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Grant will provide free Internet to all students

By tiM LoCKEttEtlockette@annistonstar.com

Piedmont’s city school system has received a federal grant that would make free Internet access available to every public school stu-dent by the end of this summer.

The grant, funded by the federal program known as E-rate, would put Internet access in every Piedmont home with school-age chil-dren.

“We’re continuing to close the digital divide,” said Michael Ingram, a member of the city’s school board. “We’re committed to transforming this community and the way people learn — so we can get out ahead of everyone else.”

The Federal Communications Commis-sion announced Wednesday that Piedmont would receive a grant of at least $500,000 to expand wireless Internet access for its stu-dents. The money comes from the “universal service” tax levied on Internet providers in the 1990s.

Piedmont took a sudden leap toward the Internet age last year, when the school system provided Apple MacBook laptops for every student in the school system. The move was

PIedmont

Trent Penny/The Anniston Star

Brandi Todd, fifth-grade teacher at Pied-mont Elementary School, teaches her class with MacBook laptop computers.

please see piEDMoNt ❙ Page 7A

funded by a mixture of local money and grants.Before the MacBooks were distributed, school officials say, many in this city of 4,900 didn’t have

computers at home. Sixty-five percent of the 1,150 students in the Piedmont district — which serves the city and a large swath of rural Calhoun and Cleburne counties — are on free or reduced lunch, indicative of a higher-than-average level of poverty.

After the MacBook program was launched, computers began to pop up everywhere in Pied-mont.

“You’d go to church on Wednesday night, and after the service, 40 MacBooks come open,” said Ingram, who is also a student pastor at Piedmont’s First Baptist Church.

Ingram’s church has wireless Internet access. Many homes in Piedmont, and in the foothills beyond, don’t have any Internet connection, school officials say. So, during this school year, stu-dents have been congregating at restaurants in the afternoons, taking advantage of wireless access.

“Much of our instruction is now done digitally,” said Matt Akin, the schools superintendent. “But there’s so much more that we could be doing.”

Akin said teachers are already offering online tutoring in their off hours by computer, though not every student has been able to access that tutoring easily.

The school system plans to have wireless Internet available across the city, and in rural areas covered by the school system, by July. But the exact shape that program will take is still unknown, as is the price tag on the program.

The city will open its first bid from a potential contractor Tuesday, and a second one on Wednes-day, said Rena Seals, the school system’s technology director.

Seals said she doesn’t know what the contractors will propose. But based on what she has seen in other cities with similar programs, Seals said the proposals may include a plan to cover the entire city with a wireless network, while providing rural students with the equipment to access 3G wire-less networks with their laptops.

Akin said the total cost of the program is projected to be between $500,000 and $800,000.The wireless system will be free to students, but that won’t mean the entire community has free

wireless. Akin said the rules of the E-rate program prohibit using E-rate funds for non-students. Akin said that by turning Piedmont into a wired city with up-to-date school equipment, the

school system can help attract new industries that will help the economy grow. City leaders have decided that investment is worth making, said Ingram, the school board mem-

ber.“In a small town like Piedmont, the school is the center of the community,” he said. “We’ve

decided to build that up, and to transform this community.”Star assistant metro editor Tim Lockette: 256-235-3560.

Kyodo News/Associated Press

Residents look over destroyed buildings half-submerged from a tsunami in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Saturday morning after Japan's biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday.

By MALCoLM FoStErAssociated Press

TOKYO — For more than two ter-rifying, seemingly endless minutes Fri-day, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrap-ers. Then came a devastating tsunami that slammed into northeastern Japan

and killed hundreds of people.The violent wall of water swept away

houses, cars and ships. Fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a nuclear power plant was knocked out, forcing thousands to flee. A boat was caught in the vortex of a whirlpool at sea.

The death toll rose steadily through-out the day, but the true extent of the disaster was not known because roads to the worst-hit areas were washed

away or blocked by debris and airports were closed.

After dawn Saturday, the scale of destruction became clearer.

Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land, with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At one school, a large white

NAturAL DiSAStErPowerful quake, tsunami kill hundreds in Japan

new Alabama ethics law to get

legislative fix By phiLLip rAWLS

Associated Press

MONTGOMeRY — Top Republicans in the Alabama Legislature are proposing changes to the state’s new ethics law that are meant to eliminate confusion about the measure that was rushed through in the wee hours.

House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, introduced identical bills Thursday before the Legislature left on its spring break. The legislation could come up for consideration after the lawmakers return to Montgomery on March 22.

The legislation would add the word “corrupt-ly” to portions of the law that prohibit public officials and employees from soliciting anything to influence an official action and that prohibit a person from offering anything to a public offi-cial or employee to influence an official action.

Marsh said Friday the legislation was recom-mended by the State Ethics Commission and the attorney general, and the legislative leaders had nothing to do with writing it.

Jim Sumner, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said the change would eliminate concerns that the law could be subject to a legal challenge because it was so vague that a person wouldn’t know when they were crossing the line.

please see EthiCS ❙ Page 8A

Jason Bacaj/The Anniston Star

Jerry Revis, manager of the Roanoke Utility Board, examines a lagoon at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Roanoke straining to solve sewage problems

By JASoN BACAJjbacaj@annistonstar.com

ROaNOKe — Spread across the table in front of Jerry Revis was a chart showing mea-surements of discharges from Roanoke’s wastewater treat-ment facility over the past three years. Measurements exceeding environmental standards were marked by red numbers.

The two-foot by three-foot sheet had nearly as many red numbers as black numbers.

“It was fairly extensive,” Revis, city utilities manager, said of the violations.

There were 18 violations last year. There were 28 the year before.

A 2007 consent order handed down by the Alabama Depart-ment of Environmental Man-agement cites violations by Roa-noke’s wastewater treatment facility stretching back to 2001, Revis said.

please see QuAKE ❙ Page 5A

“SOS” had been spelled out in English.Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said an initial assessment found “enormous damage,” adding that the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the hard-

est-hit region.President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially “catastrophic” disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier is already in

Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he added.The entire Pacific had been put on alert — including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska — but waves were not as bad as expected.The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake struck at 2:46 p.m. local time and was the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. It ranked as the

fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

The quake shook dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coast and tall buildings swayed in Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Prime Minister Naoto Kan was attending a parliamentary session at the time.

“I thought I was going to die,” said Tokyo marketing employee Koto Fujikawa. “It felt like the whole structure was collapsing.”Fujikawa, 28, was riding a monorail when the quake hit and had to later pick her way along narrow, elevated tracks to the nearest station.Minutes later, the earthquake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami along the northeastern coast of Japan near the coastal city of Sendai in Miyagi pre-

fecture. The quake was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.Large fishing boats and other vessels rode the high waves ashore, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the

way. A fleet of partially submerged cars bobbed in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing direction and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to

sea. Flames shot from some of the homes, apparently from burst gas pipes.Waves of muddy waters flowed over farms near Sendai, carrying buildings, some of them ablaze. Drivers attempted to flee. The tarmac at Sendai’s airport was

inundated with thick, muddy debris that included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.Highways to the worst-hit coastal areas buckled. Telephone lines snapped. Train service was suspended in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally

serves 10 million people a day. Untold numbers of people were stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo’s Narita airport was closed indefinitely.Police said 200-300 bodies were found in Sendai, although the official casualty toll was 185 killed, 741 missing and 948 injured.Japan’s coast guard said it was searching for 80 dock workers on a ship that was swept away from a shipyard in Miyagi.In the coastal town of Minami-soma, about 1,800 houses were destroyed or ravaged, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said. Fire burned well past dark in a

large section of Kesennuma, a city of 70,000 people in Miyagi.Officials declared the first-ever state of emergency at a Japanese nuclear power plant and ordered evacuations after the earthquake knocked out power to a

cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi facility near the city of Onahama, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. They said radiation levels inside the facility had surged to 1,000 times more than normal.

Some radiation had seeped outside the plant, the nuclear safety agency said early Saturday, prompting calls for more evacuations of the area. Some 3,000 people have already been urged to leave their homes.

The Defense Ministry said it had sent dozens of troops trained to deal with chemical disasters to the plant in case of a radiation leak.An American working at the facility said the whole building shook and debris fell from the ceiling. Danny Eudy, 52, a technician employed by Texas-based

Atlantic Plant Maintenance, and his colleagues escaped the building just as the tsunami hit, his wife told The Associated Press.“He walked through so much glass that his feet were cut. It slowed him down,” said Pineville, Louisiana, resident Janie Eudy, who spoke to her husband by

phone after the quake.The group watched homes and vehicles carried away in the wave and found their hotel mostly destroyed when they reached it.A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 100-foot (30-meter) flames whipping into the sky.Also in Miyagi prefecture, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co.Japanese automakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda halted production at some assembly plants in areas hit by the quake. One worker was killed and more than

30 injured after being crushed by a collapsing wall at a Honda Motor Co. research facility in northeastern Tochigi prefecture, the company said.Jesse Johnson, a native of Nevada who lives in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was eating at a sushi restaurant with his wife when the quake hit.“At first it didn’t feel unusual, but then it went on and on. So I got myself and my wife under the table,” he told the AP. “I’ve lived in Japan for 10 years, and I’ve

never felt anything like this before. The aftershocks keep coming. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know whether it’s me shaking or an earthquake.”Tokyo was brought to a near standstill. Tens of thousands of people were stranded with the rail network down, and the streets were jammed with cars, buses

and trucks trying to get out of the city.The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many planned to spend the night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and

offices.NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.Jefferies International Ltd., a global investment banking group, estimated overall losses of about $10 billion.The tsunami hit Hawaii before dawn Friday, with most damage coming on the Big Island. The waves covered beachfront roads and rushed into hotels. One

house was picked up and carried out to sea. Low-lying areas in Maui were flooded by 7-foot waves.On the U.S. mainland, marinas and harbors in California and Oregon bore the brunt of the damage, estimated by authorities to be in the millions of dollars.

Boats crashed into each other in marines and some vessels were washed out to sea.Rescue crews were searching for a man who was swept away in northern California while taking pictures. Two friends with him were able to get back to shore.Thousands fled homes in Indonesia after officials warned of a tsunami up to 6 feet (2 meters) high, but waves of only 4 inches (10 centimeters) were measured.

No big waves came to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, either.Islands across the South Pacific were hit by bigger-than-normal waves, but no major damage was reported. Surges up to 26 inches (66 centimeters) high were

reported in American Samoa, Nauru, Saipan and at the far northern tip of New Zealand.In Tonga, water flooded houses in the low-lying Ha’apai islands early Saturday, police said. Thousands in the capital, Nuku’alofa, sought refuge at the king’s

residence on higher ground, Radio Tonga said.The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off Japan’s east coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The area is

240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. Several quakes hit the same region in recent days, including one measured at magnitude 7.3 on Wednesday that caused no damage.

“The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month’s worth of energy consumption” in the United States, USGS scientist Brian Atwater told The Associated Press.

Early Saturday, a magnitude-6.6 earthquake struck the central, mountainous part of Japan — far from the original quake’s epicenter. It was not immediately clear if that temblor was related to the others.

Japan’s worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

———Associated Press writers contributing to this report Jay Alabaster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; Seth Borenstein and

Julie Pace in Washington; Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans; Jaymes Song and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; Denise Petski and Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles; Garance Burke in San Francisco; Nigel Duara in Seaside, Ore.; Jeff Barnard in Crescent City, Calif.; Alicia Chang in Pasadena, Calif.; and Mark Niesse in Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

The new law, covering 295,000 city, county and state officials and employees, was rushed through a special session of the Legislature at 3 a.m. Dec. 16. Several last-minute changes were made without the input of the Ethics Commission, which hears complaints against public officials and employees accused of vio-lating the law. But proponents didn’t want to slow down for fear that it would allow opponents time to kill it..

After the Ethics Commission had time to study the new law, some members complained that the wording was confusing. Sumner said the new legislation grew out of those concerns.

Under the new ethics law, a citizen could commit a crime by offering a soft drink to a city council member while discussing the need for a new sidewalk. “As it was, it would criminalize inadvertent behavior,” he said.

Mobile attorney Matt McDonald, who represents a collection of lobbyists known as the Alabama Council of Association Executives, said the legislation is needed to clear up confusion.

Four dismissed from Auburn’s football team

please see roANoKE ❙ Page 8A

And in December, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management slapped the city with a $35,500 fine, a lawsuit and a consent order requiring the city to get in compliance or build a new wastewater treatment facility in three years.

An ADEM spokesman declined to comment for this story.Since then the city and Greg Thompson, an engineer with AME Engineering, have

been “scrambling and pushing” to get the facility — a lagoon system — into compliance, Thompson said.

One violation was recorded in January, the latest monthly data available, Revis said.February’s figures are starting to come in and look “pretty clean.”But while that’s a good sign, until they get more than a month or so of data they won’t

know whether the lagoon system can be repaired or the city will have to build a new mechanical facility.

Thompson will present a timeline for making that decision at the next utility board meeting, March 21.

He declined to speak about the timeline prior to the presentation, saying they are looking at a new facility but “haven’t given up on the existing system either.”

Dropping the ballRoanoke’s wastewater treatment facility comprises three lagoons, each located in

a different part of the city. The lagoons are piped into a holding area lagoon, called a hydrograph controlled release lagoon, on the north side of town, just inside the city lim-its.

Sewage runs from a home or business into a lagoon where aerators mix oxygen into it, feeding naturally occurring bacteria that eat raw sewage, Thompson said. This partially broken-down wastewater sifts through a barrier strung across part of the lagoon. On the other side, water sits and the bacteria suffocate and die. That water is then pumped into the HCR lagoon on the outskirts of town, where it gets treated with chlorine and sulfur dioxide and is slowly sent into a tributary of High Pine Creek.

“A lagoon is the simplest, easiest kind of treatment. I mean, it’s just a hole in the ground,” Thompson said. “But the problem is they don’t work very well.”

Roanoke’s lagoons were built sometime in the 1960s. The HCR lagoon was built around 1990, Thompson believes.

Violations did not occur until the turn of the century — coinciding with heavy turn-over in the utility department, said Ronald Cameron, chairman of the Roanoke Water, Sewer and Gas Board.

“I know this is gonna sound like we’re all trying to push it off on something,” said Cameron, who’s served as chairman for nearly four years.

But information wasn’t shared, which led the lagoon to be mismanaged and viola-tions go unresolved and unnoticed by the board until just a few months ago, Cameron said.

ADEM handed down its first consent order on Roanoke in 2007, just before Cameron took over. The chairman Cameron replaced and Revis’ predecessor worked with the state agency to put together a plan to get the wastewater treatment plant back in com-pliance.

It operated under that plan until the previous utility board manager left. It was sev-eral months before the interview process was completed and Revis was hired, Cameron said.

Months after he was hired, Cameron got a letter from ADEM informing him that the city was under a court decree for violations and failure to meet reports as outlined in the 2007 consent order.

“I was like, ‘Somebody need to tell me what’s goin’ on’,” Cameron said. “There’s no way around it … the ball got dropped.”

Cleaning up the muckThere’s only so much that can be done to bring a lagoon system into compliance,

Thompson said.“The only factor you can control with lagoons is the amount of air,” Thompson said.Turtles in the biggest lagoon swim into the aerators — which Thompson likened to

floating garbage disposals. The turtles got chopped up and jammed the aerators, starv-ing the bacteria until the aerators were fixed. Roanoke’s other two lagoons haven’t had problems with turtles, he said.

Now three larger aerators buzz through any turtles to keep spinning, mixing oxygen up and feeding the bacteria breaking down the sewage, Thompson said over a Credence Clearwater Revival song coming in over the pickup’s radio.

But they’ve made another change: adding chlorine closer to where the treated water discharges into the creek. It’s more efficient and effective than adding the chemical on the other side and letting it permeate throughout the holding lagoon, Thompson said.

Now it’s a matter of collecting enough data to determine if those fixes will be enough, Thompson said. A private company will begin testing the samples Monday to make sure Roanoke’s numbers are accurate, Thompson said.

If the fixes aren’t enough to bring Roanoke’s wastewater treatment plant into compli-ance, it has to replace the lagoon system with a mechanical facility.

It would cost the city an estimated $4.5 million — a cost that would have to be born by the taxpayers, Cameron said.

“There’s no way the utility board could absorb that kind of cost,” Cameron said.But January’s significant drop in violations and the clean numbers rolling in for Feb-

ruary are a positive sign for Revis and Thompson.“Hopefully we’re gonna make this work,” Revis said.Star staff writer Jason Bacaj: 256-235-3546

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