Small-Town Power Brokers: Why Inola's Leaders Are Betting Big on Aluminum

When a $4 billion aluminum smelter proposal hits a town of 2,000 people, you’d expect the loudest voices to belong to opponents warning of toxic fumes and environmental catastrophe. Instead, the most powerful people in Inola—the superintendent, the school board president, the Career Tech center director—are quietly running the numbers and betting on a windfall.

That’s not to say they’re cheerleading from podiums. Jeff Unrau, superintendent of Inola Public Schools, gets it. He’s watched lifelong friendships dissolve over dinner table arguments about a facility that hasn’t even been built yet. But he also knows what those property tax increases could mean: the difference between perpetual budget crises and finally being able to afford what his schools desperately need. Before the Sofidel tissue paper plant arrived six years ago, Inola was deeply dependent on state aid. If the Oklahoma Primary Aluminum plant moves forward as planned by 2030, Unrau believes the district could break free from that dependency entirely.

Here’s where it gets complicated. The proposed Emirates Global Aluminum and Century Aluminum facility would occupy 350 acres along the Verdigris River, and environmental concerns aren’t hypothetical—they’re grounded in real chemistry. Aluminum smelting produces hydrogen fluoride and perfluorocarbons, hazardous byproducts that worry residents like Joleta Ingersoll, who operates the 11,500-acre McFarlin Ingersoll cattle ranch just ten miles away. Her sister, Wendy Keener, serves as school board president and is caught in the middle: she needs the budget help, but parents are asking her whether their kids will be safe breathing the air at recess three miles from the plant.

The divide isn’t between greedy developers and noble environmentalists. It’s between neighbors with legitimate competing interests. Derek Beller, superintendent of Northeast Technology Center, has lived one mile from CF Industries’ammonia and urea facility for years and sees no problem. He trusts the EPA. Rosalie Griffith, a retired accountant and 79-year-old Inola lifer, views opposition arguments as relying on outdated 1970s and 1980s environmental studies. She points to Sofidel as proof that foreign-owned manufacturing can coexist with rural life.

But attorney general candidate Gentner Drummond didn’t see it that way. Last week, he filed a lawsuit seeking to block the project, arguing that Oklahoma’s environmental protections—designed largely around oil and gas—don’t adequately address smelter-specific risks. Gov. Kevin Stitt counters that this is a national security imperative, framing aluminum independence from China as essential infrastructure.

The real story isn’t about heroes and villains. It’s about a rural community facing a genuine trade-off: growth or caution, economic revitalization or environmental protection. And the people running the schools and tech centers have decided they can’t afford to walk away. Whether they’re right depends on whether a smelter billed as“the lowest-emitting in the world”actually lives up to that claim—and whether Inola, Oklahoma, can truly have both economic security and a safe community to grow up in.