Residents living along the Apalachee River in Oconee and Morgan counties who are concerned about the impact of a proposed water intake facility on the river plan to attend the Oconee County Board of Commissioners meeting tomorrow night to seek support.
The gathering will be a sequel to one the group, now organized under the name Greater Apalachee River Community, held last week with the Board of Commissioners in Morgan County.
A proposal to greatly restrict the use of slab foundations for single-family dwellings in Oconee County has met with strong negative reaction from at least a segment of the local development community.
More than 50 people crowded the room for the Planning Commission meeting last Monday night to make clear their opposition, with at least that number, maybe more, crowded into the hallway outside.
More than 200 people of all ages showed up for the March For Our Lives rally at Oconee Veterans Park today, which ended with the plea from two North Oconee County High School students for action.
“Those who do not support common sense gun legislation are putting their wants for guns above other people’s rights for life and safety,” Piper Cyterski, the first of the North Oconee County High School students to speak, told the group.
Consultants for the Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir project asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in July of 2017 to bypass the public hearing process and allow construction of an intake facility on the Apalachee River to pump water to the reservoir in the future.
The Corps indicated that it would reject the request for a waiver of a public hearing process in August of last year.
The final meeting of the Stakeholders Committee charged with shaping the 2018 Comprehensive Plan was supposed to be a tidying up session ending with Committee approval of the document for public review and government adoption.
Instead it turned into a lengthy discussion of the possibility of commercial development on the western end of Cliff Dawson Road as it meets Mars Hill Road.
The Georgia Department of Transportation rolled out its plans for a truck bypass of Bishop as part of its upgrade of U.S. 441 to a generally receptive Oconee County Citizen Advisory Committee last (Monday) night at Oconee Veterans Park.
The plans were unchanged from those previewed to the Bishop City Council last week and call for a close-in, two-lane truck bypass on the east side of Bishop that would begin at Astondale Road on the south and reconnect with U.S. 441 on the north at High Shoals Road.
The Walton County Water and Sewer Authority asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to modify its permit for an intake facility on the Apalachee River after determining that not only its original site but three of its four alternatives are not feasible.
Rights to the water that the Water and Sewer Authority wanted to withdraw from the original and the three alternate sites are protected under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit for a power plant located on the river just upstream from the SR 186 bridge over the Apalachee River.
