ATLANTA – Three Georgia environmental groups are asking an appellate court to let them intervene in a legal effort by a coalition of utilities including Atlanta-based Southern Co. to block a federal crackdown on coal ash ponds.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) has filed a motion in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to give intervenor status to the Altamaha Riverkeeper, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and the Coosa River Basin Initiative.
The Utilities Solid Waste Activities Group acted after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in January it intends to enforce a 2015 rule prohibiting utilities from dumping ash generated by coal-burning power plants into unlined ponds. The Trump administration had backed away from enforcing the rule.
Coal ash contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water as well as air.
The EPA warned it would require utilities to “control, minimize or eliminate” contamination of groundwater from coal ash ponds. At that time, the agency rejected four ash pond closure plans submitted by utilities in the Northeast and Midwest.
The EPA then sent a letter asking the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to review pending coal ash pond closure permits to determine whether they need to be modified or reissued.
Southern subsidiary Georgia Power is in the process of spending an estimated $9 billion to close all 29 of its ash ponds at 11 plants across the state, a $9 billion investment. While the Atlanta-based utility’s plan calls for excavating and removing the ash from 19 of those ponds, the other 10 are to be closed in place.
An executive with Georgia Power disclosed last month that ash from four of those 10 ponds – at Plant Hammond near Rome, Plant McDonough south of Vinings, Plant Yates near Newnan and Plant Scherer near Macon – will continue to be exposed to groundwater after the closures are completed.
“It is long past time that Georgia Power’s risky, leaking coal ash lagoons are cleaned up and that Georgia’s rivers and communities are protected from this threat,” Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the SELC, said Friday. “By intervening, the groups that protect the Altamaha, Chattahoochee and Coosa rivers will be able to speak up for their rivers and the people who depend upon them.”
Aaron Mitchell, Georgia Power’s director of environmental affairs, told members of the state Public Service Commission during hearings last month the EPA has declared acceptable the utility’s plans to close its ash ponds – both those to be excavated and those to be closed in place.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A state administrative judge Friday ruled against a lawsuit attempting to throw U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, off the ballot based on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing insufficient evidence.
Lawyers for several voters who live in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District argued at a hearing two weeks ago that Greene should be declared ineligible to run for a second term in the House because she sought to overthrow the federal government through her actions following the November 2020 presidential election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted by Congress shortly after the Civil War, prohibits members of Congress from seeking reelection if they have tried to overthrow the government. At the time, the provision was aimed at those who had fought for the South during the Civil War.
Greene testified for about three hours at the hearing, denying advance knowledge of plans to commit violence at the Capitol on the day Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
“The court concludes that the evidence in this matter is insufficient to establish that Rep. Greene, having ‘previously taken an oath as a member of Congress . . . to support the Constitution of the United States . . . engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or [gave] aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution,” State Administrative Judge Charles Beaudrot wrote in a 19-page decision. “As this is the sole basis for challengers’ suit, the court concludes that Rep. Greene is qualified to be a candidate for representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District.”
Greene, who has become among the most prolific fundraisers in Congress in her first term, is favored to win the May 24 Republican primary against five underfunded GOP challengers, then go on to win reelection in the heavily Republican district. The 14th stretches from Georgia’s northwest border with Tennessee south to Polk and Paulding counties and into southwestern Cobb County.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who had the final say over Beaudrot’s ruling, upheld the decision late Friday afternoon.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker is not talking to reporters. He’s not appearing on the debate stage to talk issues with his opponents on the May 24 Republican primary ballot.
But the University of Georgia football icon who led the Dawgs to the 1980 national championship is so far ahead in the polls he can afford to ignore the primary and focus his attention on Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock.
That lack of engagement in the primary race has allowed Walker’s GOP opponents to declare open season on him.
“We’ve all hit the [campaign] trail and taken the tough questions,” Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and former Navy SEAL officer said last Tuesday night during a televised debate where an empty podium represented Walker’s no-show.
“This is the easy part. If Herschel Walker can’t get up here, he certainly can’t beat Raphael Warnock in November.”
Besides Saddler and Walker, the Republican candidates vying for the right to challenge Warnock this fall include Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black of Commerce, former state Rep. Josh Clark of Flowery Branch, small business owner and Air Force veteran Kelvin King of Atlanta and retired Brig. Gen. Jonathan McColumn of Warner Robins.
As is typical in any primary contest, the candidates agree on a host of issues from abortion to crime to federal spending.
While a looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling expected to overturn abortion on demand likely will have a huge impact on the general election this fall, the Republicans running for the Senate are all on the same page.
“I am pro-life,” said Black. “Life begins at conception, period.”
Clark, who served two terms in the state House in the first half of the last decade, has pledged to introduce a “personhood amendment” to the U.S. Constitution containing a total ban on abortion with no exception for incest or rape.
“Why should the child be murdered for the sins of the father?” he declared.
King, who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and rose to the rank of captain before leaving the military and starting a construction business, blamed “divisive rhetoric” from Democrats and Black Lives Matter protesters for the civil unrest and rise in crime during the pandemic.
King, who is African American, said the identity politics Democrats practice ignore Black Americans’ ability to overcome social disparities.
“Crime is going to increase when you don’t back law enforcement,” he said. “We need to make sure law enforcement is protected and supported.”
McColumn said the key to reining in federal spending is to get a grasp on runaway entitlement spending on programs including Medicare and Social Security.
“We have to make a determination how to fund them and at what level,” he said.
“We don’t have the resources we had in the past,” Saddler added. “We have to get spending under control.”
McColumn and Saddler bring the most foreign policy and national security experience to the table among the candidates.
In 35 years in the Army, McColumn said he commanded 6,000 troops and oversaw $6 billion in annual contracts. Saddler served in the Trump administration as director of intelligence programs for the National Security Council.
McColumn faulted the Biden administration for waiting too long to get the U.S. involved in the war in Ukraine.
At the same time, Saddler cautioned against the U.S. allowing itself to get dragged into the conflict to the point that American lives are put at risk.
“I don’t want to see boots on the ground,” he said. “We should be encouraging our European partners to cough up more.”
The candidates also took stands against vaccine and mask mandates as government overreach that rob Americans of their freedom.
“The [federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has gotten to be political rather than science-based,” Clark said. “They have got to be reined in.”
An issue that divides the Senate Republican candidates – mirroring a split in the Georgia GOP – is whether President Joe Biden captured the state’s 16 electoral votes in November 2020 fair and square.
Clark said the election in Georgia was “stolen” from Republican Donald Trump, blaming the mailing out of nearly 7 million absentee ballot requests for “massive ballot harvesting” that affected the outcome.
King said there were undoubtedly “improprieties” but stopped short of declaring they had an effect on the results.
Black and McColumn said they were disturbed by Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results outside the legal process.
“When people ignore the rule of law, there’s trouble,” McColumn said.
Black and Saddler said the passage of election reforms by the Republican-controlled General Assembly last year should help retore public trust in the voting process.
“People just want transparency,” Saddler said. “We need to go back to the paper ballots and voting in person.”
The candidates are united in casting doubt on Walker’s chances to defeat Warnock this fall, even if he coasts to the Republican nomination this month as expected.
Black’s campaign pointed to a poll released Thursday by SurveyUSA that shows Walker losing to Warnock by 5 points, 50% to 45%.
“Herschel Walker is ignoring the voters of Georgia,” Black said. “Herschel Walker will not win in November.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The agency in charge of Georgia’s medical marijuana program voted unanimously Thursday to turn over responsibility for hearing protests of medical cannabis license awards to the Office of State Administrative Hearings (OSAH).
Giving that role to the OSAH was a key provision in legislation the General Assembly considered this year aimed at speeding up a licensing process that has kept the program from getting off the ground. The bill died during the last hour of this year’s legislative session when the Georgia Senate tabled it by one vote.
Gov. Brian Kemp responded to the bill’s failure after the session ended last month with an executive order earmarking $150,000 from the Governor’s Emergency Fund to expedite hearings for companies the Georgia Commission for Access to Medical Cannabis denied licenses to grow marijuana and convert the leafy crop to low-THC cannabis oil for sale to patients suffering from a range of diseases.
The resolution approved during a special called meeting Thursday will remove the responsibility of holding those hearings from the commission, which is made up of a board consisting of six part-time members and a chairman.
“I think it’s going to expedite the process,” said board Chairman Sid Johnson, who was appointed to the board by Kemp last month. “[The OSAH is] in a good position to look at these protests. They’ve got the resources.”
Legislative supporters of the bill lawmakers took up this year made similar arguments as the measure went through the General Assembly.
Efforts to launch a medical marijuana program date back to 2015, when the legislature passed a bill legalizing possession of low-THC cannabis oil. But the law didn’t provide a legal means of obtaining the drug until 2019, when lawmakers put in place a licensing process for companies interested in participating and created the commission to oversee the program.
After the commission issued tentative licenses to six companies last summer, losing bidders filed protests alleging the selection process was unfair and arbitrary. The claims threaten to tie up the program in lengthy litigation that would keep the drug away from patients suffering from seizure disorders, Parkinson’s disease, terminal cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, sickle-cell anemia and other diseases.
Johnson said Thursday that 16 companies have filed 22 protests.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A federal workplace investigation has determined that two companies failed to follow required safety standards that could have prevented a bridge collapse in Covington last October that killed one worker and seriously injured another.
U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigators cited B&D Concrete Cutting of Atlanta and Georgia Bridge and Concrete of Tucker – the project’s prime contractor – after an overstressed section of an access road bridge over the Yellow River leading to Interstate 20 that was being dismantled collapsed and fell into the river.
During the collapse, a concrete saw weighing more than 1,700 pounds struck and killed a worker employed by B&D Concrete Cutting. A second B&D worker was injured and had to be hospitalized.
The OSHA investigation concluded the companies failed to ensure a competent inspector had performed an engineering survey of the bridge before allowing workers to begin the dismantling.
In addition, company personnel did not ensure procedures were in place to prevent structures from being overstressed during dismantling operations. This failure exposed workers to falling hazards.
“If the employers had conducted a proper survey on this highly technical project as required, the tragic loss of one worker and serious injuries to another may not have happened,” said Joshua Turner, OSHA’s area office director for Atlanta-East. “Established safety standards exist to ensure workers get home safely and don’t leave families, friends and communities to grieve a preventable fatality.”
OSHA also cited Georgia Bridge and Concrete for failing to keep a fire extinguisher within 75 feet of two equipment refueling stations. The agency proposed penalties of $31,283 for Georgia Bridge and Concrete and $25,669 for B&D Concrete Cutting.
The companies have 15 business days from receipt of the citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA, or contest the findings.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
