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Adopt) Me...
ATHENS AREA HUMANE SOCIETY’S Adoption Location is inside
Pet' Supplies Plus at the Alps Shopping Center
Franklin is a big, beautiful tuxedo kitty with a lush
coat and white whiskers about 5 incnes long. He
spent at least a year being a “neighborhood kitty”
but now he waits for his own special home. Cool,
laid-back and affectionate gem.
Brazil is a cute and funny young girl who
had found a home, but the resident dog
became progressively more
towards her and her owner sadly
returned her to find a new home.
this possible. Than
ACC ANIMAL
CONTROL
41 Dogi Received
24 Dogs Placed
From
Sept D
to
Sept»
GREAT JOB
ATHENS!
What a wonderful town. You came to the
rescue of 43 starved and abandoned cats
and in record time. The Athens Area
Humane Shelter is very grateful to the
, donors, and supporters who
k you so much!
ATHENS AREA HUMANE SOCIETY
22 Total Cats Received
3 Cats Placed
0 AdoptaWe Cats Euthanized
BRAZIL
NEW HOURS
Adoption Outreach Center (Cats)
Monday-Friday lpm-7pm
Saturday 10-5 • Sunday 1-5
With the drought this bad and the river this low, you never know what her muddy banks will turn up. Somebody put this
drowned bike on display a few weeks ago on the East Broad Street bridge over the North Oconee River.
later without rain. "We will be monitoring this on
a daily basis," he added, and restrictions will be
eased when possible. Meanwhile the ACC govern
ment has suspended some of its own water uses,
like washing vehicles and flushing water lines.
"The public needs to understand and come to
grips in a real way that we're in a drought situa
tion," Commissioner Doug Lowry advised.
Commissioner David Lynn suggested changing
water rates to encourage conservation. (A water
conservation committee chaired by Hoard has
looked at changing to a "conservation rate struc
ture" to do just that.) At present, large users pay
no more per gallon than small users do.
Others suggested stricter enforcement of the
outdoor water ban. As it stands, a SI,000 fine
results from a second offense, but only a warning
from the first. Hoard saw only two reasons for
citizens not to know about the water shortage:
"number one, if you're in a coma, and number
two, if you're dead." But Lowry insisted that, "as
unbelievable as it may seem, many people don't
watch this program [on TV]" (or read the news
papers) and must be reached in other ways.
John Huie jphuie@athens.net
Dog Laws
Tethers to be Cut?
Dog owners will no longer be allowed to
"tether" or chain a dog in their yard, but will
have to provide a fenced area instead, if a pro
posed new ordinance passes. The fenced space
wouldn't have to be very big: just big enough
for the dog to "stand, turn around, and lay
down, and make all other normal body move
ments" inside the fence, ACC Animal Control
Superintendent Patrick Rives told Flagpole. That's
"probably" adequate to protect the animal's
health, Rives said.
However, Commissioners George Maxwell and
Kathy Hoard have issues with the ordinance.
"This seems much farther-reaching than I had
anticipated," Heard said at the ACC Commission's
Legislative Review Committee meeting Sept. 18.
People living in rental properties may not be able
to persuade landlords to provide a fence, she
said, and many older folks depend on pets for
company. She didn't like the minimum pen size
requirement either, saying "I think there are al
ready dogs confined in pens that are too small."
And some people, said Maxwell, can't afford a
fenced yard. "I know a lot of people that love
their animals, and they're not going to be able to
afford an enclosure that will keep that animal,"
he said. Those animals may be given up to the
pound or abandoned, he said, and "nine times
out of 10, that animal's going to be put down."
But Rives told commissioners that similar
ordinances in Gwinnett and Chatham counties
haven't resulted in more animals being given up
to shelters, though they did decrease neglect
complaints. And while the ordinance would
protect a confined dog from being attacked by
another dog—or protect a child who might wan
der near a tethered animal—Rives told Flagpole
that those are rare events. If a dog owner is
found in violation of any part of county animal
control rules, the county can confiscate the ani
mal, Rives said. And while there are presently no
specific requirements about how fences must be
constructed (and fences may include "invisible"
electronic fences that shock an animal if it cross
es an underground wire), owners can be required
to upgrade a fence once an animal has escaped
from it. Commissioners will consider (and perhaps
revise) the ordinance at their October agenda-
seiting meeting, and may vote on it Nov. 6.
John Huie jphuie@alhens.net
Neighborhood Pubs
Commish to Say O.K.?
The ACC Commission's Legislative Review
Committee did vote last week to move forward
a proposal to allow some restaurants to serve
alcohol, even if they are within 200 yards of a
church or school. Two blanket exemptions to that
requirement already exist: for downtown, and
for restaurants located in shopping centers. The
proposed ordinance would allow commissioners
to weigh several criteria in granting case-by-case
exceptions to the 200-yard rule, including the
"character of the location," nearby liquor sales,
"circumstances which may cause minors to con
gregate," and previous incidents at or near the
restaurant. An exemption (if granted) would then
come up for renewal once a year if any citizen
asked for reconsideration.
Commissioners Hoard and Maxwell have
already come out fighting against such exemp
tions. "If a new restaurant comes in, I may not
know the character of that restaurant" in ad
vance, Hoard said. She worried about restaurants
thjt only serve pizza and beer, with outdoor
decks close to private homes, and suggested
allowing exemptions only if a public street
separates a restaurant from a nearby neighbor
hood. "I am very concerned about outdoor decks
and patios. I am very concerned about nice
restaurants that at 11 p.m. become bars," Hoard
said. Asked Commissioner Maxwell, "Are [young
people] not going to be influenced" by people
drinking near their schools? "To me that's de
grading to our churches and our schools and our
>• continuea on next page
Drying Up
Drought, Drought, Drought
Tensions over water hit home last week as lo
cal landscapers protested an emergency ban on
outdoor watering and Athens-Clarke County (ACC)
Commissioners voted it in anyway, just prior to
their agenda-setting meeting Sept. 19. Athens
and much of Georgia suffer from near-record
drought, and that could worsen, according to
state climatologist David Stooksbury. Ocean tem
peratures in the tropical eastern Pacific presage
a "la Nina" weather system that will likely con
tinue or worsen our drought through the winter,
when rainfall would normally be recharging lakes
and groundwater, Stooksbury writes at www.geor-
giadrought.org.
Local water restrictions are now at their
highest-but-one level with all outdoor watering
banned in Athens-Clarke, except for commercial
car washes, plant nurser
ies and construction sites
that have submitted a
workable plan to reduce
their water usage by 20
percent. All other out
door water usage is now
banned, including personal gardens (and hand
watering) and newly installed lawns. That's what
brought the landscapers to City Hall.
"You're going to cost a lot of people a lot
of jobs.... When you just turn the water off, 40
percent of my earning ability is gone. Are you
going to cut my property taxes 40 percent?"
asked Perry Bugg, owner of First Prize Lawn
Maintenance. "What I ask you to do is to share
the responsibility with every industry. Ask the
poultry to shut down one day a week. Ask the
restaurants to shut down one day a week. Ask
the University of Georgia to shut down one day a
week." The county's three largest water users by
far, ACC Public Utilities Director Gary Duck told
Flagpole, are UGA and the two poultry process
ing plants. Each uses over a million gallons daily
(out of about 18 million gallons of total county
water demand) and none has been required to
cut back, because that's not a requirement of the
county's drought management plan. (UGA does
comply with the outdoor water ban—even at
the football stadium, apparently—and according
to Commissioner Kathy Hoard, rare plants at the
State Botanical Garden are dying from lack of
water.) If it hasn't rained by early November, ACC
Manager Alan Reddish told commissioners, they
will need to go the plan's final step: "to actually
allocate that water to some users, and restrict
it to others," perhaps based on "life-support"
needs rather than economics. By that time, Duck
said, reservoir water would be severely reduced,
and the "treatability" of the remaining water may
affect its taste and color.
Some landscapers who spoke to the
Commission complimented the county on the
development of its drought management plan,
which was hashed out by a wide-ranging commit
tee that included landscapers, UGA water experts
and others. That committee will soon meet again.
But "it has become obvious that our present sys
tem needs some tweak
ing," said owner Ron Deal
'of Gardens South land
scaping. "The goal is to
reduce water usage by 20
percent. Yet you do this
by requiring our industry
to reduce its usage by 100 percent." That's "noth
ing short of a death sentence for these compa
nies," Deal said. Landscapers should at least be
allowed to water by hand, which uses much less
water, he suggested. Others suggested a need for
more water sources for the future, although Duck
said Bear Creek Reservoir has worked as intended
to supply 90 days' worth of water. "The reservoir
was never intended for us to go through a major
drought" like the present one, which is supposed
to occur only once in 100 years, he said. Officials
said last week that there was 45 to 55 days' water
supply for Athens in the reservoir.
Although sympathetic to the pleas of the
landscapers, commissioners were reluctant to
make changes to the plan on the fly. They voted
unanimously to implement the outdoor watering
ban. If watering isn't reduced now, Reddish said,
"we would be in a much more difficult situation"
Officials said last week that there
was 45 to 55 days’ water supply
for Athens in the reservoir.
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