A North Carolina real estate development company that specializes in medical office projects is putting together plans for what it is calling a health park on 14 acres at the corner of Jennings Mill Road and Virgil Langford Road.
Athens Regional Health System, parent company of Athens Regional Medical Center, will be the tenant in the first building in the proposed seven-building complex, according to architectural plans submitted to the Oconee County Planning Department.
Oconee County Code Enforcement once again has taken down signs owned by Boswell Properties that violated the county sign ordinance and were in the intersection of SR 316 and the Oconee Connector.
It also took down signs owned by the county’s Industrial Development Authority that also were in the state right of way and violated the county’s sign ordinance.
Volunteers with the Upper Oconee Watershed Network have found excessively high levels of E. coli bacteria in a water sample drawn late last week from the unnamed tributary to Barber Creek that received raw sewage from a spill on Aug. 21.
The volunteers also reported excessively high and roughly equal levels of the bacteria in Barber Creek itself below the inflow from the tributary and upstream from the inflow from the tributary, suggesting that the spill has not had lasting negative impact on Barber Creek.
The Georgia Department of Transportation has decided not to fund the widening of Jimmy Daniell Road, nullifying the project framework agreement signed by Oconee County in December of last year.
GDOT took this action because Oconee County never specified where it was going to find the $1.15 million estimated cost to the county for right of way acquisition for the project.
The county is expecting that the improvements to the intersection of the Hog Mountain Road and U.S. 441, now underway, will be completed by the end of the month, according to Emil Beshara, county Public Works director.
The roadwork will produce two left-turn lanes from Hog Mountain Road to U.S. 441 and a turn lane into the RaceTrac station for traffic heading west on Hog Mountain Road from U.S. 441. RaceTrac is on the southwest corner of the intersection.
Volunteers from the Upper Oconee Watershed Network (UOWN) plan to do sampling from Barber Creek tomorrow morning upstream and downstream from the sewage spill on Aug. 21.
Vicki Soutar, a retired Oconee County science teacher and UOWN volunteer, will lead the group. The goal is to determine if the spill had lasting impact on the water quality of the creek.
Oconee County citizens will have a series of opportunities this week to express their views on what amounts to tax increases both for county government and for the county’s schools.
While the Board of Commissioners has held the tax rate constant from last year, the increase in property value translates to tax increases of 3.45 percent for the unincorporated parts of the county and 2.95 percent for the incorporated parts of the county.
