ATLANTA – The Georgia Board of Natural Resources voted Tuesday to acquire 4,420 acres of undeveloped coastal habitat in southeastern Georgia from The Conservation Fund and the Open Space Institute.
The land is part of the 16,083 acre Ceylon tract, which the two preservation groups bought a year ago with the intent of transferring ownership to the state.
The largest undeveloped tract of coastal Georgia is located along the Satilla River in Camden County. The diverse landscape of salt marshes, tidal creeks and longleaf pine forests is home to threatened and endangered species including the gopher tortoise and indigo snake.
The Ceylon tract is close enough to the Interstate 95 corridor that it likely would be developed without the state and the conservation groups stepping in.
“This property is zoned to be able to take over 20,000 single-family homes, high density,” said Andrew Schock, Georgia state director for the Conservation Fund. “Three million square feet of commercial space and up to two deep-water marinas all were possible on this site.”
The purchases approved Tuesday involve two parcels, a 2,903-acre site owned by The Conservation Fund and 1,517 acres owned by the Open Space Institute.
While the state is paying $6.45 million for the two sites, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is getting contributions from several sources, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Chicago-based Bobolink Foundation and the new Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Fund.
The state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment two years ago to raise money for land conservation, restoration and parks projects through a tax on purchases of sporting goods. The Ceylon tract qualified for the program’s first round of funding awarded earlier this year.
The two sites approved for acquisition Tuesday are for the first phase of the project, Steve Friedman, the DNR’s chief of real estate, told board members. He said he would come to the board with the second phase of the proposed purchases late next year.
The Ceylon tract borders Cabin Bluff, another undeveloped site the state is in the process of acquiring. The DNR board voted in October to purchase nearly 8,000 acres there from the same two conservation groups.
“Cabin Bluff and … Ceylon are significant natural areas in Georgia,” said Kim Elliman, president and CEO of the Open Space Institute. “An incredible array of native species will continue to call the property and its waters home.”
Both the Ceylon and Cabin Bluff sites are slated to become Georgia DNR wildlife management areas.
ATLANTA – The Port of Savannah set a record for containerized cargo volume in October, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) reported Monday.
The nation’s busiest export hub handled an all-time high 494,095 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) in October, an increase of 8.3% over October of last year. The October total broke the previous monthly record of 441,600 TEUs set in August.
The tremendous growth Savannah is experiencing is the main reason the authority is expanding the port’s capacity, said Will McKnight, chairman of the GPA’s Board of Directors.
“Our long-term infrastructure investments ensure cargo fluidity as Savannah’s container trade increases,” McKnight said. “By improving our berthing for today’s larger vessels, expanding container storage and doubling our rail lift capacity, we’re making sure the GPA is ready when our customers are ready to grow.”
A prime example of the infrastructure improvements underway at the Port of Savannah is the Mason Mega Rail Terminal, which is now more than 75% finished. In the latest milestone for the project, rail cars began traveling along newly installed track linking the Garden City Terminal’s Chatham and Mason rail yards.
When completed, the Mason Mega Rail Terminal will give the port enough additional capacity to ship goods to cities in the nation’s Mid-South and Midwest regions.
While there’s no guarantee the container trade at the Port of Savannah will continue to increase so quickly, GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch noted the recent growth came during a global pandemic.
“To have achieved all-time record volumes in two of the last three months is a tribute to the hard work and collaboration between GPA and our partners throughout the supply chain,” Lynch said.
Meanwhile, the ports authority also broke a record in October for handling vehicles and machinery units at the Port of Brunswick.
The port moved 78,772 roll-on/roll-off units during the month, an increase of 24% over October 2019. The previous monthly record was set back in April 2015.
First-time unemployment claims in Georgia rose last week.
ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims rose in Georgia last week for the first time since early October.
Newly jobless Georgians filed 29,088 claims last week, up 9,462 over the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The agency paid out $153 million in state and federal unemployment benefits last week, bringing to more than $16 billion the benefits distributed since March, when the coronavirus pandemic first prompted Georgia businesses to close and lay off workers.
Since the week ending March 21, the labor department has processed nearly 4.1 million initial unemployment claims, more than the last nine years combined.
The job sector that accounted for the most first-time claims last week was accommodation and food services with 10,124 claims. The administrative and support services sector was next with 2,496 claims, followed by health care and social assistance with 2,256.
More than 168,000 jobs are currently listed on EmployGeorgia. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs.
ATLANTA – A recent court ruling awarding monetary damages to neighbors of a North Carolina industrial hog farm is stirring interest among Georgia agribusiness organizations in renewing a push to update the state’s Right to Farm Act.
But the Nov. 20 judgement a federal appeals court handed down against giant pork producer Smithfield Foods also served notice to environmental groups that defeated the legislation during this year’s General Assembly session to gear up for another round in 2021.
“I think it amps up the stakes,” said Gordon Rogers, executive director of Albany-based Flint Riverkeeper, one of the groups that joined forces to oppose changes to the Right to Farm Act this year.
The bill would make it more difficult for property owners living in areas zoned for agricultural use to file nuisance suits against nearby farms generating offensive noise, dust, smells or sludge runoff.
Under an amendment to the original bill approved on the Senate floor, lawsuits would have to be filed within two years after a nuisance occurs. More restrictive language in the original legislation would have required lawsuits to be brought within two years of an applicant obtaining a permit to start or change a farm operation.
The Republican-controlled Georgia Senate passed the bill in June in a vote along party lines, but it failed to reach the floor of the state House of Representatives.
Supporters say the original Right to Farm Act the legislature enacted during the 1980s contains ambiguities that expose farmers to costly lawsuits that could be avoided by a clearer statute.
“Agriculture is our No.-1 industry,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “If companies are nervous to invest in rural Georgia because they feel our law is not strong enough to protect against frivolous lawsuits, we need to address it.”
The legislation’s opponents say it is intended to shield large industrial farms not only against lawsuits from an influx of suburban homeowners who find farm operations offensive but even from other farmers who don’t want giant livestock operations in their midst polluting their air and water.
“Major industrial row crop farmers as well as the organic types who opposed this bill showed this mantra [the bill’s supporters] were pushing that this was good for all Georgia famers was not true,” Rogers said.
Rogers said there’s no need to update the Right to Farm Act because the original law already contains sufficient protections for farmers when neighbors who object to the sights, smells and sounds of farming move into their vicinity.
“I cannot and you cannot move next to a farming operation now and bring a complaint,” he said. “If [the farm is] already there, you have no right. … That problem was solved in the 1980s.”
But Mike Giles, president of the Gainesville-based Georgia Poultry Federation, said the law needs updating.
“It has to do with the determination of what is a changed condition,” he said.
As an example, Giles explained, a farm located in an agricultural zone near a cluster of houses might be left alone until a new homeowner moves in who objects to the farm and files a nuisance suit.
“Is that a changed condition or not?” Giles asked. “I would argue it is, but a court may rule it’s not.”
Walker said the legislation is not an effort to gut existing laws prohibiting large farms from polluting streams and other waterways. Those protections already are in effect in the form of the federal Clean Water Act, he said.
“We were not trying to circumvent the Clean Water Act,” he said. “This was noise, odor, dust, light, that sort of thing.”
But Senate Democrats argued during the June floor debate on the bill that the state and federal environmental agencies in charge of enforcing the Clean Water Act typically offer little protection from violations.
Rogers said the bill fizzled at the end of this year’s legislative session because the level of grassroots opposition scared off lawmakers in an election year.
“They didn’t want to get on the bad side of their constituents,” he said.
Walker said supporters hope to overcome that opposition during the upcoming General Assembly session by stepping up their efforts to educate the legislators they will need to pass it.
“It ended up being a rural-urban fight,” he said of last year’s debate on the bill. “We just have to educate our urban and suburban legislators of the need for it.”
ATLANTA – Atlanta-based The Home Depot has agreed to pay a $17.5 million settlement with 46 states including Georgia over a 2014 data breach
The settlement, announced Tuesday, resolves a multistate investigation of a data breach involving the payment card information of about 40 million Home Depot customers nationwide. Georgia’s share of the agreement will total more than $356,000.
“Our office will continue to do all we can to protect consumers and their personally identifiable information,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said. “It is important to remember that in a world where cybersecurity threats are evolving, so too must our efforts to combat them. That means we must all remain vigilant.”
The breach occurred when hackers gained access to The Home Depot’s network and deployed malware on the retailer’s self-checkout point-of-sale system. The malware let the hackers obtain the payment card information of customers who used self-checkout lanes at The Home Depot stores across the country between April 10 and Sept. 13 of 2014.
Carr said The Home Depot has taken steps to correct the situation. In addition to the $17.5 million settlement payment, the company has agreed to strengthen its information security program to better protect the personal information of consumers.
Specific steps include hiring a chief information security officer who will report directly to senior executives and members of The Home Depot’s board, providing security awareness and privacy training to all personnel who have access to the company’s network and employing security safeguards for log-ins, password management, firewalls, encryption and intrusion detection.
