was giving me a driving tour, we had to stop because his pager was crackling with word of a nearby medical emergency. (EMTs were handling it.)

Chapman has a stocky build, a bushy gray mustache and a head of thick white hair that most 66-year-old men could only envy. A few constituents recognized him as he steered the truck through Green Township’s few intersections, and as he waved back to people, he told me about the local history ― the Native Americans who occupied the land first, the European immigrant settlers who arrived in the 19th century, and the thriving local economy of timber and fishing that evolved afterward. Some of the old stone-lined trout hatcheries are still standing, though they’re obsolete and no longer suitable for commercial use. Chapman mentioned that the local parks department is trying to find grant money that would finance restoration, to preserve the hatcheries as a town artifact.

Chapman took me driving south on Green Township’s main boulevard, past a trailer park and a large gravel works, to Big Rapids, a neighboring town whose roughly 9,000 residents make it about three times as big as Green Township. Its downtown has a few blocks of upscale clothing boutiques and restaurants, as well as a walking path along the Muskegon, the smallish, winding river that flows all the way to Lake Michigan, more than an hour’s drive to the west. It’s popular with tubers and kayakers.

The economic heart of Big Rapids is Ferris State University, which specializes in training for fields like nursing, teaching and engineering. Current enrollment is around 10,000, which is down almost 25% from what it was in 2019. Some of that decline might be a temporary, COVID-related dip, but the school is facing the same demographic cliff that is threatening enrollment and finances at colleges all over the U.S.

The problem is especially acute in the upper Midwest, where the long, slow decline of the auto industry has contributed to stagnant population growth, with lots of young people moving elsewhere to find jobs or just warmer weather. Only three months ago, a medium-sized Big Rapids auto parts supplier announced it was permanently reducing its workforce by 60 people, even though the auto industry as a whole is booming right now.

Developments like these, in a county that official statistics say is among the poorest in Michigan, go a long way toward explaining why local and regional officials have worked so hard to lure new employers ― and why they were so excited a year ago, when a mostly undeveloped parcel of land along the border dividing the two townships first drew Gotion’s interest.

Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s vice president for North American operations, lives in Western Michigan. As he tells the story, he was scouting for new U.S. locations when he happened to drive by part of the undeveloped property, and spotted a sign advertising its availability. The site checked several of the company’s boxes, including proximity to a highway and access to worker training via Ferris State. Plus, Thelen says, he liked the idea of bringing jobs to Michigan.

“We’ve been offshoring these technologies for far too many years,” Thelen told me. “I personally had to do that in my last position, at my last company ― move manufacturing and white-collar jobs out of the United States. And it drove me crazy.”

Gotion had other options, including several in the “battery belt” for EV production that’s emerging across Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, where officials have traditionally lured companies with lucrative financial incentives. These overtures frequently become bidding contests, with offers that fiscal watchdogs criticize as rarely worth the jobs and growth they create.

But staying out of the game can mean letting big opportunities go to other states that are happy to play. Eager to avoid that scenario, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and the then-Republican legislature in 2021 agreed to create a multibillion-dollar economic development fund ― which state officials tapped a year later for Gotion’s incentive package. It included about $175 million in direct spending on site preparation and infrastructure improvements, plus a break on future property taxes that would be worth about $540 million over 30 years.

After the proposal got the initial approval it needed from local and state officials, Whitmer celebrated it at a Grand Rapids event, citing the Republican-backed incentive fund and support of local GOP officials like Chapman. “We are winning because we are working together,” Whitmer said, in what at any other time might have been a routine exercise in economic boosterism.

But it was October, and Whitmer was in the final weeks of her reelection campaign. The Gotion proposal drew immediate attacks from her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, who pounced on the company’s China ties. “Why is Gretchen backing China over her own country?” Dixon tweeted. “Can she assure us there will be no influence from the [Chinese Communist Party]?”

Dixon would end up losing to Whitmer by double digits. But the attacks on Gotion didn’t stop with her candidacy.

Marjorie Steele, 33, is one of the locals behind the pushback. She has testified against Gotion before the state legislature, and is launching a small research and advocacy organization she’s dubbed the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance of Michigan. When I called and asked her to make her case, she offered instead to show it by giving me a tour of her family’s homestead.

The two-story house sits on 35 acres, with some decades-old trees and a hilly section divided by a ravine. Steele and her husband tap maple trees for syrup that they make in a 40-gallon stainless steel evaporator, and they maintain a greenhouse where they’ve been growing kale and squash. Their chickens roam freely in the backyard. They have allowed the expanse beyond the yard to grow unchecked, providing a habitat for wildlife, including the occasional wandering bear. Steele told me that she hunts on her property, but not for sport: “If I go out to get a deer, it’s to feed my family.”

Steele has pale green eyes, with red and green tattoos that wind down each arm. When we met, she had put her blond hair in a tightly braided ponytail. She likes to refer to herself as a hillbilly — “a term I use with affection,” she told me. But she has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing, with a resume that includes work for startups and nonprofits, and a teaching gig at a local community college. When she talks about what she fears Gotion’s industrial waste will mean for local water resources, she speaks with the precision of a prosecuting attorney.

“There are wetlands, over 10 acres of wetlands that directly connect with a continuous stream to the Muskegon River,” Steele said. “Wetlands regulate the rest of the aquifer. There’s wildlife and endangered species that are literally depending on it.”

Steele’s land sits about five miles from the Gotion site, half a mile over the Green Township border into the neighboring town of Grant. But she said the whole ecosystem is interconnected: She worries about Gotion depleting the local water supply, drying up wells on her property and contaminating what remains.

“Best-case scenario, we’re looking at particulates getting into the water,” she said. “Much more likely scenario, we’re looking at spills, accidents, vast amounts of chemicals that we just can’t clean up.”

Larry Finkbeiner, who started working with Steele after seeing her at local anti-Gotion meetings, said he’d been open to the idea of the factory until he learned more.

“We didn’t know shit, and we thought a few more jobs could be good ― you know, a little competition, maybe we raise the wages in the area, that kind of thing,” Finkbeiner said. “Then we find out this spring it’s a battery factory. And they’re not looking at taking over the typical [smaller] industrial area, somewhere in the city of Big Rapids. They’re looking at taking out a full mile section, some 500 acres.”

Finkbeiner, who said his 10 years in the Army included hazmat duty, walked me through a list of scenarios he could imagine if something went wrong at the plant ― such as a toxic, even explosive, spill, or a fire from materials that local responders would struggle to extinguish.

The part of EV battery production that would take place at the Gotion plant uses lithium carbonate, iron phosphate and a form of graphite, plus some chemical solvents, in a process that, according to several experts I consulted, is not especially dangerous by industrial standards.

“As chemical processes go, this is pretty benign,” said Gerbrand Ceder, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of material science and engineering who has studied lithium-ion batteries for 30 years. He noted that similar factories abroad have been operating with little incident for decades, a point reinforced by Cornell University engineering Professor Fengqi You.

“All these big battery manufacturers, which are located mainly in China and in South Korea, they are relatively clean,” You told me.

But the experts also said that most industrial substances can be hazardous without proper safeguards. “It all depends on local regulations, state-level regulations and the practice that the particular manufacturer is going to pursue,” You said.

And John Meeker, an environmental health professor at the University of Michigan, cautioned that there’s always the possibility that relevant health risks have yet to be discovered. ”[You] don’t have to look far to find examples of chemicals that were thought to be safe at one time, before the science evolved to where they have now become a major concern after much damage had already been done,” he said.

Local environmental protection groups are paying attention. “We need to further review information on plant design, operational plans and the potential risks and benefits to water quality, air quality, and sustainable use of the watershed,” an official at the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly recently told the Big Rapids Pioneer, a local newspaper that has covered the Gotion story extensively. The official also indicated that the group did not have an official position on the plant yet.

Thelen, who describes himself as a longtime conservationist, told me Gotion has committed itself to environmental responsibility, especially when it comes to recycling the factory’s large intake of water ― some of which, he made clear, was for employee sinks, toilets and other nonindustrial uses. He added that Gotion has already undertaken initial reviews of the facility’s expected environmental impact, with a more thorough version to be completed when it applies for the permits that would allow construction to begin.

“When I tell you that I am comfortable with this, that comes from the guy that hunts and fishes in our streams, rivers, in our fields ― that means a lot to me,” Thelen said. “I’m not going to spend a lifetime of conservation, just to wreck it with one plant.”

But such assurances aren’t much comfort to the plant’s critics, who worry that the state environmental agency is subject to “industry capture,” meaning it is too close to the industry it is supposed to regulate. They are particularly angry that so many votes have taken place ― and the process is so far along ― even though the public hasn’t seen a thorough environmental review yet.

Not all the attacks on Gotion are coming from within the community. Some are coming from Lansing and Washington, D.C., via Republican politicians who, Gotion defenders say, are stoking local hostility — and maybe even instigating it — with little regard for the plan’s actual merits.

The main focus of the outside attacks is Gotion’s ties to China, which Republicans are using to tarnish Michigan Democrats and to undermine the Democratic climate agenda more broadly. The argument plays well with MAGA voters, plenty of whom live in Mecosta County. (Biden lost badly here in 2020.) It also plays into widely shared concerns about the U.S.’s relationship with China: Just last week, the Biden administration announced that it is prohibiting U.S. investment in Chinese companies working on sensitive technology like artificial intelligence.

Earlier this year, a pair of Michigan Republicans who were also Trump-era ambassadors released a signed joint letter, arguing that allowing Gotion to build a plant here would threaten national security and create opportunities for industrial espionage. “Why would we want to strengthen China’s position in this market?” Pete Hoekstra, one of those former ambassadors, asked me.

But some experts believe the only way to build up an American EV industry is to borrow (and learn from) Chinese technology, because the country so thoroughly dominates the market. The project’s defenders point out that although Gotion’s parent company is based in China, ownership of Gotion itself is split among Chinese, German and American interests. “There is no communist plot within Gotion to make Big Rapids a center to spread communism,” Thelen said during a spring town meeting held to discuss the controversy.

The plant’s supporters also question the motives of critics ― including Hoekstra, who in 2013 lobbied for a Chinese lumber company involved in disputes over its trade practices. “It cost Michigan and the U.S. thousands of jobs,” Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of Michigan’s Republican Party who first raised the issue in The Detroit News, told me.

Hoekstra says the two situations are “vastly different,” because “U.S. relations with China have deteriorated significantly” and “wood flooring was not a national strategic commodity.” Also, he said, the lumber company wasn’t seeking U.S. government subsidies the way Gotion is.

As for the Lansing Republicans who have spoken out against Gotion, Timmer notes, many have been in politics for years and had no complaints when Whitmer’s Republican predecessor, Rick Snyder, repeatedly visited China to pitch business opportunities in Michigan. “The Republicans would have been all over this stuff in a positive way before the 2018 election,” Timmer said.

As the fight over Gotion has gone on, the opposition has gotten louder ― and more professional-looking. Earlier this year, a slick mailer advocating for Jim Chapman’s recall went out to residents, warning that “Gotion threatens our environment and national security.” Chapman told me he’d seen it, along with some other anti-Gotion propaganda. “They have to have huge amounts of money coming in behind this thing,” he said.

The anti-Chapman mailer came from an organization called the Committee to Clean Up Mecosta County, whose officers referred questions to Ormand Hook, a former state House candidate who now serves on the Mecosta County GOP executive board. Hook said the committee has paid for just two mailers, at a total cost of roughly $2,000, with all the money coming from local sources.

Whatever its funding, the group is separate from the organization founded by Steele, who told me that her group is independent and has no outside backing.

“I don’t know who paid for that mailer,” Steele told me, referring to another anti-Gotion flier that landed in mailboxes this year. “Is it possible that it’s connected to one or two folks here? It’s possible, I don’t know. I know that it’s not me. I know that it’s not Larry.”

There’s another issue that keeps bubbling up in the Gotion debate: how the factory could change the character of the community. “People came here to live because of the quality of life that’s here,” Finkbeiner said. “We didn’t ask to be turned into an industrialized sector. I’ve had $100,000-a-year jobs. I moved back here because I wanted this life.”

But not everybody is so wary of change. Angela Magoon, 30, works at Pizza in Paris, winner of several local awards for its slices. The owner politely declined an interview, citing (as many other shop owners did to me) a desire not to alienate customers who might have strong feelings one way or another. But Magoon was eager to talk.

Magoon conceded that she’d worried about the factory’s impact initially. But she said she’s learned enough to be confident of its safety, noting that a similar battery plant has operated without incident for years in Holland, about 90 miles to the south. She also said she thinks the new jobs would mean more money for the area ― which, in turn, would mean more tax dollars for community improvements.

“They could update the play area ― I have two young children, they love that play area,” she said. “I think it’d be great if we could do more stuff for the kids.”

Chapman made the same point during our tour, citing as an example more advanced classes or special after-school programs that the schools can’t afford without more students and funds. He also noted the new opportunities for Ferris State, where increased demand would almost certainly lead to the creation of new academic and vocational programs ― such as electric battery-focused classes and more of the certificate programs that Ferris State creates and then shares with community colleges across Michigan.

Chapman acknowledged that Gotion’s presence in town could mean some dramatic changes. He told a story he’s apparently shared widely, about a constituent who, Chapman said, has to work in Grand Rapids in order to get higher wages. “You can do the fuel costs in your head, but put that aside and think about the time,” Chapman said. “That’s two or three hours a day in traffic. So now, if he can work here, that means having supper with the kids, helping them do their homework, having a cup of coffee with his wife in the morning.”

Then Chapman imagined the alternative future, where the Gotion proposal falls through. “Now the Meijer [big-box store] isn’t adding workers, it’s taking them away ― and the pizza parlor, maybe it’s cutting hours or workers, or maybe, God forbid, we even lose the place. And now people are even less likely to stop here, and maybe less likely to move here.”

Standing pat is not an option, Chapman said. “You either grow or you shrink.”

Gotion cleared its last legislative hurdle in April, when appropriations committees in the state House and Senate approved the $175 million in spending for the project. But the Senate panel vote was a close 10-9, with three Democrats joining the six Republicans in opposition.

One of the Democratic “no” votes came from Jeff Irwin, a progressive whose district includes the college town of Ann Arbor. In an interview, Irwin made it clear that he doesn’t agree with many of the arguments his GOP counterparts are making, and that he’s particularly upset with reports ― explored in a recent, lengthy feature from the Michigan Advance ― that the attacks on Gotion’s China ties are stirring up anti-Asian sentiment.

The problem for Irwin was the money itself, and what it was buying. He wasn’t convinced the jobs at Gotion would really be “high-paying,” picking up on doubts that the United Auto Workers union has expressed about EV factories more generally. Irwin also thought about the history of General Motors mostly abandoning Flint ― as memorialized in Michael Moore’s 1989 movie “Roger and Me” ― and how frequently governments have shoveled subsidies at corporations only to see the corporations walk away from commitments a few years later.

“I’m just not persuaded that, in terms of long-term prosperity for Michigan, these are the right things to invest in,” Irwin said. “When we invest in our educational institutions, those things stay here. But when we invest in some of these companies, as we see with how GM treated Flint, they often pull up stakes and seek greener pastures, whatever it is in the interest of their shareholders and maximizing profits.”

The critique echoed the arguments of outside experts like Timothy Bartik, senior economist at the Kalamazoo-based Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and author of a widely cited book on the merits of government incentives for business. Key factors, he says, are whether financial packages include education and training ― and whether they lure new projects to economically distressed places, where the impact can be “two to three times as large” because there are more people who need jobs.

Bartik said he hasn’t studied Gotion closely enough to know how the project measures up to his standards, but that the tie-in to training programs at Ferris State is an encouraging sign. And at the state level, Michigan is in the midst of a significant increase in education spending, including a Whitmer initiative that makes community college effectively free.

Whitmer has also moved to bolster environmental protections, in part by repealing Snyder-era changes that had weakened state regulations. At the same time, she just issued an executive order to expedite the process of granting permits, including the kind of environmental permits Gotion is now seeking ― and that critics like Steele and Finkbeiner worry will be granted without sufficient scrutiny.

One way to look at Whitmer’s overall approach is that she’s trying to find a sweet spot between vigilance and speed, in order to protect Michigan’s resources while also grabbing jobs and moving quickly to arrest climate change. Many of her counterparts across the country are trying to do the same, as is the Biden administration in Washington.

A great deal hinges on whether they succeed.

The Gotion fight is already seeping into presidential politics. When Donald Trump visited a Detroit suburb in June, he worked Gotion into a broader culture-war attack on Biden’s support for electric vehicles. “The push for all electric cars,” Trump said, “it’s killing the United States, it’s killing Michigan and it’s a total vote for China.”

If he, or another GOP nominee, can use Gotion and projects like it to sour voters on clean energy investments, it could undermine Biden’s ability to tout Bidenomics and, in the process, could change enough votes in key states to put a Republican in the White House. Depending on how Congress goes, that could also lead to a reversal of the decarbonization measures Biden and the Democrats put in place.

There could be some other, broader political effects as well.

The Biden clean energy investment is a chance to show that the government can do big things ― something that Americans mostly stopped believing in the 1960s and 1970s, when the lived experiences of Vietnam, stagflation and Watergate displaced memories of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal guiding the country through the Great Depression. That dwindling trust in government has likely reinforced a broader cynicism about large institutions and expertise, impeding progressive ambitions on everything from education to health care while creating a fertile environment for liars, demagogues and conspiracy theorists.

If Biden’s agenda achieves its economic and environmental goals, not just nationally but also locally in places like Western Michigan, it could help to reverse the process. In the best-case scenario, Americans in the future would look back on government-supported investments in clean energy the way older generations recalled the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority ― or even Social Security. In other words, they might have more faith in their government and its leaders.

The alternative scenario is one where Biden’s agenda mostly fails, the word “Bidenomics” becomes synonymous with “boondoggle,” and its champions become political pariahs. For Western Michigan, that could mean a Gotion plant, but without all the high-paying jobs its promoters promise, or with all of the environmental degradation that its critics fear. The detractors would be able to say they were right all along, about both the factory and the broader green energy campaign.

At that April meeting, the one where so many residents were so angry at Jim Chapman and the Green Township board, a speaker from a nearby county mentioned his own community’s fight against planned wind farms. In a worn-in gray T-shirt and sunglasses perched upside down on his shaved head, he took the measure of how Green Township’s drama was playing out. “As you can see, in the last few months, it has ripped your community apart. I don’t know if you guys have lost friends, family, how big of an issue this is,” he said.

He ended with a prediction. “This is going to be probably the biggest thing that will ever happen in your lives,” he said. ”You guys are going to go down as being hated by your community, or you’re going to go down as being heroes.”