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Retailers predict jolly sales
- Now that the holiday shopping season is officially here, area
retailers say business should stay good over the next month.
Aaron Bensonhaver
ALBANY — Area retail managers say Black Friday was strong, which bodes well for retailers this holiday shopping season.
Many said they saw more people Friday than expected and they expect to match or beat last year's sales, and last year was a good year.
"The way it's tracking right now, it will be better than the first three quarters of this year," said Michael Bruner, store manager at Goody's Family Clothing on Old Dawson Road.
"There were more people waiting than I expected," when the doors opened, Bruner said.
Pat Wilks, general manager of Staples on Slappey Boulevard, said that on Friday, "There were more people here than I remember from last year."
"It looks like it will be a strong year," Wilks said.
Those two and other area managers said the long shopping season, 31 days this year, between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve just gives shoppers more opportunities to come into the stores and buy more gifts.
"Plus the fact that Christmas is a Monday this year," giving shoppers one last weekend off work and one last paycheck to put toward gifts, Wilks said.
The managers also reported the early sales went smoothly.
"Everything looked good," said Cory Montford, senior team leader at Target on Dawson Road.
Store managers said there will be plenty of trucks loaded with fresh inventory coming between now and Christmas, so shoppers who missed out on something aside from the early bird door-buster sales, such as cheap computers or televisions, should be able to find exactly what they're looking for.
"We've got three more trucks coming next week," Bruner said.
Scott Morrill, area sales manager at Belk in the Albany Mall, said the frequency of new deliveries will die down as Christmas edges ever closer, but stock will remain current and the store can network with other Belk stores to find a particular item if this store doesn't have one in stock.
Other stores, like Staples, also have online ordering, so shoppers can stay at home and still find that perfect gift, Wilks said.
All the store managers interviewed said that by the end of this holiday season, the number of shoppers and amount of money spent should beat last year, which all said was a strong year for retail sales locally and nationally.
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Farmer adjusts cattle venture
- An Early County
cattle farmer raises grass-fed cattle
for consumers who want organic beef.
Valerie Benton
BLUFFTON — An Early County cattle farmer worries about the future of his farm, White Oak Pastures, which has been in his family for five generations.
How will the 2007 Farm Bill impact his farming operation?
Will any of his three daughters step up to take over the farm?
At 51, how much longer will he be able to raise cattle?
These are questions that weigh heavily on Will Harris' mind. Instead of getting mired down in his concerns, however, he began several years ago implementing a business model that he hopes will ensure a successful and profitable future for his farm just south of Bluffton.
Harris began looking outside his farm for ways to keep his farming operation healthy without relying on government subsidies.
As he looks out over White Oak Pastures from the driver's seat of his late model Jeep, he talks briefly about the future of the U.S. Farm Bill and wonders aloud what the next one will hold for farmers.
"I just know I don't want to be dependent on it," Harris said while steering
the Jeep over a slight hump in the road, which winds through his pastures.
NEW MARKET
To lessen his dependence on subsidies, Harris, in 1995, began reading about sophisticated consumers who wanted natural or organic foods.
Raising cattle organically was not a new concept to Harris since his family "always grass-fed the ones we ate."
But Harris decided to apply the business model to his cattle farm.
The startup business of selling grass-fed cattle to be processed and packaged for organic markets is in its second year and is proving to be profitable, Harris said.
His product can be purchased at Tommy Mc's Produce in Albany, located at 2537 Lake Park Drive. Owner Tommy McDowell said the beef, sold in 1-pound packages, is "pretty good. It's lean and healthy."
McDowell said about 75 percent of the packages he sells are to repeat customers. He thinks if more people knew about it, they would opt for the leaner meat.
Outside Albany, it is located in about 140 of Publix's 220 Georgia stores located above Warner Robins.
Harris also distributes the organic meats to natural grocery stores and health food stores from Florida to Virginia through Tree of Life, the nation's leading distributor of natural, organic, specialty, ethnic and gourmet foods.
White Oak Pastures' grass-fed beef sells for $6.99 per pound, said Harris, who also said he makes no apologies for his product.
"I do think there's sophisticated consumers who want to eat beef differently, and I can do that," Harris said. "I don't blame folks who don't. That's a lifestyle choice folks make.
"I want people to add my beef to their diet," he said, touting its health and safety benefits, among others.
NATURE'S WAY
Harris' product is advertised as healthier because it contains lower saturated fats and higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids and fatty acids that help lower cholesterol. He says his product is safer because there is not the risk of E coli or mad cow disease (BSE).
A March 7, 2006, study released by the Union of Concerned Scientists confirmed "that beef and milk from animals raised entirely on pasture have higher levels than conventionally raised beef and dairy cattle of beneficial fats that may prevent heart disease and strengthen the immune system."
The union called pasture-based meat production "a fledgling industry." The union's Web site, www.ucsusa.org, said in a March 7 news release announcing the study that, "Increasing demand can encourage greater adoption of grass-fed production methods and keep more small farmers and ranchers on the land."
Harris sells more than 200 grass-fed cows a year and saves about 100 heifers a year from the offspring of his 650 cows. Each of his cows gives birth to one calf a year, he said. About 80 percent of the stock is outbred from Angus bulls.
He loves his herd, but he also enjoys eating beef. He said the average American eats 70 pounds a beef a year. Harris chuckles when he admits to eating 70 pounds of beef in one month. He includes beef in at least two meals a day.
As a cattle farmer, he said, he thinks there is a lot wrong with raising beef herds through conventional methods, both for the consumer and the cow. He regrets that the cows he does not harvest at 18-30 months old for organic processing are grown through conventional methods. He calls it "a shame."
Through the conventional method, 500-pound calves are hauled on a truck about 1,200 miles to Nebraska and placed shoulder-to-shoulder in a feed lot with nearly 100,000 other calves. They are fed a principally high-carbohydrate diet and injected with hormone implants and sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics to prevent diseases. The result, he said, are 1,250-pound obese animals.
"That's not what I want to do," Harris said, his pure Southern dialect possessing a gentile quality. "I want to raise cows the way nature intended. They are raised to eat grass."
BUILDING THE FUTURE
Cows prefer sweeter wheat, oats, rye grass, rye and clover to the perennial Bermuda and Bahia grass that Harris plants. Hay is an accepted feed, he said.
The cattle farmer, peering out from under the brim of his felt hat, said he wants to "sell them to people who appreciate them."
Harris also has plans to build a more than 5,000-square-foot processing plant in one of his pastures. He plans to break ground next year on the plant, which may cost as much as $1 million to build.
"I've got this bottleneck in processing," Harris said of his current situation.
He sees a plant of his own is the solution. Harris has applied for a $500,000 OneGeorgia loan to help offset the costs of building the facility.
The OneGeorgia Authority was created to assist the state's most economically challenged areas with one-third of Georgia's tobacco settlement funds. Since OneGeorgia was founded in 2000, more than $150 million has been distributed to 114 counties and has led to the creation of more than 31,000 jobs.
Even plans to build the plant cause him some additional concerns. "I can't raise enough cows to service the plant," he said. He's moving forward on building the plant with "a lot of trepidation."
He said many smaller packing plants have folded. To increase his likelihood of business, he has tentative plans to also open the plant up for processing of hogs, sheep, goats and possibly deer. He expects to process 10-20 cows a day.
The next steps in his business plan are to include a retail store in the processing plant and to later develop an agri-tourism component that would draw tourists from Highway 27, which is proposed for four-laning and which cuts through his farm.
Harris has no reservations about implementing business practices and inviting outsiders to his farm if it helps ensure its future. But the farmer has no desire to go elsewhere in the world. He's content to drive his jeep over the 1,000 acres of farmland, which he is in the process of having certified organic, and gazing out over his herd, which is stratified by age.
Harris says from the driver's seat, "I'm just not happy anywhere else but here."
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Power debate fueled by jobs, environment
- Southwest Georgians weigh the benefits and costs of a proposed coal-fueled power plant.
Dave Williams
COAL BURNERS IN GEORGIA
Longleaf Station, the first coal-fired power plant proposed in Georgia in 25 years, would be in the middle of the pack in capacity among the state's existing coal-burning plants:
| PLANT |
COUNTY |
CAPACITY* |
| |
|
|
| Scherer |
Monroe |
3,272 MW |
| Bowen |
Bartow |
3,160 MW |
| Wansley |
Heard |
1,730 MW |
| Branch |
Putnam |
1,540 MW |
| Yates |
Coweta |
1,250 MW |
| Longleaf |
Early |
**1,200 MW |
| Hammond |
Floyd |
800 MW |
| McDonough |
Cobb |
490 MW |
| Kraft |
Chatham |
208 MW |
| McIntosh |
Effingham |
178 MW |
| Mitchell |
Dougherty |
125 MW |
| |
|
|
*in megawatts
**proposed |
Source: Georgia Environmental
Protection Division
ECONOMIC IMPACT
An economic impact study found that a proposed power plant in Early County would have a huge effect on wages and salaries, sales tax collections and retail sales during a five-year construction period. Here is a breakdown of that impact for the various geographic areas that would be affected, measured in millions of dollars:
| STUDY AREA |
WAGES |
TAXES |
SALES |
| Ala./Ga. |
$427 |
$56.5 |
$220.7 |
| Georgia |
$230.1 |
$48.5 |
$119.3 |
| 7 counties* |
$345.1 |
$49.1 |
$171.9 |
| Early County |
$104 |
$39.5 |
$42.1 |
*five in Southwest Georgia and two in southeastern Alabama
Source: Troy University (Ala.)
College of Business
POLLUTION IMPACT
Environmental advocates are opposed to the plant. But if it is built, they say it should be with state-of-the-art IGCC technology that significantly reduces emissions. Here is a comparison of the pollutants that would be released by the plant as currently proposed and using IGCC, measured in tons per year:
| POLLUTANT |
PROPOSED PLANT |
IGCC |
SAVED |
| Sulfur dioxide |
5,232 |
446 |
4,786 |
| Nitrogen oxide |
3,052 |
939 |
2,113 |
| Particulate matter |
654 |
240 |
414 |
| VOCs* |
157 |
65 |
92 |
| Carbon monoxide |
6,541 |
1,374 |
5,167 |
| Lead |
0.52 |
0.039 |
0.48 |
| TOTAL |
15,637 |
3,064 |
12,573 |
*volatile organic compounds
Source: Georgia Center for
Law in the Public Interest |
BLAKELY — A classic economic development debate of jobs versus the environment is raging in a corner of what politicians and policy-makers from affluent metro Atlanta refer to as "the other Georgia."
Most people in and around Blakely, a rural community 50 miles west of Albany near the Alabama line, welcome an out-of-state energy company's proposal to build Georgia's first coal-burning power plant in a quarter century as a home run after years of striking out with one prospective business tenant after another.
"I haven't heard a negative thing," said June Merritt, a member of the Early County Development Authority who chaired a local task force that examined the pros and cons of the project. "It's more like, 'When is it coming? How can I apply for a job?' "
But not everyone in town is standing up and saluting New Jersey-based LS Power's 1,200-megawatt Longleaf Energy Station.
Members of Friends of the Chattahoochee, a local group allied with state and national environmental organizations, say highly polluting coal-fired plants are remnants of an outmoded technology that should have no place in the nation's 21st century energy portfolio.
"Coal was a fossil," said Dr. Sammy Prim, a retired radiologist and board member of Friends of the Chattahoochee who lives in Gordon, Ala., across the Chatahoochee River from the site of the proposed plant. "It needs to stay a fossil."
COAL IS BACK
Indeed, it did appear for a time that coal-burning power plants were about to be relegated to history.
During the 1990s, gas-fired plants sprang up in Georgia and across the nation as a cleaner-burning alternative to coal.
But the economics of the energy industry began to change during this decade as increased demand for natural gas — brought on in part by the growing number of gas-burning plants — drove up prices. As a result, coal has become competitive again, said Michael Vogt, director of project development for LS Power.
"If you look at the coal reserves versus natural gas reserves ... it's a much shorter supply of natural gas," he said. "That results in volatility and high prices."
Vogt said LS Power has set its sights on the Southeast because the region's rapidly growing population means an ever-increasing demand for electricity.
He said Early County quickly emerged as a prime candidate for a new coal-fired plant because the area has an abundant supply both of rail capacity for shipping the coal and of high-voltage transmission lines for moving the electricity the plant would generate.
Also, the company has worked out an agreement with Georgia-Pacific, which operates a nearby paper mill, to share water drawn from the Chattahoochee, Vogt said.
The $2 billion project would create 1,300 jobs at the peak of a five-year construction period and about 120 permanent jobs after the plant is built, both a huge economic jolt for a county of 12,000 people saddled with a poverty rate of 24.3 percent in 2000, almost twice the state average.
"This will provide a tax base in future years and put us in a position to make the community grow," said Billy Fleming, the fourth-generation publisher of the Early County News, the local weekly paper, who supports the project.
While the plant's generating capacity would place it in the middle of the pack among Georgia's 10 existing coal-burning plants, it would power 1.2 million homes.
Vogt said the company plans to sell the electricity wholesale to utilities in Georgia and would sell the power out of state only if it can't find enough takers here.
NEED QUESTIONED
But the project's critics say there's not going to be enough new demand in Georgia for that much power and questioned the wisdom of building a polluting plant in an area that doesn't need the electricity.
Tom Bell, a board member of Friends of the Chattahoochee who owns more than 800 acres adjacent to the plant site, said he's convinced the company will ship the electricity south to Florida.
But Fleming said where the power goes is irrelevant.
"Do these folks think we've been eating all the corn we grow in this county or wearing all the cotton?" he asked. "We export it."
To the project's critics, however, there's a big difference between corn and cotton and electricity produced by burning coal.
Georgia already features two of the nation's biggest polluting coal-fired power plants in the country in Plant Scherer in Monroe County and Plant Bowen in Bartow County, both operated by Georgia Power Co.
Coal-burning plants are major generators of pollutants linked to various serious and even life-threatening maladies.
Nitrogen dioxide is a major ingredient in summer outbreaks of smog that trigger asthma attacks. Sulfur dioxide contributes to the formulation of particulate matter, fine particles that invade the lungs and have been linked to premature death.
Carbon dioxide has been found to be a leading contributor to global warming.
Prim said he first saw the effects of such heavy industrial pollution years ago when he had a pediatric practice in Birmingham, Ala., during the heyday of that city's steel mills.
"You didn't have to listen to radio to tell how bad the pollution counts were," he said. "You could see from the number of kids coming in with asthma."
NEW TECHNOLOGY
The Longleaf project's opponents readily concede that technology has improved since Scherer, Branch and Georgia's other coal-burning plants were built decades ago.
Tougher federal standards have forced power companies to install scrubbers on smoke stacks that greatly reduce emissions.
But the environmental groups fighting the project are criticizing the state Environmental Protection Division for not insisting that LS Power use the latest technology, which converts the coal into gas before burning it.
According to written comments filed by the Atlanta-based Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, using what is known as IGCC technology at Longleaf would reduce yearly emissions of six pollutants from the 15,964 tons contained in the company's proposal to just 3,164 tons.
"The emissions limits selected do not reflect state-of-the-art for pollution controls," said Justine Thompson, the center's executive director. "Georgia deserves better."
But the EPD considers IGCC experimental technology. It's being used at just two coal plants in the nation.
"It holds great promise for the future, but it's not ready today," said Jim Ussery, the state agency's assistant director.
Vogt said LS Power wouldn't be able to secure bank financing for the project using IGCC even if it wanted to try out what he says is still a risky technology.
BENEFITS UNCERTAIN
Beyond concerns over technology and whether the additional electricity is needed, the plant's critics also question its economic benefits to Early County.
Bobby McLendon, president of Friends of the Chattahoochee, said he expects more people who move to the area to work at the plant would choose to live over in Dothan, Ala., than Blakely because there's more to do there.
"There's nothing to spend money on in Blakely," he said.
Prim said most of the skilled jobs the plant would create likely would go to newcomers brought in by the company because the local work force doesn't have the skills to do that kind of work.
Fleming conceded that community leaders have some work to do if Early County is to achieve maximum benefit from the plant.
Part of that would involve beefing up work-force training being offered at Bainbridge College's new Blakely site, he said.
Also, more needs to be done to make the community attractive for the newcomers — including the offshoot businesses that a new plant would generate — to live and shop, Fleming said.
"If we sit on our hands and don't do anything, they'll land in Dothan or Albany," he said.
The years of debate over the project are about to come to a head. After two question-and-answer sessions and a public hearing earlier this year, the EPD could give final approval for the plant next month or early in 2007.
The project's supporters are hoping for a spring groundbreaking. But the EPD's Ussery isn't betting on it.
He said he expects environmental groups to appeal if the agency gives the go-ahead for the plant.
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