Fireworks at Alvin K. Bissell Park in Oak Ridge on July 4, 2017. (Photo by D. Ray Smith)
Several readers submitted photos from the fireworks show in Alvin K. Bissell Park in Oak Ridge on Tuesday, July 4, 2017. Here are photos by D. Ray Smith, Donna King, and Liz Bartlett.
Fireworks at Alvin K. Bissell Park in Oak Ridge on July 4, 2017. (Photo by D. Ray Smith)
An Australian ornithologist has found a secretive marsh bird, a Purple Gallinule, on the Oak Ridge Reservation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory said in a post published on Twitter on Sunday, July 2, 2017. (Screenshot from ORNL video)
An Australian ornithologist has found a secretive marsh bird, a Purple Gallinule, on the Oak Ridge Reservation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory said in a video post published on Twitter on Sunday.
Australian ornithologist Liz Znidersic recently came to ORNL to study secretive bird species, ORNL said in the video. She found the new bird using video and audio equipment.
The Purple Gallinule is typically only found in coastal or tropical areas.
“The Purple Gallinule has not been found on the Oak Ridge Reservation ever,” Znidersic said in the video. “This is the first one to be found also in Roane County.” [Read more…]
The rear of the Applewood Apartments building at 186 Hillside Road is picture above on Saturday, July 1, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Note: This story was last updated at 12:25 p.m.
CLINTON—A court has dismissed a case that once called for a $400,000 fine against the owner of three now-vacant Applewood Apartments buildings on Hillside Road in Oak Ridge.
Charges against the original defendant, former Applewood Apartments manager Tammy Sandlin, have been dismissed, and she is the only properly named defendant in the complaint, Anderson County Circuit Court Judge Don R. Elledge said in a dismissal order filed Wednesday, June 21.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals had issued an opinion on October 15, 2015, that vacated, or voided, the $406,520 judgement against Applewood Apartments owner Joseph J. Levitt Jr. because he had not been effectively added as a defendant in the city’s lawsuit, Elledge said.
At that time, the Court of Appeals remanded the case, or sent it back to, Anderson County Circuit Court in Clinton for further proceedings, “including the filing and serving of an amended complaint or city warrant against Mr. Levitt,” Elledge said in his order to dismiss.
The Court of Appeals decision essentially said that Levitt has to be given a chance to defend himself, Elledge said during a motion hearing in Circuit Court on Friday, June 9. A jury trial had been scheduled for March 9, 2018. The City of Oak Ridge is the plaintiff.
But no amended complaint has been filed by the city since the Court of Appeals decision almost two years ago, and Levitt has never been served with an amended complaint, Elledge said during the June 9 motion hearing. [Read more…]
Energy Secretary Rick Perry drives a 3D printed personal utility vehicle at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility on Hardin Valley Road on Monday, May 22, 2017. His passenger is Craig Blue, director of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs at ORNL. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
The U.S. Department of Energy is not responding to questions about Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s advocacy of Oak Ridge or the fiscal year 2018 budget request.
The only question from Oak Ridge Today that DOE has answered is: Will the department have a teleconference to discuss the budget request with reporters? The answer was “no.”
DOE, which could have a funding decrease under President Donald Trump’s budget request, has not responded to any specific questions about the budget itself. Oak Ridge Today has tried about a dozen times in the past month to reach someone in the public affairs office at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., using emails, phone calls, and on Wednesday night, a five-part tweet to active Twitter accounts for Perry and the DOE press staff.
Oak Ridge Today has sought information from the department since Trump sent the fiscal year 2018 budget request to Congress on Tuesday, May 23. Among other things, the news website has wanted to make sure that it is correctly interpreting the preliminary budget numbers published online by DOE. (See here, here, and here for more information about the budget request.)
According to the information Oak Ridge Today has received and reviewed, some Oak Ridge programs and sites could see funding increases under the president’s budget request, while others could see decreases. The programs and sites that could benefit include the environmental management program (the cleanup work at federal sites), Oak Ridge Office, and Y-12 National Security Complex. Those that could lose funding are DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information, or OSTI; Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, which is managed by ORAU; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge Today has sent specific questions about funding for most of these programs and sites to the public affairs office at DOE headquarters, but no spokespeople have responded, not even to acknowledge that the messages were received or to reply with a “no comment.”
Oak Ridge Today has also tried to follow up on Perry’s pledge to be a strong advocate for at least some programs in Oak Ridge. Perry made the pledge at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility in Hardin Valley on Monday, May 22. The pledge came after he toured ORNL, the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, and Y-12. During his visit to Oak Ridge and Hardin Valley, Perry learned about the planned Uranium Processing Facility and nuclear weapons work at Y-12, the environmental management program, and advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, materials science research, and supercomputing at ORNL. [Read more…]
Jeff Bohanan, founder and chief executive officer of Protomet in Oak Ridge, announced a $30 million expansion in Loudon County on Tuesday, June 27, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Protomet Corporation evaluated a site in south Oak Ridge for a $30 million, 200-job expansion, but the company will expand in Loudon County instead, officials said Tuesday.
The good news for Oak Ridge: The current operations will remain here. And all Protomet operations will still be in East Tennessee, said Jeff Bohanan, the company’s founder and chief executive officer.
Protomet had announced in early 2017 that it needed more manufacturing space to add new production capabilities and increase the company’s output.
The initial plan was to expand with a 100,000-square-foot building on the west side of the existing facility on Larson Drive in Bethel Valley Industrial Park in south Oak Ridge. Protomet acquired a 19.7-acre parcel next to its current facility from the U.S. Department of Energy, with the purchase going through the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board.
Protomet immediately began testing that site, spending about $60,000 on architectural and engineering fees, Bohanan said Tuesday. The idea was to add the new building at the same location as the current one.
But, “at the end of the evaluation, it was clear we could not do the expansion the way it was designed on that land,” Bohanan said. [Read more…]
Dick’s Sporting Goods is now open at Main Street Oak Ridge, and the new store had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, June 27, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Dick’s Sporting Goods is now open at Main Street Oak Ridge, and the new store had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday. A grand opening featuring former University of Tennessee football player Derek Barnett is scheduled for this weekend.
The store, roughly in the area where Sears used to be between Walmart and the U.S. Post Office on South Tulane Avenue, is 35,000 square foot. It sells equipment for team sports, footwear, apparel, hunting and fishing gear, and bicycles and fitness equipment, said Brian Johnson, community marketing manager for Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The store offers top national brands and in-store services such as a glove steamer, a gate analysis for runners and walkers, an archery lane to test bows, and bow stringing, Johnson said.
There are about 62 employees, both full-time and part-time, Johnson said.
He said many Oak Ridge customers shopped at Dick’s Sporting Goods in West Knoxville.
“Now they’ve got it here,” Johnson said. “Oak Ridge is a thriving market. Oak Ridge is an outdoor community.” [Read more…]
Design concepts for the new Oak Ridge Schools Preschool at Scarboro Park, as published in May 2017. (Image courtesy City of Oak Ridge/Studio Four Design)
The City of Oak Ridge will host a fourth public forum-style meeting on the Oak Ridge Preschool on July 11. It’s the last step in the conceptual design process, a press release said.
“Once plans are affirmed by the community, architects will begin work on construction drawings,” the press release said.
The preschool will be built in Scarboro Park in central Oak Ridge.
The July 11 meeting is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Scarboro Community Center. [Read more…]
Photo by ORNL
Note: This story was updated at 12:20 p.m. June 28.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday said the president’s budget request for the next fiscal year could lead to a 33 percent workforce reduction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. About 1,600 of the lab’s roughly 4,800 employees could be laid off, the senator’s office said.
Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and other members of the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, including Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who is chair of the subcommittee, had a budget hearing with new Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday afternoon, June 21.
Across the U.S. Department of Energy, a workforce of 29,000 employees could be reduced by 23 percent at labs such as ORNL that are managed for DOE and not for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Feinstein said. (The NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within DOE.) That would be a reduction of 6,700 employees at the non-NNSA, non-weapons labs, the senator said.
“Every non-NNSA lab would see drastic employment cuts under this proposed budget,” said Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. “We must change this budget.”
The potential layoffs at DOE labs would be the result of a budget request submitted by President Donald Trump to Congress on Tuesday, May 23. But the president’s budget request has not yet been approved by Congress, and it has run into bipartisan opposition. Some legislators have declared the budget request “dead on arrival,” and others have said they won’t even review some proposed cuts such as a 30 percent funding reduction for the State Department. [Read more…]
Oak Ridge Today has taken a few days off in order to attend a family reunion, and for the most part, we haven’t been able to post stories for the past few days.
We resume our regular posting today (Monday, June 26).
The family reunion was in West Yellowstone, Montana.
It’s the first vacation we’ve had since we started more than five years ago.
We will try to provide more information later. Thank you for your support and for reading Oak Ridge Today.
Robert William Holmberg
Robert William Holmberg, 94, who spent his career as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, passed away Tuesday, June 20, 2017, four months after the death of his beloved wife, Reba Justice Holmberg.
Bob was born in 1923 to the late Elmer and Ida (Barquist) Holmberg in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He developed an early curiosity in science and especially chemistry, which included setting off at least one explosion during a chemistry experiment in his home. He graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in Chemistry in 1944. As a student there, he began working on the Manhattan Project at the Ames Laboratory. Eventually drafted into the Army, after a short basic training, he found himself plucked from the ranks to join the Army’s Special Engineer Detachment and was sent to wartime Oak Ridge.
Bob’s first job in Oak Ridge was in a research division at Castle on the Hill (now known as DOE Headquarters). [Read more…]
Seven professional bowlers will be in Oak Ridge on Saturday for a clinic at Oak Ridge Bowling Center.
The bowlers will include Jason Belmonte, the number one bowler in the world, said Craig Porter, general manager of the Oak Ridge Bowling Center. The bowlers will also include E.J. Tackett, Sean Rash, Ronnie Russell, Dominic Barrett, Tommy Jones, and Bill O’Neil.
The players are arriving Thursday and Friday. The clinic is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. It will provide access to professionals for seven hours, Porter said. The seven hours will include five hours of on-lane instruction and one hour of classroom instruction. There will also be an hour lunch.
[Read more…]
Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, the Oak Ridge man convicted of vehicular homicide in a fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after July 4 fireworks two years ago, was sentenced to 12 years in prison during a hearing in Anderson County Criminal Court on Monday, June 19, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Note: This story was last updated at 8:20 p.m.
CLINTON—Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, the Oak Ridge man convicted of vehicular homicide in a fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after July 4 fireworks two years ago, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Monday.
Cromwell—a self-proclaimed sovereign citizen driving on a suspended license, according to court records and testimony—was actually sentenced in nine separate cases. He had been convicted on all nine counts at the end of a three-day trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton in February. Besides reckless vehicular homicide, the nine convictions included eight counts of aggravated assault.
Senior Judge Paul Summers of Nashville announced the effective 12-year sentence at the end of a roughly four-hour sentencing hearing in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Monday afternoon.
The convictions had been split into three groups. The first group included the reckless vehicular homicide conviction, which was filed over the death of James Robinson, who died pushing his two young daughters to safety as Cromwell backed his Dodge Ram pickup truck through the crowded parking lot of Midtown Community Center on July 4, 2015. Witnesses said Cromwell backed up at a high rate of speed. That first group of convictions also included three aggravated assault convictions for injuries to James Robinson’s wife, Julia Robinson, and their two young daughters, now 11 and nine. Cromwell received an effective five-year sentence for those first four convictions.
Cromwell received an effective four-year sentence for aggravated assault convictions for injuries to two other victims (the second group) and an effective three-year sentence for aggravated assault convictions for injuries to three other victims (the third group).
The three groups of sentences are to be served consecutively for a total of 12 years (five years for the first group of convictions, four years for the second, and three years for the third).
