Resurfacing of parts of 25 Oak Ridge streets is scheduled to start Saturday.
“The project will begin on Wisconsin Avenue with repairs to correct surface and drainage problems, which will be followed by concrete work by city personnel to correct drainage problems,” a press release said. “This project will generally proceed from west to east.” [Read more…]
Information from WYSH Radio
The commissioners of the Powell-Clinch Utility District scored a legal victory last week in their dispute with the state’s Utility Management Review Board when an appeals court overturned a lower court’s ruling that they could be held liable for, and removed from office, for acts that allegedly occurred before a change in state law in 2009.
The issue before the appeals court was to determine if the three commissioners—Charles Oldham, Jerry Shattuck, and Charles Taylor—could be removed from office based on a change in state law that went into effect in June of 2009 which added an amendment that “failing to fulfill the commissioner or commissioners’ fiduciary responsibility in the operation or oversight of the district” would be considered as one of the possible grounds for the removal of utility even if the alleged acts occurred before the amendment went into effect. [Read more…]
Information from WYSH Radio
On Thursday, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Valley Authority updated Roane County residents on the ongoing cleanup efforts from the 2008 coal ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant.
The December 2008 spill dumped more than a billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the Clinch and Emory Rivers and into the surrounding community. What had been 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge is now down to about 70,000 cubic yards—or 14 million gallons—and officials expect to have the rest cleared by the end of June. [Read more…]
Pictured above is the proposed Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 National Security Complex, with the administrative area in the front and the fortified section of the building in the rear. (Submitted image)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently announced that it has awarded a $12 million contract to Avisco Inc. of Oak Ridge for road, bridge, and water line work on Bear Creek Road as part of the Uranium Processing Facility project at Y-12 National Security Complex.
The contract is part of the UPF site readiness subproject, a press release said. Avisco will be building about 4,000 feet of two-lane roadway, a bridge, and adjacent potable waterlines in order to prepare the site of the new UPF. Construction will begin in June and is scheduled for completion in September 2014. [Read more…]
Pictured above is the proposed Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 National Security Complex, with the administrative area in the front and the fortified section of the building in the rear. (Submitted image)
There are some “world-class engineering problems” to work through, but site preparation work has started on the giant new Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex, a project official said Thursday.
“We’re finally starting to make some traction,” UPF Federal Project Director John Eschenberg told several hundred people at the two-day Tennessee Valley Corridor National Summit at Y-12’s New Hope Center.
Eschenberg said the site prep work could last 18 months, and it will include work on power distribution and underground water lines as well as moving a section of Bear Creek Road to the north. Three contracts have already been awarded to East Tennessee small businesses. [Read more…]
Eric Cantor
Note: This story was updated at 12:35 p.m.
In his first visit to Oak Ridge, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor paid tribute to the national security and science work that has occurred here dating back to World War II, called for a continued emphasis on research and discovery, and touched on political topics including the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, unemployment, and the nation’s social safety net.
A Virginia Republican, Cantor said the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Northern Route Approval Act, allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to be completed. The bill declares that a presidential permit is not required to approve the section of the pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska, which crosses a national border. [Read more…]
Lamar Alexander
It’s been five years since U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander called for a new Manhattan Project for energy independence, and during a Wednesday update, the senator said four “grand principles” should guide America’s energy policy.
The senator said his principles—which include research and development, free market forces, and cheaper, clean energy—would “end an obsession with taxpayer subsidies and strategies for expensive energy.” They would instead focus on “doubling research and allowing marketplace solutions to create an abundance of clean, cheap, reliable energy,” Alexander said during a Wednesday afternoon speech at the Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit in Oak Ridge.
The senator called for doubling research funding and ending long-term subsidies for “big oil” and “big wind.” [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge City Council will consider the municipal budget, which is not expected to raise property taxes, during a second and final reading Tuesday evening.
The Oak Ridge City Council has approved a budget that does not raise the property tax rate in the fiscal year that starts July 1.
The budget provides $50,000 more for the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce than Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson had requested, and it gives city employees a 1 percent pay raise.
Council members deferred a request from the Oak Ridge Board of Education to match $50,000 in spending for one of two new school resource officers at Jefferson and Robertsville middle schools. City officials estimated the cost per SRO is about double the school system’s request, or more than $100,000 per year per officer, when the cost of a police car is included. [Read more…]
Bill Haslam
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam had a ceremonial bill signing for a reduction in the Hall Income tax for senior citizens on Tuesday, a press release said.
Haslam signed the legislation during a visit to Crossville. It’s the second piece of legislation cutting taxes in the governor’s 2013 legislative agenda, the press release said. [Read more…]
Hundreds of people lined up at the Alexander Inn on Saturday for an estate sale, an unprecedented opportunity to buy items ranging from bed frames and Bibles to chairs and chandeliers, before the vacant, historic hotel is converted into an assisted living center. (Photo by Don Hunnicutt)
Renovations have started at the historic Alexander Inn, and on Saturday, hundreds of people shopped at an estate sale at the vacant, two-story hotel, taking advantage of an unprecedented opportunity to buy items from the 1940s to the 1980s, including bed frames and Bibles, chairs and chandeliers, and dishes and dressers.
Halfway through the three-hour sale, a project executive estimated that more than 500 people had attended. At one point, the line of people waiting to get in stretched from the hotel, located on East Madison Road, to Kentucky Avenue, said Rick Dover, general manager of Family Pride, which has proposed converting the dilapidated hotel into an assisted living center. [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge City Council will consider the municipal budget, which is not expected to raise property taxes, during a second and final reading Tuesday evening.
The Oak Ridge City Council will consider the municipal budget on second and final reading tonight.
If approved, the budget would not raise property taxes, but it would give employees a 1 percent pay raise and add another $50,000 for the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce contract.
Tonight’s meeting also includes a presentation of the Oak Ridge Schools’ budget, which was approved on second and final reading on Thursday. [Read more…]
Joyce Ward, mother of Staff Sgt. Christopher M. Ward, who died in Afghanistan on April 6, and Leon Jaquet, Anderson County veterans service officer, unveil a new plaque honoring Ward at the Veterans Memorial at the Anderson County Courthouse in Clinton on Monday.
CLINTON—He had volunteered to replace another soldier on his last tour, and he paid with his life.
Christopher Michael Ward, 24, died in southern Afghanistan on April 6, the victim of a suicide car bombing. The explosion also killed two other soldiers, a U.S. diplomat, and a Department of Defense civilian. They had been delivering donated books to children in Zabul province.
On Monday, Ward was honored when his name was added to the Veterans Memorial at the Anderson County Courthouse in Clinton during a Memorial Day ceremony.
“It’s very heartwarming,” said his mother Joyce Ward of Oak Ridge, who is moving to Hinesville, Ga., on Tuesday. “His death was not in vain.” [Read more…]
