The cooling tower for one of two new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle looms in the distance.
ATLANTA – The state agency that regulates Georgia utilities is no longer going to approve incremental costs associated with the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion.
The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) voted unanimously Tuesday to postpone further decisions on the mounting costs of the long-delayed project and whether those expenses can be passed on to customers until after the work is completed.
Under a stipulation agreement the PSC staff and Georgia Power reached late last month, the commission approved $670 million the Atlanta-based utility spent on the project during the last half of last year. While the PSC will continue reviewing Georgia Power’s spending at the plant south of Augusta every six months going forward, it will not vote on those costs.
Tuesday’s vote came after it became clear that Georgia Power’s share of the project’s capital costs have exceeded a $7.3 billion cap the commission set in 2017 when it agreed to let the utility finish the project despite massive delays and cost overruns.
Georgia Power announced last month that its share of those capital costs had increased to $9.2 billion.
The overall price tag for the Vogtle expansion being shared by Georgia Power and three utility partners has nearly doubled from the original estimate of $14 billion approved by the commission in 2009 to about $26 billion.
The first of the two new reactors originally was scheduled for completion in 2016, with the second reactor to go into service one year later. But the work has run into significant delays, partly due to the bankruptcy of prime contractor Westinghouse and, more recently, to workforce shortages arising from the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the latest revision to the schedule, the first new reactor is expected to go into service in the second quarter of next year, with the second to follow in the first quarter of 2023.
Tuesday’s vote by the PSC not to make any decisions on the rising costs of the project until after it is completed doesn’t take Georgia Power customers off the hook for picking up the bill eventually.
“This stipulation in no way limits or prohibits Georgia Power from bringing expenditures above $7.3 billion to the commission for verification and approval, or for inclusion in [the customer] rate base, at a later time,” the agreement states.
Still, putting off a determination on how much of the cost overruns customers will have to absorb is good news, said Kurt Ebersbach, senior attorney for the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center.
“[Georgia Power] could have come in again and sought commission approval for the $9.2 billion,” he said. “[But] they’ve got quality control issues. … It was not a good time for them to come forward and seek approval for an additional $2 billion.”
ATLANTA – Georgia’s health agency will more than double the number of temporary hospital staff to help cope with the current surge in COVID-19 patients, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
The Department of Community Health (DCH) will commit $125 million in addition to $500 million the state already is spending to increase state-supported hospital staff at 68 hospitals across Georgia from 1,300 to 2,800, Kemp said.
Specifically, 170 of the new staff will go to rural hospitals, the governor told reporters during a news conference at the state Capitol.
Commissioner of Community Health Caylee Noggle and her team have also identified 450 beds in nine regional coordinating hospitals that will be soon be available for the new staff being deployed to treat patients.
Kemp said his decision to increase hospital staff was based on input during the last week from hospital CEOs.
“Virtually every hospital’s most pressing issue was a lack of qualified staff to treat the patients coming thru their doors, nurses, respiratory therapists, ICU personnel, just to name a few,” he said.
The additional hospital staff will be provided through a continuation of the state’s no-bid contract with a private Alpharetta-based staffing firm, Jackson Healthcare, and a subsidiary. Georgia Health News reported recently that the contract, which began with the first wave of COVID-19 in Georgia last year, had brought Jackson $434 million as of July 23.
Kemp’s announcement Monday came as Georgia continued to lag the nation in COVID-19 vaccinations. As of Monday, 48% of Georgians had received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to the national average of 59.7%.
About 41% of Georgians had been fully vaccinated, compared to 50.7% of all Americans.
The governor also announced Monday that state offices will be closed on Friday, Sept. 3, in advance of Labor Day to encourage state employees who have not been vaccinated to schedule a shot on or before that day.
Kemp also doubled down on his previous declaration that the state will remain open for business despite a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
“We will not shut businesses down,” he said. “We will not prevent families from earning a paycheck.”
The governor also defended his decision not to impose a mask mandate on teachers and students in Georgia schools. However, he said he would support any choice individual schools or school districts might make to switch to online classes for a short period of time due to a rise in COVID-19 cases.
“Let the schools deal with the individual situations they have,” Kemp said. “That’s better than one size fits all.”
Overall, 982,589 Georgians have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began, the state Department of Public Health (DPH) reported Monday. About 90% of the current cases involve the delta variant, DPH Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey said Monday.
The virus has hospitalized 68,852 Georgians and resulted in 21,978 confirmed or probable deaths.
On Monday alone, the DPH reported 5,165 confirmed cases, 212 hospitalizations and 45 deaths.
ATLANTA – The beginning of a new fiscal year meant more records at Georgia’s two coastal ports.
The Port of Savannah handled 450,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containerized cargo last month, an increase of 25% over July of last year, the Georgia Ports Authority reported Monday.
Cars and other machinery units at the Port of Brunswick were up 39% in July compared to July 2020.
Savannah’s Garden City Terminal has set container trade records in nine of the last 10 months, despite the supply chain disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In Brunswick, four of the top 10 months for roll-on/roll-off trade have occurred since last October.
“Consumer demand and the addition of extra loader vessels [are] driving a prolonged surge in volumes,” ports authority Executive Director Griff Lynch said.
Meanwhile, work continues on a series of improvements that will add more capacity, particularly at Savannah.
The first of two space-adding projects at the Garden City Terminal is due to open this fall, adding 700,000 TEUs of container capacity. The second phase of the expansion will open in 2023.
“We’re expecting continued elevated demand in both Brunswick and Savannah through at least the end of 2021,” said Joel Wooten, chairman of the ports authority’s board.
Another major project, the Mason Mega Rail Terminal, is scheduled to be finished by October. The terminal will add 18 working railroad tracks at Savannah, which will double the port’s rail lift capacity to 2 million TEUs per year.
Also, the long-awaited deepening of Savannah Harbor is 90% complete. Increasing the depth of the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet will allow the new generation of super-sized containerized cargo ships to get into and out of the Port of Savannah with greater scheduling flexibility.
ATLANTA – Georgia elementary and secondary students scored slightly lower on end-of-course tests last spring, a trend state Department of Education (DOE) officials attributed to the disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Also, fewer students took the tests than at the end of the 2018-19 school year, the last year the Georgia Milestones tests were administered.
Scores on the End of Grade tests administered to students in grades three through eight and the End of Course tests taken by high school students were affected by rolling COVID-19 quarantines, rising case counts and shifting instructional models, State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Monday.
“Georgia Milestones was designed to measure instruction during a typical school year, and 2020-21 was anything but,” he said. “Given the impacts of the pandemic on all students, we expected some decreases this year.
“With educators already working to get students back on track and the vast majority of school districts offering five days a week of in-person instruction this year, I’m confident students will receive the support they need to make up any lost ground.”
The DOE sought a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education twice during the last year to scrap the tests for the 2020-21 school year because of the pandemic but was denied. The Georgia Board of Education responded to the federal decision by approving Woods’ proposal to temporarily lower the weight the test scores counted toward students’ final grades from 20% to just .01%.
Compared to the Georgia Milestones tests administered during the 2018-19 school year, scores declined statewide by an average of six points in grades 3-8 and a range of 4 to 15 points in high school.
Statewide, the percent of enrolled students who took the tests last spring ranged from a high of 79% in third grade to a low of 55% in high school. School districts did not require students to come into the school building solely to take the test if they were uncomfortable doing so due to the pandemic.
Nearly all school districts are planning to use a formative assessment provided by the DOE to measure learning loss during the pandemic.
State and local funds have been dedicated to addressing the issue, including significant investments in instructional resources, state and regional academic recovery specialists and improvements to internet connectivity in rural and underserved areas of Georgia.
ATLANTA – The state is moving forward with plans to leave in place coal ash from some of Georgia Power’s closed ash ponds despite objections from neighbors and environmental groups.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) has issued a draft permit allowing the Atlanta-based utility to cap one of four ash ponds at Plant Hammond in Floyd County near the Coosa River, leaving the ash in an unlined pit. Ash from the other three ponds will be excavated and removed for storage in a lined landfill.
The Plant Hammond ash pond is the first of 10 around the state Georgia Power plans to close in place. Ash from 19 other ponds will be excavated and removed.
Several factors were considered in deciding which ash ponds to excavate and which to close in place, Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft wrote in an email.
“We have worked with third-party professional engineers and geologists to design our plans on a site-by-site basis considering size, location, amount of material and the geology of the area among other factors,” Kraft wrote. “Each closure design is unique.”
But Georgians who live near ash ponds slated to be closed in place and environmental advocates say all of the ponds should be excavated.
Coal ash contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water.
In the case of Plant Hammond, leaving the ash in an unlined pit will cause it to come into contact with groundwater, Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative, said Aug. 10 during a public hearing on the draft permit.
“Allowing it to remain in groundwater does not protect the Coosa River or water downstream,” he said. “It should be separated from water.”
Georgia Power is spending an estimated $8.1 billion on a multi-year plan to close all 29 of its ash ponds located at 11 coal-burning power plants across the state to comply with federal and state regulations.
The plants – including Plant Hammond – are being retired as the utility reduces its reliance on coal for power generation in order to reach a long-term goal of lower carbon emissions.
Aaron Mitchell, director of environmental affairs for Georgia Power, said the closure-in-place option for ash ponds is one of two authorized by both the EPD and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the other being excavation and removal.
The EPD’s permitting program for ash ponds due to be closed in place requires post-closure care for 30 years, including ongoing maintenance of the cover and groundwater monitoring. Results from monitoring must be reported at least twice a year and posted on Georgia Power’s website.
“It addresses both the federal and state rules and establishes permitting conditions we will comply with to protect the public health and environment,” Mitchell said. “Safe, effective closure is part of our commitment to the community.”
Opponents of closing ash ponds in place point to Juliette as an example of what can happen when ash left in an unlined pond contaminates adjacent groundwater. Residents of that community near Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer are suing Georgia Power over contamination of their drinking water wells.
“Georgia Power is gambling with our public health,” Acworth resident Robert Whorton testified at the Aug. 10 hearing. “I don’t think we should accept toxic coal ash leaching into our groundwater.”
Others who spoke at the hearing warned the decision the EPD makes on the Plant Hammond draft permit likely will set a precedent that will affect the other nine closure-in-place plans Georgia Power will be seeking from the state agency.
The EPD is accepting written public comment on the draft permit through Sept. 10.
