CAMDEN COUNTY, Ga. — Early voting is underway in Camden County as residents decide whether or not the county will have the authority to make a multi-million land purchase for a space port.
The Spaceport Camden project has been in the works since 2015. Supporters say it will create jobs and diversify the county's economy.
"We have an great opportunity here in Camden County, not only to launch here but we want everything else here. The R&D, STEM programs going into the school systems, university center," Camden County Administator Steve Howard said.
Spaceport Camden would be the thirteenth licensed spaceport in the nation and the third vertical lift facility on the East Coast.
"We're part of the new space race, and we can be part of that and be a leader of that. And they're projecting that to be a trillion-dollar industry by 2040," Howard said.
The Federal Aviation Administration approved an operator's license for the facility on the condition that the county acquires the former industrial site where the facility is planned.
This land has housed past industrial sites, including a former rocket-fuel facility. Making the land extremely contained, according to opponents.
"The land is saturated with methane, other very dangerous toxic materials, there's proved to be buried ordnance, unexploded ordnances," St. Marys City Councilman Jim Goodman said. "We don't know what the cost is going to be to clean it up. It's really not possible for Camden County to do it."
There are also concerns about the flight path, directly over the Cumberland Island National Seashore.
That's why opponents of the spaceport, like Goodman and the environmental group One Hundred Miles, filed a lawsuit that would stop Camden County from purchasing the Union Carbide site.
"We are not opposed to the spaceport, it's a wonderful concept," Goodman said. "We're opposed to the location of the spaceport at the particular piece of land."
On March 8, residents will ultimately decide the path forward, during a referendum election that could take away the county's power to purchase the site.