The question of how we will acquire and manage our energy in the future is one with global implications, the answers to which should excite more than just ecologically minded folks. Even the most hardened climate-change skeptic should be able to appreciate that an America which is powered by homegrown, renewable sources is a nation that will last. So, how does this global question manifest itself locally? What are the steps that Athens could take to provide a more secure energy future?

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Beyond Coal: On campus, a campaign led by the group Students for Environmental Action is calling for an end to burning coal on campus. Coal is one of the dirtiest forms of energy from beginning to end, with environmentally devastating and controversial mining practices and polluting byproducts. Regardless of how you feel about coal, if we do leave that particular energy source behind, what are local, sustainable resources that we might turn to for a greener Athens?

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Water, Water, Everywhere: Already we have two local hydroelectric plants: one at Barnett Shoals, just south of town, and one at Tallassee Shoals, just north of town, with capacities of 2,800 and 2,300 kilowatts, respectively—enough to power a couple thousand homes between them when the rivers are flowing well. Historically, there have been many more dams around town, servicing local mills and streetcars. By my count, there were at least seven other dam sites around Clarke County itself, with others further afield, like the Watson Mill Dam on the Madison-Oglethorpe county line. The Watson Mill Dam is largely intact, as are dams at Flinchum’s Phoenix in Whitehall Forest, and near the site of the Princeton Mill. Others, such as the one at Ben Burton Park and the one just upstream from the Whitehall Mill, have almost completely vanished, with only overgrown remnants on either bank to hint at the former size of the structures.

While it would certainly be a difficult road to actually restoring those ruins to functioning power plants, the idea is certainly an interesting one to consider. Modern-day small-scale hydroelectric operations like these don’t necessarily have to have the negative environmental impacts of their predecessors. The Tallassee Shoals plant is certified by the Low Impact Hydropower Institute, covering issues including water quality, watershed protections and other factors related to the facility’s environmental impact.

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We Have Gas: The recent plan to begin capturing methane from the ACC Landfill is another project that could help achieve a more sustainable energy system around here. The plan calls for allowing a private company, Blue Source LLC, to drill wells into the landfill, capturing and burning gases to create enough power for 2000 homes. This system involves capturing methane that would have naturally escaped as part of the decomposition process, as opposed to the waste-to-energy plant that's proposed for Elbert County, which involves actively burning the trash itself. The Elbert County project has attracted near-unanimous opposition from area residents in light of its foreseen environmental and other impacts. Regardless of the methods involved, dealing with our waste is a difficult and messy proposition in the long-term.

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Catching Rays: We do live in the Sun Belt, and although it has been raining a lot lately, which is good for hydro-electricity, the majority of the time skies are clear all day long. Green Power EMC, the company behind Tallassee Shoals’ low-impact status, also has a program which places solar panels at schools, the nearest at Oconee County High School. Most of these are small-scale demonstration projects, but the potential for harnessing our rooftops for energy production is certainly exciting. Imagine if every flat-roofed school building or big-box retailer were equipped with a large-scale system.

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Looking Ahead: Of course, generation is only part of the battle, and becoming more efficient is a key piece of the strategy. ACC has embraced LEED certification for new building projects, producing an already impressive list of energy-efficient structures. And while UGA has for the most part eschewed certification, its recent projects have conformed to LEED guidelines [see Russell Cox's story in this issue]. A potentially forthcoming local ordinance could extend green building standards to private commercial development as well. That ordinance, if passed, would only apply to new construction, though, so it’s also exciting to see the formation of the “Sustainable Industry Roundtable,” a group aimed at greening local industry.

It would be exciting to see these strategies come together to produce a truly sustainable community. A few thousand homes here and there under these projects add up to serving a significant percentage of the population with local, sustainable energy. It doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to imagine: consider that the two active dams and methane capture could potentially represent energy for approximately 4000 homes combined. 2000 Census data stated Athens had approximately 39,000 households, which means we could be achieving 10 percent of residential energy usage from local, sustainable sources very shortly. How much further could we go?

Kevan Williams

athensrising@flagpole.com

What's Happening?: That giant hole being opened up on Hull Street isn’t a grave being dug for the local construction industry; it’s actually a sign that things are still alive and kicking around here. That hole will actually be the underground vault for the UGA Special Collections Library. This new library may be one of the few high-profile new construction projects around town, but work is still being done here, with renovations aplenty. The list of campus buildings undergoing major renovations is pretty impressive, from historic structures like New College and the Fine Arts building to dated modernist buildings like Journalism and the Coliseum. Expansion seems to be another theme, with projects at the Butts-Mehre complex and the Georgia Museum of Art really starting to take shape.

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More UGA Builds: One under-the-radar project is a new home for the Ceramics Department on River Road, in a 15,000 square foot building with an industrial look not too far from the new Lamar Dodd School of Art. This will consolidate that department, which is currently on the far end of campus, and the rest of the art school, and perhaps free up the old Lamar Dodd building on Jackson Street for its turn on the renovation bandwagon. This project should be a quick one, with the ceramics building opening in the fall. I do have one question, though: With River Road already dominated by so many looming revivalist fraternity mansions, why not give the ceramics department a Grecian temple just like everyone else, for consistency’s sake?

Speaking of denuded hills above the river, construction of a new bridge and a new building at Horseshoe Bend have left College Station Road looking a little less green lately. The bridge will connect over to the sewage treatment plant on Bailey Street behind Barnett Shoals Road. While the new plant will take care of the “poop on the loop” odor issues, those missing trees won’t be back for a generation, and we may have just traded olfactory pollution for the visual sort. Especially of note, some of the crape myrtles that were planted in the College Station median for the '96 Olympics were wiped out. Another impressive stand was wiped out as part of Special Collections Library site preparations; it’s a shame we can’t be more careful with our resources, since trees take a long time to grow.

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Infill Action: One project that recently caught my eye was on Baxter Street, at the site of the former China Boat. Although some elements of the original structure were kept, this “renovation” features an interesting curving facade facing Baxter, designed by E and E Architecture. I’m looking forward to seeing this one finished and adding to the growing collection of interesting commercial infill along Baxter Street.

Another project that’s gotten quite a bit of flak is a proposal for a RaceTrac gas station on West Broad Street, at Colima Avenue. The proposed highway-style 18-pump station isn’t compatible with the single-family neighborhood, and the developer's zoning request was withdrawn at the last ACC Commission voting session when it was made clear that it had no chance for approval (the developer now has the option to re-submit a new design for the project). Gas stations don’t have to be overbearing eyesores, though, and if designed well enough, the Broad Street station could actually be an attractive improvement to the neighborhood. Consider the Texaco station adjacent to J's Bottle Shop on Prince, with its convenience store oriented toward the street and pumps off to the side. A little creativity in the design, as opposed to the strategy for maximum visibility, might go a long way.

There has even been some infill scattered around town in the last few months in spite of the economic slowdown, most notably a complex of new neo-Craftsman houses on MLK near North Avenue. But with talk of UGA cutting enrollment due to state budget crisis, even the infill student housing market may go away.

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Abuse of Resources: As a final note, it’s interesting to watch our local bureaucracies go after Athens’ character so whole-heartedly. The planning department still seems willing to shut down Jittery Joe’s Tasting Room on East Broad, potentially forcing one of the coolest local (and locally minded) businesses around town to move over a parking lot technicality. Ironically, the effect that Jittery Joe’s has had on cycling around town ought to more than make up for any negative effects this parking lot will have.

Likewise, the services that Nuçi’s Space provides are certainly worth more to the community than the tax revenue their property would provide. And UGA recently went to war over scooters, potentially eliminating a positive local phenomenon (as a follow-up to my recent column on the subject I spoke with Leon Ward of ReCycle Scooters, who told me that the way Athens has embraced scooter use—especially those with 50cc and smaller engines—may be unique among towns our size in this country).

Each of these three cases represents an overcompensated reactionary response to a perceived fear that it will “open the floodgates” to things that are detrimental to our community. Really though, aren’t the bureaucratic overreactions doing more damage?

Kevan Williams

athensrising@flagpole.com

So far as I can tell, bio-medical advances in our region began and ended in the 1840s, when Crawford Long came up with ether as an anesthetic. As storied as our past relationship with this industry is, it's no wonder that multi-national corporations like Novartis and Solvay haven’t set up shop in Athens. No offense to the firms such as Noramco and Merial that are doing great work in the bio-tech field locally, but when I think Athens, bio-science isn’t at the top of the list of local identities. Not yet, anyway.

Even if we did manage to grab one of those big deals, and roped in a factory from some medical giant, would it even put a dent into our poverty rate? What would 400 or so manufacturing jobs do to address the root causes of the issues we face? Further, would this multi-national company stick around in our little town once the incentives package wore off or economic conditions called for downsizing?

The reality is that Athens is a town without a major industry, propped up by a university that is ultimately somewhat indifferent to its surroundings. Many cities are fortunate enough to have big, locally grown industries, and there is often a beneficial relationship, with these corporations giving back to efforts to improve the community. The Beltline in Atlanta is a good example of those kinds of corporate-assisted efforts: $30 million have been raised for the project, the major donors representing a "who’s who" of big companies in Georgia.

While recruiting industries to the area is important, I wonder if we should maybe put the myth of the Swiss pharmaceutical magnate to rest. All of Athens’ problems won’t be solved when and if we land one of these large European drug plants. A few supporting businesses might follow that hypothetical first factory, especially now that a local medical school is a sure bet, but will a vaccine factory really open the floodgates as some would have us believe, turning 316 into the fabled “University Parkway” bio-technology corridor, with factories from here to Emory? Maybe one day, but not any time soon.

We shouldn’t spend big bucks putting all our eggs in that basket. Consider the $17.7 million SPLOST proposal from Gerry Whitworth to create a publicly owned industrial park to attract such large factories. If we’re going to spend that sort of money (which is by no means a done deal), why don’t we create facilities that are geared to local start-ups? There are already some fledgling bio-tech firms on campus, as part of the Georgia BioBusiness Center, some of which have spun off and moved elsewhere, and one of which (BioInquire) will be expanding locally. Artbio is another company that’s growing here, with help from a local grant.

If Athens is known for anything, it’s creativity and collaboration. Is it too crazy to think the locally minded DIY ethics that serve Athens so well in music and arts could be applied to industry?

What are the spaces that local on-campus biotech firms need to get off campus and up and running? A smaller office building with shared lab space might not be as sexy as a $300 million factory on several hundred acres, but it could be what allows small start-ups to grow to the point that they might actually build a factory a decade or two down the road. Those sorts of companies, if they did succeed, would be much more likely to give back to the community down the road, too, as compared to out-of-town industries searching for the sweetest tax break.

In the meantime, a diversified economy is worth aiming for, rather than banking too heavily on the bio-tech field. Are there are other local companies with the potential to grow into larger community cornerstones that could use a boost? What about the successful local brewery Terrapin? Although they’re a small company right now, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine them growing and employing a lot more folks along the way. Maybe one day our funky brewery would be what Coca-Cola is to Atlanta.

Another local company that has caught my eye is Power Partners, with their solar water heater manufacturing. Surely that’s a growing industry worth nurturing. Two of President Obama’s big campaign planks were smart grids and sustainable industry. While Power Partners recently laid off some workers, green building is the future, and if we have a local industry that’s already got a foot-hold in that market, it seems like a wise investment. Even if transformers aren’t quite as cool as new vaccines, maybe we should think about Power Partners instead of Solvay and Novartis.

What about looking back to cotton, Athens’ original manufacturing legacy? We certainly have enough fashion retail enterprises downtown, and a small but growing identity in that field. But where do the products those people sell come from? What if local designers had a production line intown where they manufactured their goods for sale throughout the region? There is a push-back against the sweat-shops of globalism, and it's worth considering that a slice of the fair-trade garment industry could happen right here. Sustainable agriculture is another field where the region might be taking off, if the 1000 or so people who attended the recent Georgia Organics conference are any indication. The Athens area is already well ahead of the curve on the organic farms front. Might northeast Georgia one day be known for the Southeast's finest organic veggies, rather than chicken houses?

We shouldn’t abandon our hopes of high-tech research and bio-medical factories here in Athens, but we should also look at what’s already around us—needing a nudge in the right direction or a leg up. One thing Athens has is creativity aplenty, and that’s something that we can build on.

Kevan Williams

athensrising@flagpole.com