ATLANTA – The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is fining a Swainsboro pillow manufacturer $190,758 in connection with amputations suffered by three employees.
The federal agency reported that Place Vendome Holding Company – operating as R&F Marketing – has a history of safety and health violations in the workplace.
An inspection OSHA conducted last November found that four workers had suffered serious injuries by being exposed to several of the same hazards the agency had reported in a November 2020 inspection:
In December 2020, a machine operator suffered an amputation injury. OSHA found no lockout procedures to safeguard workers.
In February of last year, another machine operator had to have a finger amputated and suffered nine crushed fingers. OSHA found the machine’s energy control locks had been removed.
In March of last year, a maintenance manager loading a pallet jack onto a truck suffered an amputation after a finger was caught between the wheels of the jack.
In April of this year, another maintenance manager suffered a lacerated hand while trying to clean fibers out of a motor.
Following the November 2021 inspection, OSHA cited Place Vendome for seven repeat violations for obstructing exit routes, failing to post well-lit signs identifying exit routes and stacking materials in unstable or unsecured tiers.
The agency also cited the company for failing to mount or keep fire extinguishers accessible and train designated workers to use fire extinguishers.
Three other serious violations included locking an emergency exit door from the outside, failing to have emergency action plans in place, failing to establish and utilize equipment-specific procedures to control hazardous energy as well as failing to train workers on the procedures.
“Place Vendome once again exposed their employees needlessly to serious and life-altering hazards,” said Jose Gonzalez, OSHA’s acting area office director in Savannah.
“This ongoing disregard for the safety of their employees is unacceptable, and we will continue to hold them accountable until they follow all necessary federal requirements and take steps to protect workers at this facility.”
The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA, or contest the findings before an independent review commission.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – While June typically kicks off vacation season, it’s turning out to be a busy month for local transportation officials across Georgia.
City and county transportation agencies are scrambling to put together project lists to submit ahead of a June 30 deadline for an initial round of grants through the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure spending bill President Joe Biden signed into law last November.
“After years of promises, the Biden-Harris administration has acted,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday as he rolled out a portion of the initiative, $12.5 billion earmarked for bridge projects.
“We are getting to work now fixing roads and bridges across America. … This work is vital. It is urgent.”
By far the largest portion of Georgia’s share of the funding – $8.9 billion – will go to repair and rebuild roads and highways. Another $1.4 billion will help finance public transit projects, with allocations of fewer than $1 billion each going toward water and sewer systems, airports, bridges, electric vehicle charging stations and broadband.
The Atlanta area is off to a faster start than the rest of the state. The 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) released a list of proposed projects last month for the first round of funding.
While the list includes some road projects, much of the $45 million would go toward transit infrastructure in Cobb and Clayton counties, electric buses and EV charging stations.
“This initial round of funding demonstrates the impact of the infrastructure law to help us build a safer, better connected, more equitable and resilient region,” said Anna Roach, the ARC’s executive director.
“The Atlanta region must work together to maximize the transformative potential of the infrastructure law.”
With public transit service not nearly as extensive outside of metro Atlanta, most of the federal funds local governments elsewhere across Georgia are likely to seek will be for highway projects, said Bill Twomey, county consulting services manager for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia.
“We’re not talking lower-scope projects,” he said. “These would be larger projects with economies of scale.”
Twomey said Georgia’s larger counties will have an advantage over the smaller counties in applying for grants because their transportation agencies tend to have larger staffs that are familiar with federal procurement requirements.
However, the rules are different this time, Twomey said.
“In the past, the highway crew for the state [Department of Transportation] was usually to go-between on a lot of these federal programs,” said. “That is not the case [this time.] … That’s going to be a hurdle for some counties.”
Becky Taylor, director of federal relations and research for the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA), said her organization is helping city officials navigate the complexities of seeking federal grant funding.
The GMA has created a page on its website at https://www.gacities.com/BIL.aspx to serve as a clearinghouse for information on how to apply for grants through the infrastructure spending bill.
Taylor also pointed to the build.gov website developed by the White House.
“It has a chart and matrix showing program types and what agency you need to apply to,” she said. “There are going to be about 400 programs.”
The GMA also will feature a panel session on the infrastructure law at its annual convention in Savannah late this month. The panel will include representatives of the White House, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority.
Taylor said the various regional planning commissions around the state also will help city transportation agencies prepare and submit project lists, a role the ARC already has performed in metro Atlanta.
Twomey said the opportunity the infrastructure spending bill represents for local governments is huge, if they can clear the bureaucratic obstacles to landing grants.
“This is a considerable amount of new funding compared to what’s been out there in the past,” he said.
“The net result is going to depend on whether cities and counties think they can take advantage of the program and adhere to federal guidelines.”
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power completed a demonstration project this week blending hydrogen with natural gas at the utility’s Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna.
The project was the first to test a blend of 20% hydrogen in a natural gas turbine in North America. The blend produced a 7% reduction in carbon emissions at a plant that burned coal until switching to gas a decade ago.
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company, worked in partnership with Mitsubishi Power.
“This monumental hydrogen demonstration project at Plant McDonough-Atkinson is another example of how, at Georgia Power and Southern Company, we are building the future of energy today,” said Allen Reaves, senior vice president and senior production officer at Georgia Power.
“This demonstration helps pave the way for long-term clean and carbon-free use for already existing infrastructure. Making these smart investments today on behalf of our customers ensures we can continue to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy as Georgia grows and thrives for decades to come.”
The Washington, D.C.-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent non-profit energy research and development organization, supported the development of the project. EPRI researchers were on-site during the testing, and the organization will publish a detailed report on the testing and results later this summer.
“Accelerating low-carbon technology development is essential to achieve net-zero targets by mid-century,” said Neva Espinoza, vice president of energy supply and low-carbon resources at EPRI.
“This successful hydrogen demonstration test reinforces the significant, game-changing role that this and other low-carbon technologies can play to help reach economy-wide decarbonization.”
Two years ago, Southern Company announced a long-term of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Mitsubishi Power provided full turnkey service for the project including engineering, planning, hydrogen blending hardware, controls, and risk management.
The project built upon Mitsubishi Power’s hydrogen combustion experience and ongoing hydrogen combustion development at the company’s facility in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Mitsubishi recently announced it will establish the world’s first center for testing hydrogen-related technologies.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – For the third year in a row, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has granted Georgia permission to change how it tracks school performance in response to the pandemic.
In the first two years of the pandemic, the federal agency allowed states a great deal of flexibility in how they measured school performance.
This school year, Georgia again applied for and received permission for exceptions in how it reports the data, according to a letter from the DOE to State School Superintendent Richard Woods dated May 26.
Georgia will not assign overall scores or letter grades for schools and districts as it did before the pandemic.
Those grades were calculated using a combination of factors such as content mastery, progress, readiness, and, for high schools, graduation rates.
Collecting such data helps families evaluate school performance and hold schools accountable. The data for each school is published on the Georgia School Grades Report website.
Georgia also uses this data to determine which schools need special attention and support.
The state will still collect and publish data on how schools perform on individual indicators, such as reading, math, social studies, and science.
“The purpose is to focus on the information in each indicator and to avoid consolidating complex information into an oversimplified numerical score,” according to a presentation on Georgia’s Department of Education website.
Data on student attendance, college and career readiness, and closing achievement gaps between different groups of students also will not be reported.
The state is revamping how it evaluates progress. Going forward, rather than evaluate school improvement based on a pre-pandemic baseline, Georgia will use 2022 data as a baseline.
“Our goal is to establish a new baseline rather than compare your school’s performance to pre-pandemic norms,” the state Department of Education presentation says.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state has suspended consideration of permit requests for a proposed titanium mine near the Okefenokee Swamp after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered Twin Pines Minerals to reapply for a federal permit.
In a memorandum issued a week ago, Michael Connor, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, wrote that the Alabama-based company had not properly consulted the Muscogee Creek Nation despite their request for such a consultation. The Okefenokee is culturally significant to the tribe.
Environmental groups that oppose the project say the mine in Charlton County would threaten the hydrology of the largest blackwater swamp in North America.
Twin Pines originally sought permits for a mine that, once excavated in phases, would have affected about 12,000 acres near the swamp. Later, the company revised its application to a smaller “demonstration mine” of nearly 900 acres.
The Army Corps declared back in 2020 that the mine didn’t need a federal permit because the wetlands at the proposed site of the project were excluded from federal regulation.
Following that determination, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) set up a process for Twin Pines to seek five state permits for the mine.
The state agency suspended consideration of those permits after the Army Corps reversed its earlier decision and decided to require Twin Pines to reapply for a federal permit.
“Given the Corps’ recent action, Georgia EPD is deferring action on all applications for [state permits],” The EPD wrote in a permitting update dated Tuesday.
“Following the conclusion of the federal process, EPD will assess what permits are required for the proposed demonstration mine and determine the best process for consideration of these permit applications moving forward.”
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
