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Williams wont seek re-election to leadership post
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ATLANTA — Sen. Tommie Williams has announced that he won’t seek re-election as president pro tempore.

Williams told fellow senators in a letter Monday that he wants to give others a chance to lead and would like to spend more time with his wife and three children. He will seek re-election for his Senate seat, and is running unopposed.

Williams was first elected to the Georgia Senate in 1998, and has served as the chamber’s second-highest-ranking official since 2009. Prior to becoming president pro tempore, Williams was Senate majority leader.

“It is a very difficult decision for one to give up a position of political power,” Williams wrote in the letter. “Over the last two years, the struggle over who would govern the Senate has been stressful, but liberty almost always requires a struggle. I have fought for giving the Senate the liberty to govern itself.”

The Lyons Republican presided over a tumultuous era in the Senate that saw power stripped from Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and spread among a committee of several senators that was often at odds with Cagle.

In a statement, Cagle said Williams and his family “have offered themselves up for service” and wished Williams well on his exit.
Williams said he will serve the remainder of his term.

It is unclear who will succeed him when the Legislature returns in January. Sen. Ronnie Chance, who has served in the Senate since 2005, said Monday he is interested in the position.

“I think it’s a little premature right now,” Chance said when asked about whether he would definitely seek the role. “We don’t know who’s going to be in the caucus. I’ve talked to a lot of people about it, including the lieutenant governor and the governor. But we need to get through the primary first.”

Chance does not face primary opposition. All 236 members of the Legislature are up for re-election this year.

The president pro tempore stands in for the lieutenant governor — who is the president of the Senate — when he is absent. According to the Senate rules, the president pro tempore is elected by the Senate from among its members by a majority of the senators voting.

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers commended Williams for his service, calling him a “decent” man.

“He leads with a heart of compassion rarely found in politics,” said the Woodstock Republican, who is not expected to seek the position. “His leadership will be sorely missed in the Georgia Senate. However, real leadership does not need a title and Tommie Williams will continue to be a major force for good.”

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Book review: Author digs into mining's complicated past and present in 'River of Lost Souls'
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Jonathan Thompson will speak about his book "River of Lost Souls" at the King's English Bookshop on Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. - photo by Amanda Olson
"RIVER OF LOST SOULS: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Spill," by Jonathan Thompson, Torrey House Press, 275 pages (nf)

Plenty has been written about the very small world of a mining town and the very broad reach of a beleaguered industry. From Loretta Lynns iconic song "Coal Miners Daughter," to the 2010 nail-biting coverage of 33 trapped Chilean miners, to the hit Broadway musicals "Paint Your Wagon" and "Billy Elliot," mining is a global story, and its one of heartbreak, hard work and hard times.

Jonathan Thompsons "River of Lost Souls" examines the many facets of risk involved in taking resources from below the earths surface. An environmental journalist, Thompson has reported on southwest Colorado for over 20 years. This book is special, however, because the Four Corners area of Colorado is his current and ancestral home. Thompson is writing about minings ecological, social, financial and political impact on his land, his landscape, his water, his people. That makes "River of Lost Souls" more than a regular reporting job.

Thompson begins with the Gold King Mine wastewater disaster of 2015, which the EPA caused while attempting to drain water near the mines entrance. The spill sent 3 million gallons of waste and tailings into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the San Juan River watershed which drains into the Colorado, affecting the Utah, Colorado and New Mexico parts of that watershed as well as the Navajo Nation.

From there, Thompson jumps into far stretches of time to 1765, when a Spanish explorer named the Animas River; to 10,000 years earlier, when Paleo-Indians roamed the rivers valley; to the meridian of time, when the ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo people inhabited the land for 500 years; to the mid-1800s and the Swedes who came to Silverton, Colorado, to mine.

Its a grand scope, but telling any story of landscape is telling a very grand story.

It also makes a complex story difficult to follow. Thompsons time warps are important, but they are jarring. His time jumps need clear dates, and Thompson doesnt always make them available. A map would also be useful. Thompsons writing is good, but his sentences can be dense and require readers to do their own mining for the riches the writing embeds. The work is worthwhile, however, as there are many moving parts in any story about mines land, culture, policy, history, money, inevitable disaster and Thompson works to examine all of them.

"River of Lost Souls" is a thoughtful read, but not a quick one. Because Thompsons writings come from 20 years of his newspaper reports, the overall feeling can be disjointed and sparse, which is distracting if one is expecting to follow a tenable thread. This is not a typical narrative with a cast of characters and a traditional story arc. Readers should approach this text as the investigation it is: puzzle pieces of a larger-than-life story that is eons old. If you are the kind of reader who wants it laid out cleanly, this is not that book. But, to Thompsons point, nothing is clean about mining that has never been the case.

Thompsons best writing is in his descriptions of people and places. His telling of how he came to Silverton is familiar and engaging. If readers approach the book with care and attention, they will be rewarded with savoring these descriptive passages when they happen.
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