It was rather typical for the many quartz misconceptions of those days, that the high purity of the Spruce Pine quartz was wrongly attributed by many to the composition of alaskites rather than pegmatites, based on the official misnomer of its quartz-bearing rocks. Led on by the misnomer, an extensive examination of true alaskitic rock bodies and all kinds of pegmatites ensued for potentially competitive sources. An estimated one hundred million dollars was wasted in the twenty years following 1974. Among several new, world-wide industries, especially those that were based on the use of pegmatite quartz, resulted in failure, for it was then unknown that the strong presence of alkali feldspar especially in alaskites and their pegmatites as well as their typical ionic enrichment processes and often high crystallization temperatures are counter-productive to the creation of high quartz purity.

Indirect evidence of these petrogenetic facts became apparent (to some) in the late 1980's, when newcomer Unimin Corporation, which, after starting on its own and then becoming IMC's successor, inadvertently demonstrated that its new products, IOTA® 4, 5, 6 SV, produced from the insitu Spruce Pine kaolin deposits, chemically weathered original rocks, were of much higher purity than the quartz of the more perthitic rocks explored by IMC, Indusmin Inc. and Feldspar Corporation. This accidental resource discovery further strengthened the District's dominance of industrial quartz.

In the late 1980's, Unimin acquired Indusmin Inc. to reduce potential competition, but was forced by the Anti Trust Division of the Justice Department to divest it for the wrong reason (avoidance of a feldspar monopoly). However, when Feldspar Corporation failed in 1991 to become a second high purity quartz supplier in the District and when its quartz operation wound up in Unimin's possession, this time with government consent (because the company had not been a supplier yet), the calls for competition became louder. By 1992 IOTA® quartz supported an estimated trillion dollar world-wide industry. Even cold war nemeses of the USA, such as the former USSR and China had become dependent on it. Owing to Unimin's quartz monopoly, supplies continued to lag behind demand and prices kept going up. Unimin was clearly overwhelmed, yet seemingly unwilling to yield the supply status quo. Under these circumstances, this author felt compelled to break with the secretive industry tradition, published the first edition on High Purity Natural Quartz for Industrial Use and took other initiatives.

Ironically, just as competent high purity quartz competition began to re-establish itself in the District in 1993 with Quartz Technology/Inmet Mining and Feldspar Corporation/GE Quartz projects, the most vulnerable part of its infrastructure, its water supply, suddenly came under attack by a powerful opponent, caught in a conflict of interest, the federal government. Pushed hastily by anonymous lobbyists, manipulating a duly warned but ignorant, pro-environment/anti-mining administration, a rare, tiny species, known as the Appalachian Elktoe Mussel, was placed on the endangered species list late in 1994 for its recovery in, of all places, the low profile mountain streams of the Nolichucky river system. Orders were received by the mineral processing companies of Spruce Pine in August of 1996 requesting compliance with new High Quality Water Standards (HQW) and only the very naive will underestimate their impact. Compliance will: (a) raise (IOTA®) quartz cost, (b) limit, even reduce its supply and (c) prevent new competition within this fragile watershed.

Not enough. Still one more attack on that water supply had come in 1994, when the town of Spruce Pine, in a move designed to transform itself from the "mineral city" (which it still proclaims to be), into a retirement and recreational community, laid exclusive claim to the upstream waters of the North Toe River as drinking water under new State Watershed Rules. This water had also been the life-line of the upstream mining (Inmet Mining/Quartz Technology project) and agriculture industries. Amidst protests and without the necessary permits, Spruce Pine of Mitchell County, defiantly installed a water pipe line into neighboring Avery County. In 1996 the State's new watershed rules were declared unconstitutional by a North Carolina Superior Court and the case is now headed for the State Supreme Court. But even before the two-pronged attack on the limited water supply, increasing the production of high purity quartz in the District had always been difficult. Recycled water can also be detrimental as Unimin found out in 1997, when it sold several novel and seemingly indestructible pink quartz color varieties produced with, it to its unsuspecting customers.