Those of you who live in Winston-Salem may remember that we have a daily newspaper called the Winston-Salem Journal.  You may also remember that the newspaper used to employ an editor by the name of Ken Otterbourg, and that Mr. Ottberbourg left the paper a while back after having a bit of a disagreement with senior management at Media General.  When he was still with the paper I liked the fact that Mr. Otterbourg tried to take the online lead by penning a blog and I was also impressed that he was willing to take the abuse that comes with that territory.  If nothing else his blog made the paper feel a little more personal, at least to me, so I was sad to see him and his blog go.  I'm not sure what he's up to these days but I was happy to see his name pop up in my news reader as the author of this article, Alcoa and the great North Carolina power grab, in Fortune.

To power its operations, Alcoa (AA) built a series of enormous hydroelectric dams, four in all, along a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin River as it cuts through the heart of the state. But with the smelter disassembled and the ingot room gone cold, the power is a commodity, sold into an electrical grid hungry for clean energy. Alcoa's federal license, received in 1958, has expired, and it operates the dams under an extension as it seeks relicensing for another 50 years' use of the river.

In another era Alcoa would already have its license. But North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue and officials in Stanly County, home to three of the dams, are asking federal regulators to do what they have never done before: say no. Their message is simple. With the smelter and the local jobs and much of the tax base gone, they say Alcoa's right to the license, its right to make money from the river, has vanished. They want control of the river — and the revenue it generates — returned to the public.

Says Keith Crisco, North Carolina's secretary of commerce: "Everybody's done a good job of making this a complicated issue, but to me it's pretty basic: There's an economic asset there, and it's our job today to get the best value for the people of North Carolina."

The battle over the Alcoa dams — and it is a battle, fought on both a grand and often personal scale by armies of lawyers, lobbyists, and neighbors — is about the control of a resource. But it's also about what, if any, obligations corporations have to the places like Badin that they leave behind as their businesses change. As Stanly County's manager Andy Lucas puts it: "They're giving us the crumbs off the king's table. That's our water. It should benefit us."