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Ogeechee public hearing slated
EPD seeks comments on consent order for King America Finishing
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Holi Deal Bragg
Special to the News
Updated: Mar 1, 2013, 5:00 PM
Published: Feb 27, 2013, 4:05 PM

People with an interest in the Ogeechee River will be able to offer their input about a proposed consent order for a textile mill’s pollution discharge.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division will be holding a public hearing at 7 p.m.  Tuesday, March 5, at Effingham County High School.
“The purpose of the public hearing will be to receive comments on the proposed King America Finishing Inc. consent order to address alleged violations of the Georgia Water Quality Control Act,” EPD spokesman Kevin Chambers said.
The proposed consent order includes conditions requiring King America Finishing Inc., a textiles plant in Screven County that discharges wastewater into the Ogeechee River, to implement supplemental environmental projects to benefit the river’s watershed.
An earlier consent order, challenged by civil suits and retracted by the EPD, followed findings in 2011 that King America was guilty of discharging wastewater in violation of permits and without proper permits. The findings were the result of an investigation into a massive fish kill in May 2011 that left about 38,000 fish dead along more than 90 miles downriver from King America.
The cause of the fish kill was columnaris, a bacterial disease caused by environmental stress. Some, including former Ogeechee Riverkeeper Dianna Wedincamp, have said the contaminants in the plant’s discharge, which include formaldehyde and ammonia, both of which were found in high amounts in river water samples after the kill, caused ­— or at least aggravated — the environmental stress.
Chambers said the public hearing will be confined to water quality issues relating to the consent order and officials will not allow comments about land use, zoning or any other issue.
“The public hearing is a formal process to receive comments on the proposed consent order,” he said.
EPD officials will give a brief presentation at the beginning of the hearing. People who want to comment for the record are asked to sign in upon arrival. Officials won’t directly answer questions, but questions asked by participants will be answered by EPD officials in writing at a later date, Chambers said.
Statements that are lengthy or “of a considerable technical or economic nature” should be submitted in writing for the official record, he said.
Those speaking during the hearing will be asked to limit statements to three minutes to allow everyone an opportunity to be heard.
While the hearing is March 5, written comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. March 15. They can sent by email to EPDcomments@dnr.state.ga.us or by mail to Ms. Linda MacGregor, Watershed Protection Branch, 4220 International Parkway, Suite 101, Atlanta, GA 30354.
If emailing comments, include “proposed Consent Agreement King America Finishing (Dover, Screven County)” in the subject line to ensure the email is sent to the correct persons.
The proposed order can be viewed and downloaded at www.georgiaepd.com by clicking on the “What’s New at EPD” button, Chamber said.
Effingham County High School is at 1589 Georgia Highway 119 S., Springfield.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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