The Okefenokee Swamp is the largest black water swamp in North America.
ATLANTA – From a proposed titanium mine near the Okefenokee Swamp to carpet mills in Northwest Georgia, the Georgia Water Coalition’s annual Dirty Dozen report highlights threats to waterways across the state.
Rather than identifying the most polluted places in Georgia, the 2021 report released Tuesday points to projects and policies that threaten the future health of Georgia’s waters and the Georgians who depend on them for their wellbeing.
Five of this year’s Dirty Dozen are making return appearances on the list, including the problem of coal ash disposal.
Georgia Power is in the process of closing all 29 of its ash ponds at 11 coal-burning power plants across the state. While the Atlanta-based utility will remove the ash from 19 of those ponds, ash is being left in place in the other 10 ponds, prompting complaints from environmental groups.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Mineral is seeking permits to mine titanium dioxide at a site three miles from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the largest black water swamp in North America. Opponents fear the mine could damage adjacent wetlands and permanently affect the hydrology of the entire 438,000-acre swamp.
In Coastal Georgia, the 30-year-old Hercules Landfill Superfund site in Brunswick still leaches toxins into groundwater. The 2019 Golden Ray shipwreck has finally been cleared from St. Simons Sound, but the extent of damage to the coast still must be evaluated.
In Middle Georgia, a proposed plastics rendering plant near Macon touted as a solution to plastics pollution is really part of the problem, the report says. Critics say the project would generate more greenhouse gases through the production, transformation and ultimate burning of fossil-fuel-based plastics.
Along the Chattahoochee River system, West Point Lake and Lake Harding are plagued by algal blooms caused by excessive nutrients.
Jet fuel and sewage spills repeatedly foul the portion of the Upper Flint River that flows beneath Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, causing fish kills.
In Gordon County a proposal to build a 24-house mega-chicken farm has prompted homeowners to plead with their county commission to protect their property values, well water and their river.
And in Northwest Georgia, water providers including the city of Rome are spending millions of dollars to remove from drinking water harmful chemicals generated by carpet mills.
The Georgia Water Coalition is a consortium of more than 285 conservation and environmental organizations, hunting and fishing groups, businesses and faith-based organizations founded in 2002.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp attacked former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s corporate record Tuesday in the first ad of what promises to be a bruising campaign for next year’s Republican gubernatorial nomination.
Perdue was the CEO of several companies before being elected to the Senate in 2014, including Reebok and PillowTex. The new ad accuses him of outsourcing American jobs to enrich himself.
“Millionaire David Perdue built a career putting himself first, searching for cheap labor,” the 30-second ad states. “Perdue outsourced jobs to countries like China. He made a fortune for himself but left communities broken, families ruined.”
The ad was paid for by the Georgians First Leadership Committee, a new type of fundraising organization that can raise and spend unlimited contributions.
A bill passed this year by the Republican-controlled General Assembly along party lines authorizes “leadership committees” to raise money on behalf of top statewide elected officials and heads of the legislature’ s majority and minority caucuses. Challengers to statewide incumbents – including Perdue – can’t access those funds unless and until they win their party’s nomination.
Perdue entered the governor’s race last week, saying Kemp has lost the confidence of Georgia Republicans and cannot defeat 2018 Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, who recently jumped into the contest as well.
The GOP primary race is all about last year’s presidential election in Georgia. Kemp angered Donald Trump after the November election when he refused to help the former president overturn Georgia results that favored Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump urged Perdue, a longtime ally, to challenge the governor in next May’s primary.
Perdue served one term in the Senate before losing to Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a runoff last January.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a lower court decision denying a challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointment of former state Sen. Jesse Stone to a judgeship in Augusta.
Kemp appointed Stone to a Superior Court judgeship in the Augusta Judicial Circuit last February, one year after the resignation of former Judge Michael Annis.
Lawyer Maureen Floyd filed a petition last March in Burke County challenging the validity of the appointment, and Stone submitted a motion to dismiss it.
The trial court sided with Stone, rejecting Floyd’s argument that the appointment was illegal because it was not made “promptly” as required by the Georgia Constitution. The court also noted that Floyd failed to cite any authority supporting her conclusion that removal from office was a proper remedy.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court opinion noted that Floyd’s contention of a promptness requirement relied on a provision in the constitution that pertains to the executive branch of state government rather than the judicial branch.
The opinion also noted that removing Stone would simply have created another vacancy, further prolonging the length of time the office was vacant.
“A remedy that aggravates the injury flowing from a constitutional violation is not a remedy that is tailored to the injury,” Presiding Justice Michael Boggs wrote for the court.
The decision also noted that Floyd did not contend that Stone was in any way personally ineligible to hold the office.
Stone, who served as mayor of Waynesboro during the 2000s, was elected to the Georgia Senate in 2010. He didn’t seek reelection last year.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Benjamin Ayers, dean, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia
ATLANTA – Georgia’s economy will bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic next year, despite inflation and the latest COVID-19 variant, the dean of the business school at the University of Georgia predicted Monday.
“We’ve made tremendous progress getting back to normal, Benjamin Ayers of UGA’s Terry College of Business, told an audience of about 475 business leaders at the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta. “By late 2022, Georgia’s economy will fully recover from the COVID-19 recession.”
In fact, Georgia’s forecast economic growth rate of 4.3% next year will outperform the predicted increase in the nation’s gross domestic product of 4.0%, Ayers said during Terry College’s annual Economic Outlook luncheon.
That growth will be driven mainly by strong consumer and business spending and a robust housing market, he said.
Pent-up demand by consumers, particularly for services they couldn’t get during the pandemic, will result in both higher consumer spending and less saving. On the business side, companies will spend more on technology needed to facilitate remote work.
While there will less demand for commercial real estate due to the increase in Georgians working from home, Ayers expects significant increases in single-family and multi-family housing construction.
But home prices that have risen 23% during the pandemic are expected to increase more slowly next year.
“Homes have become much less affordable, and we expect mortgage rates to be higher,” he said.
Ayers said he expects Georgia’s workforce to fully recover in 2022. The state’s unemployment rate should average 3.2% next year, a point below the national jobless rate.
The most job growth is expected to occur in hospitality and live entertainment, the economic sectors hurt worst by the pandemic. Sectors such as manufacturing, health care, retail and government will grow at slower rates.
Ayers said potential headwinds that could result in lower-than-expected economic growth include supply chain disruptions, worker shortages and the lingering pandemic.
“Inflation may run higher and longer than expected,” he said. “A large increase in interest rates could trigger recession.”
But Ayers rates the likelihood of a recession as “quite low.”
Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities, who gave the national economic forecast, said states including Georgia that reopened their economies early in the pandemic are recovering faster than states that locked down over a long period of time.
Vitner said he doesn’t expect much economic impact from the spread of the new omicron variant because Americans have grown more accustomed to the virus than in its early days.
“People are less afraid of contracting the virus,” he said. “We’re likely to see less economic blowback from a resurgence of COVID.”
Still, Vitner predicted inflation will likely remain a problem for the U.S. economy for the next three to five years if not the rest of the decade.
“We’re not going to see a replay of the ‘70s,” he said. “But inflation is going to be persistent, and it will be pernicious.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia would abandon the use of absentee ballot drop boxes under legislation Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller pre-filed in the General Assembly Monday.
Drop boxes have been used before elections during the last two years to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But a controversial election reform bill the Republican-controlled legislature passed last March significantly limited the number of drop boxes cities and counties could deploy.
Now, Miller, R-Gainesville, who is running for lieutenant governor, wants to eliminate absentee ballot drop boxes altogether.
“This is the next step in our fight to restore Georgians’ faith in our election systems,” Miller said Monday.
“Drop boxes were introduced as an emergency measure during the pandemic, but many counties did not follow the security guidelines in place, such as the requirement for camera surveillance on every drop box. Moving forward, we can return to a pre-pandemic normal of voting in person.”
Democrats, who opposed the election bill as a bid by majority Republicans to make it harder for Georgians to vote, criticized the drop box legislation as a politically motivated move by Miller to offset former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of state Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, in next May’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor.
“[Miller is] trying to silence the voters of color who elected Democrats last cycle by banning one of the most popular ways they chose to cast their ballots,” said Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia.
“No one who wants to suppress Georgia voters deserves to make our laws or help lead our state, and Georgia Democrats will not stop fighting to protect our elections from Republicans who clearly don’t believe in democracy.”
Republican Geoff Duncan, the current lieutenant governor, announced he would not seek reelection after refusing to take part in Trump’s attempts to overturn last year’s presidential election in Georgia.
Besides Miller and Jones, GOP activist Jeanne Seaver of Savannah is also running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.
Democrats in the race include Bryan Miller of Watkinsville, grandson of the late Gov. and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, and three state representatives: Erick Allen of Smyrna, Derrick Jackson of Tyrone and Renitta Shannon of Decatur.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
