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Tallassee Road
The Return of the Roundabout?
originally published April 2, 2008
Proposed changes to Tallassee Road include adding bike lanes and sidewalks along the road’s nearly six-mile length, Athens-Clarke County Transportation and Public Works Director David Clark told citizens at a public forum last week - but those could be 20 years away. A more immediate problem is congestion at the intersection with Whitehead Road. “That’s the first project that needs to be done,” Clark told about 50 citizens who attended a Mar. 24 meeting. Either a “roundabout” (i.e., traffic circle) or a stoplight could solve the problem, Clark said.
No roundabouts have been built in Clarke County, he acknowledged, but the intersection is only congested for a few hours a day, so a roundabout would keep traffic moving better than a stoplight would. Widely used in Europe, such traffic circles are gaining favor domestically because drivers do not have to stop at the intersection, but instead continue around a one-way circle to their desired turn-off. Aside from small-town courthouse squares, only a few roundabouts have been built in Georgia, including one on North Decatur Road in DeKalb County. And setting a stoplight to operate only a few hours a day (while flashing at other times) can cause accidents. “It’s very dangerous, because people do get accustomed to it operating all day long,” ACC traffic engineer Steve Decker said.
Long-range recommendations by Clark’s department (based on traffic counts and accident records, and subject to funding by county commissioners) include widening Tallassee Road to five lanes along the busy section from Loop 10 to Whitehead Road. That’s less than a mile, but it will be expensive, he said, because the railway bridge there would have to be widened. “It’s structurally sound, but it’s functionally obsolete,” Clark said of the bridge. And “working with CSX [the corporation that owns the railroad] is going to be a challenge,” he predicted. Eventually (in 2020 or later), left-turn lanes should be added to Tallassee Road at intersections with Lavender Road and at Quailwood Drive, Clark’s department suggests. Beyond Lavender, little improvement is needed to the two-lane road, Clark said, and a controversial proposal for a connecting road to the Atlanta Highway side of the Middle Oconee River is no longer planned. The proposals are still in draft form, and public comments (which can be emailed to dclark@co.clarke.ga.us) are taken “very seriously,” he said.
Rep. McKillip Checks In with Local Students
originally published April 2, 2008
“It’s a full-on onslaught on public education from that side of the aisle,” Athens Democratic State Representative Doug McKillip said of his Republican General Assembly colleagues in a talk Mar. 26 with around 50 members of UGA’s Young Democrats. Asked by a student “how serious” state Republican leaders are about introducing school vouchers into Georgia’s education policy landscape, McKillip responded, “Very serious. There are already cracks in the dam on vouchers.” Example: a version of one key bill, as of press time, would make vouchers available to students at a school considered by state or federal standards to be “failing” for three years running. As an alternative, McKillip said, he’s promoting public charter schools, a compromise that, he admitted, does involve some degree of what could be called a “school choice” philosophy.
And McKillip said he’s been a staunch supporter of Democratic Rep. Debbie Buckner’s attempts to rein in the redevelopment plan for Jekyll Island. “After all, it is a state park,” he said, “and it would be great if we could make the state park available to people who don’t own a condominium.” McKillip appeared skeptical of developer Linger Longer, Inc.'s claims about the affordability of hotel accommodations in its planned redevelopment. “It’s on its way to a Hilton Head-esque kind of thing,” he said.
On the state budget for the next fiscal year? “This was a budget I was proud to vote for,” McKillip told the students assembled, in large part because legislators were able to regain $90 million, he said, of Gov. Perdue’s proposed $140 million in “austerity cuts.” On the issue of water policy, a Perdue-backed plan to challenge Georgia’s border with Tennessee (with an eye toward Tennessee River water) seemed to get a warmer response - if largely facetious - from a lawyerly McKillip than many of his constituents might expect. “It is a really interesting idea,” he said of the Tennessee border challenge, citing legal points in favor of both state’s positions. (Still, he seemed unconvinced that the “interesting idea” was a good one.)
Asked about potential electoral repercussions from the legal troubles and recent downfall of Democratic Rep. Ron Sailor of Atlanta, McKillip - up for re-election for the first time this fall - said he didn’t expect any for his party. Also, despite a realist’s attitude toward what the Democratic minority is generally able to accomplish in the House (“fall back and play defense” is a key role, he said), the first-term House member expressed his characteristic optimism about the party’s chances in state-level elections this fall. “We would hope for some gains in November,” he said. “I mean, that’s the way the pendulum is swinging nationwide, and we’re hoping to gain some seats.”
Students Question a New Coal Plant Proposed for Middle Georgia
originally published April 2, 2008
In an era of heightened awareness of the causes and implications of global warming, new proposals for carbon dioxide-producing coal-fired electric power plants have had an increasingly hard time getting off the ground - more than 50 such proposals across the country were scuttled last year, according to an article from the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute - and their proponents are finding opposition from quickly-forming networks of activists challenging the typical prescription for meeting growing energy demands.
That’s been the case with so-called Plant Washington, a coal-burning generating plant planned for 1200 acres near Sandersville, GA (in Washington County), since the group hoping to build it announced its intentions in January. Energy-policy activists statewide began to question the need for the plant almost immediately, and a small group of them held a meeting in Athens Mar. 26 aimed at organizing students against the increase in coal-based power use in Georgia.
It was clear, though, at that meeting, that organizers are up against a somewhat unconventional opponent in the Plant Washington proposal. The proposal comes from a group known as “Power4Georgians,” a consortium of 10 Electric Membership Cooperatives (EMCs) which have essentially decided to band together and create their own electric power, rather than purchasing it from a wholesale producer. According to the group’s website, those EMCs buy baseload power from Georgia’s Oglethorpe Power Corporation, but buy supplemental power from various wholesalers.
“By 2013,” the website says, “many of these supplemental power contracts will expire. When combined with our forecasted growth, wholesalers are expected to charge substantially higher prices for contracts that are renewed. Most contracts will not be renewed because some contracts have been sold to other companies and renewal terms are unfavorable for members of the respective EMCs. Therefore, the EMCs are seeking ways to develop reliable sources of power at affordable prices.” In other words, the 10 EMCs of Power4Georgians are seeking to change the landscape of their business by getting further into the business of power generation themselves.
And while promoting energy efficiency and developing renewable power sources are parts of Power4Georgians’ plans, Georgia citizens opposed to an increase in coal-burning - and its related emissions and other impacts - seem to be quickly solidifying their disapproval. Many are familiar with the southwest Georgia fight against the Houston, TX-based corporation Dynegy - a very different foe from a group of EMCs - over its planned Longleaf coal plant in Early County. That plant has received permits from state regulators, but its emissions permitting is being held up in court by Atlanta-based public interest law firm GreenLaw.
Anti-coal activists wonder too, though, about the viability of new coal-based plants in a shifting regulatory environment at the national level, both within government and without. The large banks that fund massive capital projects like building new power plants have begun to move toward incorporating so-called “carbon principles” into their investment decisions, and there are some indications that a “cap-and-trade” scheme of carbon emissions regulation may see movement in Congress this year. Both would seem to hold potential to put the financing of new and old coal plants at risk, though it’s not clear yet if Power4Georgians is accounting for such factors. Additionally, the federal government recently suspended planned loans for rural power generation across the country, perhaps waiting for Congressional action before moving forward. Also in the news just last week: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s politically controversial veto of legislation greenlighting coal plant expansion in her state.
Regardless, for Seth Gunning, an organizer with the Southern Energy Network, there’s a key task in informing both the would-be neighbors of Plant Washington, in Sandersville, and concerned citizens and EMC customers across the state of what a new Middle Georgia coal plant could mean in terms of climate change, air quality, and more. Gunning told a sparse gathering of UGA students last week of “listening projects” he’s been helping to conduct in Sandersville since mid-February. Those involve not disseminating information but, as the name implies, simply listening to local citizens’ concerns. Concerns, he says, are numerous, but Sandersville residents tend to assume the plant’s eventual construction is a sure bet.
“They feel like it’s cut and dry; it’s happening; their voices don’t matter,” Gunning said, “and that’s not the case.” How the growing opposition to coal power will play in the rest of the state - whether with EMC customers, Athens-area residents, or students - is still an open question.
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