VOL. 8 NO. 52
www.ShopperNewsNow.com |
December 31, 2014
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Christmas comes to Karns Welcome in the New Year on Market Square Mayor Madeline Rogero and city employees invite everyone to greet the New Year Wednesday, Dec. 31, on Market Square. ■ Ice skating on the Holidays on Ice Rogero skating rink from 1 p.m. until midnight ■ Festival foods available at the ice rink ■ Music on the Square beginning at 10:30 p.m., with a big screen showing events from 2014 ■ Countdown beginning at 11:59 p.m., with a ball drop and fireworks ■ Join in the singing of “Auld Lang Syne” following the fireworks. Sponsored by 93.1 WNOX.
Promoting hope Grant Standefer, executive director of Compassion Coalition, put out a call for donations as the year ends. He quotes Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the Standefer heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” And says 71,000 people in Knox County live below the poverty line with many of them worn down by “the oppression of seemingly hopeless life situations and circumstances. They are indeed heart-sick.” Compassion Coalition, a collaboration of area churches, agencies and individuals, offers hope through “getting ahead” classes. Those who become a financial partner in the mninistry may do so online at www. compassioncoalition.org or by mail at 107 Westfield Drive, Knoxville TN 37919. Info: Facebook: CompassionCoalition; Twitter: @CompassionKnox
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Hiram Day, 2, Karns Fairest of the Fair Tiny Tot King, doesn’t seem to mind the cold during his very first Christmas Parade.
If you ask 2-year-old Emmit Riehn what’s better than a sucker and a Christmas parade, he might say two suckers and a Christmas parade.
Judging by the crowd’s reaction, Santa and Mrs. Claus were the clear favorites among parade goers at the annual Karns Community Christmas Parade. The parade went off without a hitch in beautiful but cold weather following postponement due to heavy rains the previous Saturday. Photos by Nancy Anderson
More photos on page A-3
Phil Savage at Bliss Home on Friday Photographer Phil Savage will be featured at an opening reception 6-9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 2, at Bliss Home, 29 Market Square. His work will remain on display at Bliss through January. Savage was born in Mexico City and is a world traveler, Phil Savage which has helped him hone his ability to “turn the or-
dinary into the extraordinary,” according to event organizers. “Phil loves to explore the endless possibilities that photography has to offer, by embracing black and white panoramic photos with hand-tinted touches. His First Friday exhibit aims to challenge viewers to rediscover the beauty and complexities that can be found all around Knoxville.” Savage earned a full gymnastics scholarship from Southern Illinois University, where he received a
bachelor’s degree in fine art photography. He studied French at the University of Grenoble in southern France. He was inspired by his mother, Anne, a graduate of the Art Institute of Geneva, and his father, Paul, a businessman and avid photographer. He settled in East Tennessee when he was hired by AllAmerican gymnast Ginger Temple Baxter to help her coach gymnastics. In 2010, he became the only Junior National Team coach in the
history of Tennessee. He is currently the head coach at Harpeth Gymnastics in Franklin, Tenn., where he just won his 32nd consecutive state title. His photography ranges from sports to architecture and nature. He loves to experiment with time exposures, night photography, abstracts and light painting. Savage is the first photographer to win the Dogwood Arts Festival contest, which is usually awarded to painters.
Plaintiffs press tree-cutting lawsuit despite TVA concession By Betty Bean The property owners who filed a lawsuit in 2012 challenging the Tennessee Valley Authority’s treeremoval policies will press on with their case despite TVA’s announcement that it has ended the practice of destroying vegetation that grows taller than 15 feet on its easement zone. The utility contends that suspending the 15-foot rule renders the case moot and asks that the lawsuit be dismissed. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Tom Varlan ruled in favor of TVA, which maintained that easement rights acquired 70-80 years ago give the utility permission to remove vegetation (by cutting or spraying herbicide) within 150 feet of its power lines, including the right to execute the “15-foot rule,” which it put into place in 2012. In October, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that
ruling and sent the case back to Varlan with instructions that TVA must produce documentat ion that it conducted an environmental-impact study before implementDon Vowell ing the 15-foot rule, as required by the National Environmental Protection Act. TVA responded that the 15-foot rule wasn’t really a material change and therefore it hadn’t violated the NEPA. In Dec. 16 court filings, plaintiff’s attorney Don Vowell said that TVA’s about-face is illusory, since it proposed to end the 15-foot rule only in the “buffer zone” (on the outer edges of the easement) while reserving the right to continue to cut in the “wire zone” (beneath the lines), where TVA power wires are typically suspended some 60 feet high. “The area that TVA plans to effectively clear-cut is approximately 280,000 acres, or more than
437 square miles,” with this area being ‘approximately half the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.’ “The stated area is the area of the entire right-of-way, not just the buffer zones. The buffer zones, considered alone, would be a much smaller number of acres and square miles, approximately 25 percent of the stated amount,” the brief, filed Dec. 16, said. “The Court of Appeals quotes the letter of the TVA official in which he states that ‘our policy requires TVA to cut down all trees 15 feet or higher’ with no indication that the policy is limited to the buffer zones.” On Dec. 23, TVA filed two new documents. One declared the property owners’ lawsuit moot because the 15-foot rule is no longer in effect. The other was a statement from Jacinda B. Woodward, TVA’s senior vice president of transmission and power supply, who said she has “completely suspended” the use of the 15-foot rule in transmission rights-of-way and will do an NEPA review of any new
buffer zone maintenance practices before implementing them. She said this applies to both buffer and wire zones. Vowell made an appearance on WBIR news to discuss TVA’s apparent reversal. He said he was speaking out “to debunk the idea that this is a voluntary suspension of the 15-foot rule by TVA when it is really being done to comply with the ruling from the Court of Appeals.” In his Dec. 16 brief, Vowell said a case is moot “when there is nothing left for the Court to decide. The case at bar is not moot because the issues stated in the complaint have not been decided.” The plaintiffs contend that the 15-foot rule has had a substantial environmental impact, which means that TVA should have submitted an environmental-impact statement, which it did not do. Admitting to an NEPA violation could have serious consequences, including being ordered to pay legal fees and costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act.
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