A recent three-hour Hinesville City Council meeting consisted of a number of presentations and two executive sessions. One of the closed sessions lasted an hour with no action taken.
The first presentation was by Alice Keyes, associate director of One Hundred Miles, a coastal Georgia advocacy group, who presented information on two active proposals from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for exploration of fossil fuel off the coast of Georgia as well as leasing for that land.
According to Keyes’ documentation, BOEM approved seismic exploration off the Georgia coast in 2014. She said this type of exploration sends seismic and sonic booms down to the ocean floor that bounce back to sensors, charting the area.
“It’s really neat technology, but unfortunately, it has absolutely detrimental impacts to marine mammals as well as fish and crab,” Keyes said during the Jan. 21 council meeting. “And so one of the implications of seismic activity is a reduction in the number of animals that are actually killed by those activities.”
She added that an estimated 138,000 animals would be impacted because of the seismic activity, but that number could be low.
Phil Odom, a commercial waterman for 12 years and a member of Liberty Consolidated Planning Commission, also spoke on the proposals.
He raised a concern about the lack of discussion about seismic testing’s detrimental effect on microbial life in a report by the seismic testing industry on the expected loss of life due to that form of testing.
“A blue crab goes through seven different larval stages in the ocean. And these larval stages will be crushed by the sonic waves and blasts that occur for this testing,” Odom said. “This is late 19th-century, early 20th-century technology. We’re in the 21st century.”
He added that he hopes in 25 years when fossil-fuel exploration is looked at again that there will be better testing available.
Also, BOEM has proposed opening the land off the coast of Georgia to be leased for drilling, according to Keyes’ presentation.
The BOEM is taking comments on this proposal through March 30.
“They estimate that only about 550 million barrels of oil are available off of our coast. All total, that’s enough to be about one month of our entire nation’s domestic demand,” Keyes said. “And so that’s a lot of infrastructure, it’s a lot of activity, it’s a lot of disruption of our wildlife and our communities for a very limited amount of oil and gas reserves.”
Keyes said there is still time to do something about these two proposals.
“Right now, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is deciding on their final planning for the East Coast, and the more resolutions we have opposing oil and gas development, the more likely we are to be excluded from that plan,” she said. “And so Georgia communities have an opportunity to still be heard in that decision-making that’s happening now.”
The council decided to create a workshop with other surrounding community leaders and invite the One Hundred Miles group back to present again.
Hazard mitigation plan presented
Mike Hodges, director of the Liberty County Emergency Management Agency, presented the council with an update on the county-wide hazard mitigation plan. It is currently getting a final approval by both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Georgia Emergency Management Agency. Once put in place, the plan allows the county and property owners to qualify for post-incident funding for damages caused by disasters.
“If we were to have a hurricane here and we didn’t have a hazard mitigation plan, we wouldn’t qualify for reimbursement,” Hodges said.
Hodges noted that a fatal EF-2 rated tornado touched down in Liberty County in 1998 that caused $38 million in damage.
Hodges said he will return to the council once the federal and state agencies have reviewed the plan so that the city can approve it. He added that they are due to put the plan in place before November. The plan will be good for five years.
Other business
Other happenings at the Jan. 21 City Council meeting include:
• Marcus Sack of P.C. Simonton and Associates presented a quarterly project status. For the Wastewater Treatment Plant project on Fort Stewart, which is 50 days behind schedule, Paul Simonton of P.C. Simonton said the biggest reason the project is behind is because the contractor could not get enough workers who could pass a background check to gain access to the installation. Councilman Keith Jenkins said it was not the council’s concern that the contractor did not have enough vetted employees to access Fort Stewart. Simonton agreed. The project is expected to be completed by October. Simonton said that if the contractor does not meet the deadline, it faces daily fines.
Delete-Merge Up• Hinesville police Chief George Stagmeier said there was an increase in aggravated assaults, robberies and burglaries in December from November.