Firefight
Ban Heats Up

Over 40 people addressed commissioners at an exploratory public hearing last week on extending ACC's anti-smoking ordinance to bars and/ or restaurants. Most speakers opposed extending the ban. Athens has banned smoking in most indoor public places (except bars, and the smoking sections of restaurants) for the past 10 years. Private employers may allow smoking only if all employees smoke; if not, a designated smoking area may be provided for smokers.

Commissioners last year discussed extending the ordinance and decided against it. But recently Mayor Heidi Davison referred the proposal back to the Legislative Review Committee - a panel of five commissioners. That committee has not proposed any specific ordinance, but wanted to hold a public hearing first to "get a feel for what kind of impact" a wider ban might have, according to chairman Tom Chasteen.

A number of commissioners have indicated "they would like to see a ban," Chasteen told Flagpole. In earlier committee discussions, some commissioners expressed caution or skepticism. "Let us be careful how we treat downtown Athens," Commissioner George Maxwell advised.

After hearing all the speakers, the committee adjourned without further discussion. It will meet again April 20; citizens may attend but cannot speak. Any recommendation would then go to the full commission.

Even speakers who operate smoke-free restaurants opposed a ban, saying the free market should decide. But other speakers defended their "right to breathe clean air," saying non-smokers often aren't assertive, and ventilation won't work to remove smoke. Several public-health organizations were represented, including the American Cancer Society and the Georgia Alliance for Tobacco Prevention. According to that group's website, eight Georgia local governments have passed smoking bans, including Valdosta, Snellville, Bainbridge, Statesboro, and Gwinnett County. Numerous others are considering smoking bans.

"All these kids want to do is be with their friends," one speaker told the five commissioners and a standing-room-only crowd. "They don't want lung cancer." Another said her father has lung cancer, and "I would just give anything if I could show people what it's like for somebody to die from cigarettes."

"It's not a big disruption" to go outside a bar to smoke, said another. "I cannot choose whether or not to breathe... I cannot see a band in a non-smoking restaurant." But other speakers questioned whether police should be "chasing smokers," and predicted that crowds would congregate outside bars to smoke. Daniel Berg, assistant manager of El Centro, said such crowds could be "problematic for the police and for us to control."

"I don't think most of you realize how hard bars and police work together to keep Athens fun," said another bar operator, predicting "massive amounts" of glass and litter on sidewalks if bars prohibit smoking. Others predicted uncontrolled private house parties if smokers are driven from bars.

Restaurant owners insisted any ban on smoking must include bars as well as restaurants, or else restaurants will be placed at a "tremendous disadvantage" as smokers flee to bars. In previous discussions, some commissioners have expressed sympathy for that view.

Berg, of El Centro, said a ban would have an "obvious impact" on business, otherwise restaurant owners would not be so worried about losing customers to bars. He suggested that all parties "work together" and suggested outdoor smoking areas.

John Huie

In his foolish youth John Huie operated one of Athens' first smoke-free restaurants.

Animal Control
This Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 79 calls.
7 complaints of animal cruelty
7 bite cases
5 complaints of barking dogs
4 citations for ordinance violations
38 animals impounded
34 dogs
4 cats
25 dogs placed
5 adopted
10 reclaimed
10 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of March 11 to March 17.

Up The Creek
Senate Weakens Buffers

State senators from the Athens area voted along with the 35-21 majority last week to weaken protections for most of Georgia's small creeks. Lobbied hard by developers, Senate Bill 460 would allow landowners to bury a small stream in a pipe - a practice which is presently illegal - and would eliminate the buffer requirement on the piped section of the stream. The bill now goes to the state House of Representatives. If it becomes law, it will not affect streams in Athens-Clarke County, which are protected by a local ordinance. About half a dozen other Georgia counties have passed local stream buffer ordinances.

In other counties, the measure would apply to small streams - or the upper reaches of larger ones - with less than 25 gallon-per-minute flow. Such a stream would typically drain 35 or 40 acres, according to hydrologist Dr. Rhett Jackson of UGA's forestry school, and may account for 40 percent of all Georgia streams by length. He describes them as "streams you can jump across."

A buffer is a strip of undisturbed forest, and 25-foot buffers are considered minimal for filtering pollutants from rainwater flowing into the creek and providing wildlife habitat. But according to Athens-area Senator Ralph Hudgins - a co-sponsor of the bill, along with Sen. Casey Cagle of Gainesville - developers were being "shut down" by the buffer requirement. Hudgins voted to weaken the requirements, as did Senators Don Balfour and Brian Kemp (who represents Athens).

But the proposed changes involved no input from environmental groups or academics, according to Dr. Jackson of the forestry school.
Sally Bethea agrees. A member of the state Board of Natural Resources, she is also the director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an Atlanta environmental group. She is one of "several" people on the 18-member board who "will vote in favor of protecting the environment" above other interests, she said. Many board members are "actually part of the regulated community" and are developers or bankers by profession.

"The environmental community was not involved in any meaningful way" in negotiations on Senate Bill 460, she told Flagpole, and its backers weren't interested in waiting for the results of a $300,000 UGA study of how well the present buffer laws are working. Instead, the bill was driven by the Gwinnett Council for Quality Growth and others, including a Macon Lexus dealer who is angry that buffer requirements have kept him from building his dealership as he wants it. She called the bill "a thinly veiled effort" by its supporters "to work on fundraising for future races." That's no way to make Georgia water policy, she said.

While Bethea thinks there may be some problems with present stream buffer requirements, a real solution would begin outside the legislature. Representatives of affected industries like developers, along with environmental groups and scientific people, should hammer out statewide plans on issues like interbasin water transfers and stream buffers, she said. That was done successfully with erosion control measures.

It was also the way the state's original 25-foot stream buffers were established, according to Dr. Jackson of the Forestry school. The buffer requirement was a compromise reached by various interested parties - including environmental groups, developers and academics - and it included reducing the width of buffers along north Georgia's trout streams from 100 feet to 50.

Jackson scoffs at claims that the bill could improve water quality. "It's bull" he said, and a "mistaken assumption" that water quality is the same as water chemistry. Piping a stream would reduce some stream bed erosion, but the Federal Clean Water Act mandates protecting the "chemical and biological integrity of waters of the U.S.," and putting a stream into a pipe destroys its biological integrity. Streams contain tiny critters - fish, amphibians and aquatic insects. Streams "process" the nutrients that wash into them and are "fairly productive" of food for wildlife. "You cannot mitigate for the water quality of a stream that no longer exists."

Piping streams will make meeting new Federal water-quality standards more difficult, too, Jackson said, and can allow erosion to occur undetected underground. Since sewer lines run near streams, a sewage leak could also occur undetected.

The Georgia Water Coalition - which advocates that water be managed as a public resource, and includes 85 state and local environmental groups, including some in Athens - says all its members oppose the proposal. Jenny Culler, of Upper Oconee Watershed Network, says state rules are often "politically motivated," and that makes local ordinances, like ACC's stream buffer protections, important.

Since "we all live downstream from somebody else," citizens should not only guard our local ordinances against "inevitable" development pressures, she says, but should also be interested in what our neighboring counties are doing.

John Huie

Contact the author at jphuie@athens.net.

The SLC
Built For Learning

Wondering what the new brick structure is on the corner of Lumpkin and Baxter Streets?

The $43 million building which opened in the fall of 2003 is the University of Georgia Student Learning Center.

Known to most students and faculty as the SLC, it is a place where students can gather to study, have meetings and go to class all while enjoying a cup of coffee from Jittery Joe's, a local coffee shop, located on the second floor of the building.

The idea for this four-story structure was introduced at a meeting in 1996, when former UGA president, Charles Knapp was in office.

city-studentlearningcenter.jpg

The building did not begin to take shape until 1998, when new president Michael Adams, was beginning his tenure at UGA.

Designed by architect Cooper Carry of Atlanta, construction began on the SLC in 2000, said Florence King, Assistant University Librarian for Human Resources. Since its opening this part classroom building, part virtual library has become the largest publicly funded building on campus.

The SLC is a 200,000 square-foot building containing 14,000 cubic yards of structural concrete, 136,000 concrete masonry units, six miles of concrete pile foundations, 800,000 standard size bricks used in the exterior wall and hardscape of the site, 1,382 windows, 1,236 pieces of architectural precast concrete, 1,900 pieces of cast stone, 276,000 sq. ft. of actual floor space, 236,000 usable sq. ft. of floor space and 2,800 miles of electrical, A-V, wireless and data cable.

The concept of a virtual library versus a library filled with actual print books is a new one, King said. With 500 computers for accessing the world wide web, 21,000 full-text journals, 29,000 full-text books, 2,000 connections for laptop computers and its pervasive wireless network, the SLC is indeed a virtual library.

The SLC is also indeed a learning center with 26 general classrooms varying in size from 24 to 276 seats, state-of-the-art library classrooms dedicated to teaching electronic research and information literacy skills and three faculty development rooms designed to provide space for class preparation.

With 96 group study rooms and 24/7 access to portions of the building the SLC provides students with a place to study and hang out between classes. Food and drink are okay there, too, unlike most other areas of campus, and plans are under way to have the whole building open 24 hours.

Eliza Ozimek

Eliza Ozimek is a UGA journalism student who is learning the meaning of "publish or perish."

Spanish Lie
But It Works Here

Two days after Spanish socialists won an upset victory over rightist Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, three of the New York Times' four opinion columns called the results a victory for Al Qaeda. "This is not how democracies are supposed to react when they are attacked by fanatics," scolded Edward Luttwak. "What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" asked David Brooks. (The answer, interestingly, is "pacificación.")

These reactions follow party lines; Republicans lament the demise of one of the two major European governments aligned with Bush, while Paul Krugman, the lone leftie on the Times op-ed page, raises a tall glass of Toldyaso on the rocks. As usual, the conventional wise men are missing the point.

Think yourself all the way back to Friday, September 14, 2001. Do you remember how you felt that day? The Twin Towers are still burning, the New York Daily News is estimating the death count at 15,000 and bus stops in Manhattan are blanketed with homemade missing persons posters. The story that an elderly man "surfed" collapsing debris all the way down to safety has been circulating on-line, but we've just learned it's a hoax. We know that Muslim men hijacked the planes, but that is all. We know neither their identities nor the precise cause for which they were willing to kill and be killed. We're stunned. Antenna flags are still weeks away.

Bush waited months before suggesting that invading Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, but imagine for a moment that he had instead followed Donald Rumsfeld's counsel, given at a meeting of the National Security Council hours after the towers fell, and immediately blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11. What if Bush had addressed a shocked and grieving nation that very night, calling for war against Iraq?

"September 11, 2001 has taken its place in the history of infamy... It is absolutely clear and evident that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was looking to commit a major attack. We will defeat the Iraqi murderers. We will succeed in finishing off the terrorists, with the strength of the rule of law and with the unity of all Americans."

Intelligence experts express skepticism that Iraq is responsible, but everyone ignores them. Then, suddenly, contradicting Bush's confident assertions, Al Qaeda issues a credible claim of responsibility. Bush has been caught cynically exploiting the still-warm ashes of the fallen in order to promote an illegal war while letting the real murderers get away.

The next day, you're in a voting booth.

Switch the names and dates from Bush to Aznar and from 9-11 to M-11 - the Spanish name for the Madrid bombings - and you've got the atmosphere that led to the leftist victory on Sunday. "The Spanish people smelled a rat," wrote The U.K. Mirror. "In an age of alarming voter apathy, an extraordinary 77 per cent turned out at the polls."

Spanish voters didn't fire Aznar because they were scared of big bad Al Qaeda. They dumped him because they didn't want to be led by a liar. As Spain enters a new era of terrorism, its citizens want straight talk about the threat. Will Americans do the same this fall?

The parallels are eerily similar. Three years after 9/11, Bush and officials of his administration continue to mislead us about who carried out the attacks and what could have been done to prevent them. (My favorite fib involves supposed contacts between Al Qaeda and the group Ansar al-Islam, which Bushies claim proves a Saddam-Osama link. Ansar al-Islam operates in the northern "no fly zone," which is part of Iraq but in a region controlled by Saddam's Kurdish enemies. Most American voters are unclear on the particulars. Ignorance is the fertilizer of the Bush Doctrine.) Not only that, he coddles the guilty as he bombs the innocent. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two nations directly responsible for the founding and funding of Al Qaeda and the Egyptian unit that probably carried out 9/11, have yet to be held accountable.

It shouldn't have taken more than three days - the elapsed time between the exposure of Aznar's lie and his defeat - to turn us against Bush. His 9/11-related lies are by now so voluminous that they literally fill books. And yet, according to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 52 percent of American voters believe he "gave the most accurate information he had" about Iraq before going to war a year ago. There are only two possible explanations for this continued support: either Americans don't know that their "president" is a liar, or they don't care.

Either way, this is not how democracies are supposed to react.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the author of Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right, coming in May.