Hyundai Water, Milton and Green Voters

– Oct. 9, 2024 –

Good morning! Like many of you, we’re keeping an eye on Milton after spending much of last week without power thanks to Helene. But there’s other news, too, including a controversial pair of water permits state regulators issued Monday. And we also have a feature today about a group that’s targeting non-voters who care deeply about the climate.

Questions, tips or concerns? Send me a note at mary.landers@thecurrentga.org

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NEWS: ENVIRONMENT

Water permits finalized

Georgia regulators issued final permits to Bulloch and Bryan counties on Monday to withdraw water from the Floridan aquifer for the Hyundai megasite. While that’s the end of the permitting saga for now, controversy over the millions of gallons of water a day promised to the Hyundai site in Ellabell is sure to linger. The Corps of Engineers is still reevaluating the site permit and citizens in Bulloch are trying to force a referendum to reverse their county’s water decisions, as The Current’s Mary Landers reports.

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FEATURE: VOTING

Greening the vote

Dedicated voters may be getting weary of mailers, phone calls and texts bombarding them a month before the presidential election. But they won’t be hearing from The Environmental Voter Project. That’s because the nonprofit targets environmentally minded non-voters and focuses solely on getting these folks to the polls, as The Current’s Mary Landers reports. “We find environmentalists who don’t vote and we turn them into better voters,” said founder Nathaniel Stinnett.

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NEWS: ENVIRONMENT

Get ready for Milton

Hurricane Milton got big and bad quickly, its wind speed increasing by 90 mph in just 25 hours. That rapid intensification is a signature of climate change, and we should expect more of it, as The Guardian explains. Hurricane Milton is a Category 5 storm as of Tuesday evening, but its predicted path keeps serious damage away from Coastal Georgia. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the southern Georgia coast and tropical storm watches in the north. We’re keeping an eye on updates from the National Hurricane Center as well as dispatches from our favorite local hurricane expert, Chuck Watson of Enki Research. He advises that because Helene weakened infrastructure “even winds 20 mph gusting to 35 mph may cause some scattered power outages, but this is an ‘inconvenient’ situation and not hazardous with a little common sense.” 

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Also noted:

• Helene’s damage was made worse in North Carolina by weakened building regulations pushed by home builders and adopted by the state legislature to cut costs, The New York Times reports.
• In Georgia, a Joint House Disaster Mitigation and Resilience Study Committee meeting scheduled for today in Chatham County was canceled as Hurricane Milton threatened.
• The Georgia River Network, a statewide advocacy group protecting rivers and public access to water trails in Georgia, has a new name: Georgia Rivers.
• Georgia K-5 public or private school teachers are invited to apply for $1,000 life sciences teaching grant provided by the Georgia DNR Wildlife Conservation Section and The Environmental Resource Network. For more information click here. Deadline to apply is Oct. 30.

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