YOUTH
SPECIAL SECTION
ROTC cadets from Arabia Mountain High School got a history lesson while cataloging soldiers’ graves in Lithonia’s historic cemetery. A10
The readers have spoken, and on April 28 the winners of the 2012 Best of East Metro Readers Choice Awards will be honored at the Mall at Stonecrest.
Mapping soldiers’ graves
Grill Masters...
East Metro’s Best
We are the Bar-B-Que
RIBS • TIPS • PORK • BEEF • CHICKEN • TURKEY • BRUNSWICK STEW • FISH • SPLITS
SEE 2 GREAT OFFERS ON THE BACK OF THIS AD EAST ATLANTA • DECATUR • STONE MOUNTAIN • LITHONIA • AVONDALE ESTATES • CLARKSTON • ELLENWOOD • PINE LAKE • REDAN • SCOTTDALE • TUCKER
Copyright © 2012 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
April 21, 2012
Volume 17, Number 51
www.crossroadsnews.com
Stonecrest residents pushing hard for grocery store By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Stonecrest residents want a grocery store and they are ready to fight for it. At an April 16 meeting hosted by the Parks at Stonecrest Homeowners Association, more than 50 residents packed the Fairfield Garden Inn to urge county officials to help them get a grocery store for the area anchored by the 1.3 million square-foot Mall at Stonecrest. Dwayne Williams, the Parks at Stonecrest president, said residents want to get a grocery store into the footprints of the Stonecrest Overlay District and the meeting was to begin the conversation with county officials. They told Commissioners Stan Watson and Lee May and the county’s Economic Development Director Charles Whatley and other county officials in attendance that they have thousands of rooftops and available land for a grocery store. While income is high in the area, Whatley
More than 50 said the area still lacks the type of density that residents in the grocery store developers look for and that Stonecrest area can sustain the business. attended an April He said that the last thing residents need 16 meeting at is for a grocery store to open and be unsucFairfield Garden cessful. Inn to urge “You don’t want to county officials to incentivise a bad deal,” help them get a he said. “When a grocery grocery store. store goes dark, other grocers won’t come.” Whatley said that the grocery business is a rough one with a thin profit margin. He also Charles Whatley said that the decision to locate a store is not always rational. Jennifer Ffrench Parker / CrossRoadsNews “You have got to be prepared to fight that, just like you fight the data,” he said, “Not all velopers and retailers. munities with 1,700 units on Turner Hill the decisions [are] logical or reasonable.” “You have got to keep telling them,” he and Klondike roads near the mall, said that Whatley encouraged the residents to keep said. a grocery store is one of the assets that the telling their story accurately and effectively, Jethna Wagner from Euramex Manageand if it changes or improves, to update de- ment, which operates three apartment com- Please see STONECREST, page A5
From Trash to Gas to Cash DeKalb’s new renewable energy facility gearing up By Carla Parker
DeKalb County is now turning “trash to gas and gas to cash.” CEO Burrell Ellis and county officials cut the ribbon on April 16 on its new renewable energy facility at the Seminole Road Landfill in Ellenwood. The ribbon-cutting comes six months after an Oct. 27 ground breaking on the $9 million facility and makes DeKalb the first county in the United States to build a facility that converts landfill gas to fuel. Officials were joined by representatives of Energy Systems Group and the Clean Cities Atlanta Petroleum Reduction Program, who partnered with the county on the project. The 10,961-square-foot facility, which is expected to save the county $3 million in fuel over the next eight years, will turn landfill gas into renewable fuel and reduce diesel and gasoline fuel consumption and related emissions in the metro Atlanta area. Through the program, the DeKalb Sanitation Department is converting 70 vehicles to run on renewable natural gas produced by the facility. The county says that fuel is cleaner and less expensive than diesel fuel. Ellis said renewable energy is the energy of the future. “There may be a time when we will run out of oil, but we are not going to be running out of renewable energy,” he said. “Renewable energy will create jobs and a green, sustainable infrastructure.” Ellis said the county is expecting to make $1 million each year from energy sales to
Carla Parker / CrossRoadsNews
State Rep. Earnest “Coach” Williams and Clarkston Mayor Emanuel Ransom stroll through the renewable energy facility in Ellenwood on April 16.
private users of compressed natural gas vehicles. “Diesel fuel – much like the fuel most of us put in our cars – is now running at over $4 a gallon,” he said. “But compressed natural gas is currently running between $2.25 and $2.37 a gallon. So that is significant savings along with the revenue we’ll be producing from this plant.” The county’s goal is to eventually replace or adapt its entire fleet of 306 sanitation vehicles with natural gas vehicles over the
next eight years. Ted Photakis, senior account executive of Energy Systems Group, said the facility also will have a positive environmental impact by reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions to the equivalent of 17 million gallons of gasoline consumed annually. “Instead of that flare that’s destructing that gas, it’s going to be directed here to this plant, which has near zero emissions,” Photakis said. The test phase of the facility’s machinery
began on April 16. The on-site fueling station, which will be open to the public, will be completed this fall. The renewable energy facility is funded by DeKalb and a U.S. Department of Energy grant made to Clean Cities Atlanta through President Barack Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The county’s Sanitation Department Please see TRASH, page A2