ATLANTA – Manufacturers that use the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide could face additional restrictions in Georgia under legislation pre-filed in the state House of Representatives.
House Bill 3 would require facilities seeking a permit to release more than 50 pounds of ethylene oxide annually to let the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) install electronic devices to continuously monitor those emissions and release the findings at least twice a year.
Ethylene oxide is used primarily to sterilize medical equipment, a need that has drawn a great deal of attention during the coronavirus pandemic.
The need for tighter regulation of the chemical became apparent last winter after public concerns were raised over unreported releases at a Sterigenics plant in Smyrna and a facility in Covington operated by BD Bard.
The General Assembly responded during this year’s legislative session by passing a bill introduced in the state Senate requiring manufacturers that use ethylene oxide to report any waste spills or gas releases to the EPD within 24 hours. The director of the EPD then must post the information on the agency’s website.
“We made progress during the previous legislative session to report ethylene oxide spills through Senate Bill 426,” said Rep. Erick Allen, D-Smyrna, sponsor of House Bill 3. “I hope that the state legislature will act swiftly to help monitor emitting patterns and help prevent the risks that threaten our communities.”
Allen’s bill also would require manufacturers releasing ethylene oxide to submit a detailed ambient air plan to the EPD by January 2022.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) and telecom providers remain far apart on how to expand broadband connectivity in rural Georgia with time growing short for the state to decide a key component of the issue.
The EMCs want the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to nearly double what they can charge providers to attach broadband technology to their utility poles, from the current $20 per pole per year on average to $37.95, while the providers are calling for rates to be lowered to $7 per pole, the rate set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Under legislation the General Assembly passed this year, the PSC will decide how much the EMCs can charge for pole attachments.
As the commission opened what is expected to be several days of hearings on Tuesday, representatives of the two sides defended the pole rate they are seeking as critical to the successful deployment of broadband across wide swaths of rural Georgia lacking high-speed internet connectivity.
The rate the EMCs are seeking is fair based on the cost to the utilities of the additional investment they will have to make, Chris Stevens, president and CEO of Coweta-Fayette EMC, told commissioners. Requiring EMCs to charge a lower rate would force them to choose between raising customer rates or reducing their budgets at the risk of service and safety, he said.
“If EMCs aren’t permitted to recover a fair rate for our pole attachments, these [broadband] deployments may not exist,” he said.
Stevens presented an offer the EMCs are proposing to incentivize providers by charging just $1 per pole per year for pole attachments in areas where EMC customers currently lack broadband service.
“We want our member-owners to have access to broadband,” he said.
But lawyers for telecom providers who cross-examined Stevens Tuesday argued that nearly doubling the pole attachment rate in areas that don’t qualify for the $1 discount would give the EMCs a revenue windfall.
Mari Browne, representing the Georgia Cable Association, disputed the EMCs’ assertion that lowering pole attachment rates would force the utilities to raise customers’ monthly bills. She pointed to past instances where the EMCs increased pole attachment rates without lowering customers’ bills accordingly.
“Changes in pole rents … don’t impact service rates,” Browne said.
Browne went on to assert that a federal law adopted in 1978 requires the FCC to set pole attachment rates, and many states have adopted the FCC formula.
But Stevens said the lower pole attachment rates set by the FCC are no guarantee that utilities will aggressively expand broadband service. Even though Georgia Power, for example, charges the FCC rate, 43% of its rural service area is without broadband connectivity, he said.
“Our revenue stream would go up,” said Stevens, referring to the proposed $37.95 rate for pole attachments. “But it would be a true, fair return on the investment our members have made.”
The PSC will hear additional witnesses representing the EMCs and the telecoms during the coming days. The commission is due to vote on the pole attachment rates in mid-December.
President-elect Joe Biden (left) maintains a close lead in Georgia over President Donald Trump (right) as a statewide hand recount nears completion. (Biden and Trump campaign videos)
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to maintain his lead in Georgia as a statewide audit of nearly 5 million ballots wraps up shortly, despite the discovery Monday of around 2,600 uncounted ballots in Floyd County that went mostly for President Donald Trump, according to a top state elections official.
Biden, who is poised to be the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992, has held a lead of more than 14,000 votes over the past week and after several news outlets called the race for the former vice president on Friday.
On Monday, the state’s voting system manager, Gabriel Sterling, said around 2,600 votes were found through the audit that began last week after officials in Republican-leaning Floyd County discovered they had failed to upload a memory card containing electronic counts of those votes on Election Day.
Locating those 2,600 votes is set to cut Biden’s lead over Trump by 800 votes in Georgia, leaving the Republican president with a deficit unlikely to be surmounted once the audit’s hand recount finishes by a Wednesday deadline ahead of the election’s formal certification later this week, Sterling said.
“Nothing is making us see any substantive change in the outcome,” said Sterling, a top deputy in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. “It’s verifying what we saw on election night.”
Speaking at a news conference Monday, Sterling also continued to dismiss claims from Trump and his allies of alleged voter fraud in Georgia as state and county officials gear up to hold a pair of pivotal U.S. Senate runoff elections that could decide the balance of power in Congress.
Republican allies of Trump, led in Georgia by outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville, have lodged unfounded claims of ballot harvesting, software tampering, improper signature verification for absentee ballots and voting by dead persons.
State and county election officials have found no evidence in support of those claims pushed by Trump and his allies after counting 4.3 million of the nearly 5 million votes in Georgia as of Monday afternoon, said Sterling, who along with Raffensperger is a Republican.
“Those people out there undermining this thing through crazy, over-the-top claims on cable news, if you have evidence, call us,” Sterling said Monday. “We will investigate any credible leads someone gives us.”
As for the ballots found in Floyd County, Sterling attributed the issue to human error and “gross negligence” on the part of the county’s election director, Robert Brady, who has been asked to resign by Raffensperger’s office.
State officials have been unable to reach Brady to discuss what caused the issue since the Floyd elections director is in quarantine due to COVID-19, Sterling said. An investigator from Raffensperger’s office is in Floyd County now to determine exactly what happened.
Even with the Floyd County issue, Sterling on Monday called the unprecedented statewide audit effort a success as elections boards in the state’s 159 counties closed in on recounting every ballot by hand. He said the state next plans to create a website to publish data on the recount results for transparency.
“We’re about accuracy, we’re about process and we’re about following the law,” Sterling said.
ATLANTA – Supporters say the first legislation pre-filed in advance of the 2021 General Assembly session would strike a blow for free speech on Georgia college campuses.
But opponents say the “Forming Open and Robust University Minds (FORUM) Act” could lead to discrimination.
House Bill 1, pre-filed on Monday by Georgia Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville, reintroduces a bill the state Senate’s Republican majority passed last March 32-21 along party lines. The legislation cleared a committee in the House of Representatives but failed to get a floor vote during the final hectic week of the 2020 General Assembly session in June.
The FORUM Act would bar the practice of establishing “speech zones” effectively limiting where student groups could convene on campuses. It also would eliminate speech codes in state law by protecting what students can say and protect students’ right to free association for the expression of ideas.
“Our public universities are meant to be safe forums where ideas could be debated, but over the years, the ability of students to exercise their First Amendment rights has been greatly diminished,” Bonner said Monday. “The FORUM Act would help protect and clarify those rights and hold our government accountable if they are suppressed.
“By implementing constitutional standards on free expression, schools can minimize the risk of costly litigation and create an environment where free speech and academic inquiry can thrive.”
Bonner cited specific complaints that prompted him to introduce the bill.
In 2016, Georgia Gwinnett College officials reportedly stopped a student from sharing his Christian faith with other students on his college campus, Bonner said.
Georgia Tech’s student government reportedly denied funding for a Students for Life speaking event featuring Alveda King, the niece of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., because her appearance would have been “inherently religious,” Bonner said.
Several Democratic senators objected to this year’s bill during the floor debate over concerns it could prevent colleges from barring organizations that promote race and gender discrimination. They also worried such broad speech protections could attract hate groups to Georgia campuses.
The Senate bill also drew opposition from representatives of the University System of Georgia and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Results of final-phase testing for a COVID-19 vaccine partly taking place in Atlanta show nearly 95% effectiveness at preventing the virus, marking a huge breakthrough in the push to end the global pandemic, Emory University researchers announced Monday.
The vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical company Moderna and given to more than 700 volunteers in Atlanta since August is the second candidate vaccine to clear major testing hurdles over the past week, after the company Pfizer announced last Monday its vaccine has shown 90% effectiveness.
Both vaccines have progressed through trial phases enough to be on the cusp of receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency-use authorization by year’s end.
“This is a great day for science and a great day for hope that we will see the end of the [COVID-19] pandemic,” said Dr. Colleen Kelley, an Emory infectious-diseases professor who helped lead the university’s Moderna vaccine trials.
With FDA approval, Kelley and other health experts estimate COVID-19 vaccines could be distributed as early as next month for hospital workers, first responders, elderly persons and those with chronic health issues. The general public would receive vaccines later next year, possibly by summer.
Around 30,000 people enrolled for trials of the Moderna vaccine candidate across the U.S., including more than 700 people at three sites in Atlanta led by Emory. Lasting from Aug. 11 to Oct. 23, the final trial phase was unusually fast due to the intense interest in developing multiple vaccines for COVID-19.
Trial volunteers only showed mild negative reactions to the vaccine, Kelley said. Many participants represented the most vulnerable persons to COVID-19 including people aged 65 and older, though the vaccine has not yet been tested on children.
A few steps are needed next before people can start receiving the Moderna vaccine, said Kelley. The vaccine’s data still needs to be peer-reviewed before FDA approval can be given, and state and federal officials still need to ensure the logistics are in place for millions of doses of the vaccines to ship out.
Both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines use genetic sequencing to create proteins that mimic COVID-19 and trigger a response from the patient’s immune system to erect safeguards, rather than other types of vaccines that introduce disease-causing organisms to create resistance.
Notably, Moderna’s vaccine can be stored at far less extreme refrigeration temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine, which requires storage as low as minus-80 degrees Celsius. The Moderna vaccine can be stored for up to 30 days at between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius, Kelley said.
Amid encouraging results, health experts say it will be important for more vaccines besides just those from Moderna and Pfizer to be developed and approved so that as many people as possible around the world can have access to preventative COVID-19 medicine.
“It could be that this year we cannot gather with our family and friends, but hopefully that would happen soon with the dramatic effects that the vaccines are showing just in the past week,” said Dr. Nadine Rouphael, an Emory infectious-disease professor and another trial leader for the Moderna vaccine.
