ATLANTA – Georgia Power reported Friday the discovery of a malfunctioning coolant pump at the second of two new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle, forcing a delay in the completion of the unit.
The news came one day after the Atlanta-based utility announced it has settled a lawsuit with Oglethorpe Power Corp., one of Georgia Power’s three minority partners on the nuclear expansion underway at the plant south of Augusta.
The problem in one of the reactor’s four pumps was found during pre-operational testing and startup of the unit, which had been expected to go into service between the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2024. The new forecast no longer envisions a 2023 completion date.
The first of the new reactors went into service at the end of July, seven years after originally scheduled and at more than double the original cost estimate.
The problem with the coolant pump was an “isolated event,” Georgia Power wrote in a report filed Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has a replacement on hand and is working to replace the malfunctioning pump.
Meanwhile, the settlement announced on Thursday calls for Georgia Power to pay Oglethorpe Power $413 million associated with cost overruns on the project, including $308 million in construction costs previously incurred and $105 million in projected capital expenses.
Oglethorpe sued Georgia Power in June of last year, declaring at the time it was exercising an option agreed to by all four project co-owners in 2018 by capping what it was willing to pay for the project.
Under the 2018 agreement, Oglethorpe announced it would reduce its share of ownership in the nuclear expansion from 30% to 28% in exchange for Georgia Power paying 100% of Oglethorpe’s remaining share of construction costs.
However, Oglethorpe has agreed in the new settlement to keep its 30% ownership share and drop the litigation.
“Oglethorpe Power and our members are experiencing growth on our system, so there’s great value in keeping our full Vogtle capacity, especially at a significantly reduced cost,” said Heather Teilhet, Oglethorpe’s senior vice president of external affairs.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement with Oglethorpe Power in this matter, and that Oglethorpe Power will retain its full ownership interest in these new units,” Georgia Power spokesman Jacob Hawkins added. “We continue to work constructively with all our partners to complete the Vogtle expansion, bringing clean and reliable energy to Georgia.”
Georgia Power’s other partners in the project are the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) and Dalton Utilities.
The new reactors at Plant Vogtle – units 3 and 4 – are joining units 1 and 2, which were built in the 1980s.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Labor processed 5.4 million unemployment claims during the pandemic, third highest in the nation, and paid out more than $23.6 billion in benefits.
While that workload put a tremendous strain on the department, it’s not the reason state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson announced late last month a plan to overhaul Georgia’s unemployment compensation system.
“This agency needed to modernize and make changes long before the pandemic,” Thompson said Oct. 2. “The pandemic just highlighted the necessity of making the changes.”
Thompson, a Republican former state senator, vowed to overhaul the labor department within days of taking office last January. He was sworn in on the heels of a Georgia Office of Inspector General report that nearly 300 state employees had erroneously received unemployment benefits totaling $6.7 million during the last two pandemic years.
Besides tackling fraud, Thompson also vowed to eliminate a backlog of about 59,000 unemployment claims and repair the agency’s 39 career centers around the state, many of which had suffered extensive water damage.
But modernizing an unemployment compensation system that dates back to the 1980s, one of the oldest in the country, was the most glaring need.
The goal is to replace that outdated system with a secure, cutting-edge web-based platform over the next two years to 28 months.
A fully online system will let unemployed Georgians file claims without having to travel to a career center, Thompson said.
“The customer experience will be much better,” he said. “On the employer side, it will help keep premiums low by cutting down on fraud … [and] it gives us greater transparency, so when we have audits, we can comply in a timely manner.”
The planned overhaul of the way Georgia provides unemployment compensation is drawing bipartisan praise from state lawmakers.
“I certainly think the Georgia Department of Labor needs to be modernized to support Georgia workers and their needs,” said state House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville. “My understanding is one in five Georgians who applied during the pandemic never got those [unemployment benefits].”
Georgia Rep. Bill Werkheiser, chairman of the House Industry and Labor Committee, said Georgia wasn’t alone in struggling to pay out jobless claims during the pandemic.
“I don’t think anybody in the country was prepared for the pandemic,” said Werkheiser, R-Glennville. “When you’re getting 100 calls a day and suddenly, it’s 6,000 to 10,000, you don’t have the staff.”
Thompson said the new system will help the department do its job better with a smaller staff than the agency had on its payroll in previous years. The modernization plan is intended to improve customer service through efficient call routing.
“There’s no reason you should have people waiting three hours on hold or six months or more waiting for appeals,” he said.
Thompson said the overhaul will cost $55 million to $60 million. The department has received a federal grant of $28 million to help with the effort, and the agency plans to seek additional funding from the General Assembly in the fiscal 2024 midyear budget and the fiscal 2025 spending plan, he said.
Besides modernizing the unemployment compensation system, the department also has landed an $8 million federal grant to help the agency find jobs for inmates released from the state prison system. Thompson said the goal is to use mock job interviews to train inmates in how to handle real interviews.
“We don’t want to just give them a referral,” he said. “We want to make sure they’re equipped with skills before leaving [the prison system].”
Another project involves relocating some of the department’s career centers.
“Some are in areas that aren’t very safe to come to,” Thompson said. “Everyone in our state deserves to work in a safe, clean environment.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Education is partnering with the state’s leading business organization to support workforce readiness in rural school districts.
Working with the Georgia Chamber Foundation and the chamber’s Center for Rural Prosperity, the state will award $3 million grants to rural districts for projects designed to increase workforce readiness.
The initiative will target projects aimed at expanding awareness of post-secondary and high-demand career opportunities. as well as efforts to increase entrepreneurial and work-based learning opportunities for rural students.
“Partnerships with business and industry are essential to expand opportunities for our students – to ensure they graduate equipped to pursue careers and live successful, fulfilling lives,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Friday.
“This historic partnership with the Georgia Chamber Foundation will allow us to reach students in our rural school systems with educational experiences that will equip them to participate in Georgia’s high-demand industries and contribute to the prosperity of our state.”
Education and talent development remain the top issues for Georgia’s business community, according to member surveys conducted by the Georgia Chamber.
“Consistently, we hear from Georgia businesses that they want to engage students earlier to expose them to long-term career opportunities in their communities,” said Chris Clark, the chamber’s president and CEO. “Furthering partnerships among industry and K-12 school districts is vital, especially in our rural communities.”
The state Department of Education defines 115 Georgia school systems as rural, including state charter schools in rural areas.
Under a program the state established in 2014, students who enroll in technical college courses in 18 high-demand fields, from welding to commercial truck driving to criminal justice – can qualify for full tuition coverage.
The new partnership between the state and the Georgia Chamber is the second initiative of its kind announced this week. On Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp unveiled GEORGIA MATCH, a proactive program that will send personalized letters from the governor to every high school senior in Georgia listing the public universities, colleges and technical colleges they are academically eligible to attend.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has extended the temporary suspension of Georgia’s sales tax on gasoline and other motor fuels for another month.
The Republican governor cited ongoing inflation and an uncertain economy caused by what he called irresponsible policies at the federal level for the need to keep the suspension he ordered last month in effect. The suspension will run through Nov. 11.
“We’re taking action at the state level to deliver relief to hardworking Georgians fighting through Bidenflation, soaring interest rates, and sky-high prices due to Bidenomics,” Kemp said Friday.
The average price of regular gasoline in Georgia is $3.18 per gallon, about 40 cents less than last month.
The current suspension of the motor fuels tax is the second Kemp has ordered. He first suspended the tax in March of last year, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russia drove gasoline prices in Georgia to a record high of more than $4 a gallon. The first suspension remained in effect until last January.
With a budget surplus that had reached an estimated $4.8 billion at the end of the last fiscal year in June, the state can afford to keep the suspension in place.
Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for canceling oil and gas leases on hundreds of thousands of acres in Alaska’s environmentally fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at a time when pump prices are well above where they were when he took office in 2021.
Biden authorized large withdrawals from the national Strategic Oil Reserve earlier this year in an effort to tamp down rising gasoline prices. But with the reserve at its lowest level in decade, he isn’t expected to reduce the stockpile further.
ATLANTA – Legislation on fishing access Georgia lawmakers may take up during this winter’s legislative session will pit public interest against private property rights.
That was the takeaway message from the initial meeting this week of a House study committee on fishing rights created at the end of this year’s session.
The legislature passed a bill on the last day of the 2023 session guaranteeing Georgians the right to fish in navigable portions of the state’s rivers and streams. The measure came after a property owner along a stretch of the Flint River known as Yellow Jacket Shoals banned fishing from the bank on its side of the river.
The question before the study committee promises to be how to define what constitutes a navigable river or stream and what does not.
“The law can be a little blurry on navigable streams and the rights of adjoining landowners,” Scott Robinson, chief of fisheries management at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, told members of the study committee, who met Wednesday in the small town of Gay in Meriwether County near the Upper Flint River. “The determination of navigability can be difficult.”
Mike Worley, president and CEO of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, said public fishing rights are increasingly coming under threat in Georgia.
“In recent years, a growing number of landowners are seeking to limit the public’s access to our rivers and streams,” he said. “No fishing signs have popped up all over Georgia’s rivers. … The rivers belong to all of us, not just to those who own the land.”
Quint Rogers, a fishing guide who hosts clients on trips on the Upper Flint and Upper Ocmulgee rivers, said his business depends on public fishing rights.
“Open access to Georgia’s navigable waters is key to my business model,” he said.
But Ben Brewton, a lawyer who owns land along the Flint River, said his family’s property legally extends to the center of the river, not just to the low-water mark at the river’s edge. It was Brewton who filed the lawsuit that prompted the General Assembly to pass the fishing rights bill.
“The land out in the river is owned by us,” he said. “Every year, we get a tax bill from the county. If you’re going to take that away, that land is going to go off the tax rolls, economically impacting the county.”
Brewton warned there are other riverside landowners all over Georgia who wouldn’t take kindly to their properties being taken by the state. He predicted a rash of lawsuits likely would follow.
Shawn Lumsden, who also owns land along the Flint, said interlopers on privately owned land along the river have become a nuisance.
“We support the public’s right to fish,” he said. “[But] our family has had problems for years with poachers and trespassers. We’re concerned that opening up streams and tributaries will give non-law-abiding citizens a direct corridor into private property.”
The study committee plans to hold several additional meetings around the state this month before coming up with recommendations for the full House to consider.
