Thursday, October 25, 2007

Couple of things

- My old company's parent company is selling some smaller papers, which is to be expected. With the rise of not only blogs, but free, web-based content from the mainstream media, it's becoming more challenging for newspapers to raise revenue. This appears to be a sound strategic movie on the part of Morris Communications, who is already doing good things on the digital media front.

- Kudos to DePalma's and the other area businesses working to cut back on water usage. DePalma's has long opted to not serve water unless a customer asks for it, but this step is a welcome move and one that is much appreciated. Same goes for Noramco which cut back on usage last year when no one was talking about the drought.

- Speaking of water usage, today's the day we find out some specifics for Step F. There's a work session for the Athens-Clarke County Commission at 5:30 p.m. at the Government Building.

- This is a shame. I didn't really shop there that much - most of the seafood I typically opt to cook is tame like Halibut or Catfish - but it provided a rarity (fresh seafood) for this community. Plus you could order Crawfish there.

- Gov Sonny Perdue is lashing out at everyone over the drought ... but it's worth noting that 74 percent of Alabama is under drought conditions, compared to just 34 percent of Georgia. I discovered that yesterday.

- Anyone else think the Bobby Petrino Experiment with the Atlanta Falcons will result in a spectacular, flaming disaster?

- Deep breath. One game down, three more to a world title. Deep breath.

5 Comments:

Blogger ACCBiker said...

JMac:

1. Congrats on last night's win. The bats continued their ways right out of the gate. I knew the game was well in hand by the third inning. You are right about the importance of Game 2.

2. I have a different take on the DePalma's drought "solution". Yes they are saving water but it comes at a cost of using up the scarce capacity of the landfill. The landfill remaining capacity is surprisely little to most of the general public. What we do in the next 10 years with the landfill will be the next major battle.

10:02 AM  
Blogger Jmac said...

1. Thanks. It's still a long way, you don't go 21-2 in your final month without doing something right. The Rockies will get things worked out ... I'm just hoping it's next month when they do.

2. True enough. I know that the local government has been working with these businesses during the drought to push the recycling program since it makes money and saves landfill space (and you're right, in addition to building a reservoir, we need to build a new landfill ... particularly since my 'let's fire our trash into outer space toward the sun' plan doesn't seem economically feasible).

10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

74% of our neighbor to the west may be under drought conditions - but their wonderful governor has failed to imposed any sort of water restrictions on them that even begin to come close to the restrictions Georgia is already facing.

So who's being greedy and selfish now?

11:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

paveplanet is dead-on right about the looming landfill crisis!

I remember back in my undergrad business days when one of my favorite professors was telling us all to buy land for a future landfill or to buld a private landfill if we wanted to really become wealthy someday. In spite of the fact that I was convinced, I had no way to do that but I think I should have tried harder to find one.

Nobody wants a landfill near them but everybody wants to throw away as much garbage as they like and whine that it costs so much to have it hauled away because, after all, it's just garbage.

ACC has been working on this problem for years, now. They have several interim solutions that will buy some time but the long term solutions are just not there, yet. Because, as I said, nobody wants a landfill anywhere near them and we're so small that every square inch of land is very near somebody who does NOT want a landfill there. You don't read much about it in the MSM - it's not yet a crisis and it's not very sexy.

Kudos to all the businesses trying to save water but, please, please, PLEASE! ask them to use something other than styrofoam or plastics that are not recyclable! Paper is best but reclyclable plastics are also good. Styrofoam is the worst of all.

One other interesting observation: Athens, along with it's partners, actually owns their resevoir (Bear Creek). It may not seem adequate at this critical time but, consider this: Atlanta does NOT own a resevoir of any kind! That's right. Lake Lanier belongs to the federal government. I'm not positive but I think maybe the feds also own Altoona. That is incredlbly short-sighted! Considering that most parts of the metro Atlanta area did not institute any water usage restrictions - the state had to be the ones to come in with the watering bans and such, you may think ACC needs to do more and better but we are most certainly a damn sight better off in terms of planning and leadership than the whole Atlanta area!

Rain, rain, rain some more!

Al

2:23 PM  
Blogger hillary said...

Heh. Tame. No vicious fishies.

You mean farmed?

It does suck that they closed.

4:23 PM  

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