George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America in New York City on April 30, 1789. From Washington’s inaugural address:
it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge.
In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either.
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.
On April 30, 1803, negotiators from France and the United States finished discussions of the Louisiana Purchase, which would double the size of the country.
By the middle of the 18th century, France controlled more of the modern United States than any other European power: from New Orleans northeast to the Great Lakes and northwest to modern-day Montana. In 1762, during the French and Indian War, France ceded its America territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain and in 1763 transferred nearly all of its remaining North American holdings to Great Britain. Spain, no longer a dominant European power, did little to develop Louisiana Territory during the next three decades. In 1796, Spain allied itself with France, leading Britain to use its powerful navy to cut off Spain from America.In 1801, Spain signed a secret treaty with France to return Louisiana Territory to France.
Reports of the retrocession caused considerable uneasiness in the United States. Since the late 1780s, Americans had been moving westward into the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys, and these settlers were highly dependent on free access to the Mississippi River and the strategic port of New Orleans. U.S. officials feared that France, resurgent under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, would soon seek to dominate the Mississippi River and access to the Gulf of Mexico.
U.S. envoys agreed to pay $11,250,000 and assumed claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. In exchange, the United States acquired the vast domain of Louisiana Territory, some 828,000 square miles of land. In October, Congress ratified the purchase, and in December 1803 France formally transferred authority over the region to the United States. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory for the bargain price of less than three cents an acre was Thomas Jefferson’s most notable achievement as president.
On April 30, 1886, former Confederate President Jefferson Davis arrived in LaGrange, Georgia for the unveiling of a monument to Benjamin Hill. Earlier that day, he spoke in Newnan, Georgia.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
The Bibb County Board of Elections rejected challenges to almost 800 potential voters, according to 13WMAZ.
Bibb County Republican Party Chairman David Sumrall questioned their residency, arguing it was illegal for them to vote under their listed addresses. In a hearing Monday afternoon, Sumrall told the board he wanted to help the county run a fair election.
“My purpose is simply to help us move toward the cleanest voter roll possible, which lists only lawful voters,” he said. “Every unlawful vote dilutes the vote of a lawful voter.”
Sumrall challenged three sets of voters, including 159 people who listed their address as Mercer University’s student center. That’s where mail goes for students and some staff. Board members, like Chairwoman Karen Evans-Daniel, explained county tax records show all Mercer buildings have the same address.
Sumrall also challenged 48 people who registered to P.O. boxes. Again, board members pointed out exceptions, like Georgia’s VoteSafe program. Evans-Daniel says that allows victims of domestic violence to register to a P.O. box so their abuser can’t find them.
He also claimed 584 people were still on the rolls in Bibb County after moving out-of-state. Evans-Daniel clarified 551 of them have “inactive” voter statuses, meaning they’ll automatically fall off the list within the next two federal election cycles. She also expressed doubt at Sumrall’s proof, telling him it’s possible he didn’t have definitive information.
“Just because my name is Sarah Jackson, and I was born in ‘49 – that’s the only information that you would have – does not mean that Sarah Jackson born in ’49 does not exist in another state,” she said.
It wasn’t Sumrall’s evidence that prompted the board to vote down the challenges. It was the Federal Voting Rights Act that prohibits most changes to voter rolls before a federal election. There are federal races on the May 21 primary ballot.
The board voted unanimously to dismiss the challenges against the Mercer addresses and alleged out-of-state voters.
They voted 3 to 2 to dismiss the P.O. box challenge after some debate.
The Georgia State Election Board reprimanded Fulton County for a temporary failure to count 1326 ballots in 2022, according to the AJC.
Election workers in Fulton County initially failed to count 1,326 votes during the 2022 primary because they weren’t loaded from memory cards, according to an investigation report.
The State Election Board reprimanded the county, which corrected its vote totals and recertified the election in June 2022. The discrepancy didn’t change the outcome of any races.
Votes from seven memory cards, which store votes from ballot scanning machines, weren’t recorded on election night, the report said. Either an election worker didn’t click on the correct box to load results, memory cards were removed from computers prematurely, or there was an unknown technical error.
“The exact cause could not be determined, but it is believed that human error during the (vote) extraction process was the most likely cause,” the report said. “Fulton County elections instituted a new procedure … to ensure that all precincts and tabulators that were created on the election management system have also had their results uploaded.”
The secretary of state’s office detected the problem because one precinct showed zero votes cast, raising a “red flag,” the investigation report said.
State Election Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal said county election offices need to ensure that voting data is correct. There was a similar issue in Cobb County with a memory card that wasn’t loaded correctly in November 2022, changing the results of a Kennesaw City Council election.
“Obviously that really undermines voter and public confidence in the process,” Ghazal said at the February meeting.
New state election rules could affect the outcome of 2024 elections, according to USA Today via the Athens Banner Herald.
“We’re paying lip service in this country that we value elections,” Kidd, director of elections and registration in Douglas County, Georgia, west of Atlanta, told USA TODAY. “But that’s not being shown by the laws that are being passed.”
But other significant new rules are already in effect in major 2024 battleground states, including Georgia and North Carolina, that could help to decide the results of a close presidential election.
In Georgia, in particular, a series of election rules passed over the past three years threatens to overburden election officials and, in some cases, issue criminal penalties against them. New election measures passed by the Republican-led state Legislature in late March that are awaiting a signature from Gov. Brian Kemp could further hamper the way elections offices operate if enacted, experts say.
Liz Avore, lead author of the Voting Rights Lab report, argued that these laws take “steps toward almost treating election officials like they are suspects in a crime” and “treating election offices like they’re crime scenes.”
Republican leaders in the state, including Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have defended the laws, arguing they bring enhanced security and provide clarity around laws for election officials.
Raffensperger said he didn’t see an issue with poll worker recruitment in 2022 after some of the initial election laws were passed, and doesn’t expect to see any in 2024. He also lauded Republican officials’ work in recent elections.
In recent years, Kidd said, one of his biggest work-related fears has been making a mistake on the job that could wind him up in prison.
Georgia is among nine states that have enacted laws ramping up investigations into and prosecution of election crimes, according to the Voting Rights Lab report.
A measure passed in the state’s sweeping 2021 election integrity law opened election workers up to felony prosecution if they issue an absentee ballot request form to a person who does not request one. Another passed in 2023 made it a felony, punishable by up to a year in prison, for officials to accept more than $500 in private funding for election administration.
Joseph Kirk, elections supervisor in Bartow County, Georgia, an area about an hour northwest of Atlanta, said he doesn’t believe the new laws criminalize election workers.
Instead, he sees the changes as more about politics rather than election administration.
“There’s more fear from poll workers, from temporary employees, about making mistakes rather than actual changes in law that are trying to increase the penalties for those mistakes,” Kirk said.
In Floyd County, more than $100 million dollars were spent on Coin-Operated Amusement Machines (COAMs), according to the Rome News Tribune.
Players in Floyd County spent over $100 million in the past year on gaming machines found in many service stations and food marts, according to figures provided by the Georgia Lottery Corporation.
Not all of that money leaves the county. Of the $102,761,647.18 spent from April 1, 2023, through March 31, in Floyd County, $73,937,385.20 was redeemed to players. That left approximately $28.8 million in profit.
Of that profit, 90% is split between the master license holder and licensees, and 10% goes to the Georgia Lottery Corporation. A bill on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk may change the split of the net revenues to 13% for the lottery and 43.5% for the master license holder and licensees.
According to information on the Georgia Lottery’s COAM website, the gaming machines generated approximately $1.4 billion in revenue in Georgia in 2023, of which the Georgia Lottery Corporation received $140 million.
The Rome City Commission is currently working on an ordinance that would, to a degree, enact restrictions on COAMs. Once enacted, it’s anticipated that Floyd County and Cave Spring will follow Rome with similar ordinances.
Two Gwinnett legislators hosted a Town Hall about the City of Mulberry incorporation referendum, according to the AJC.
Georgia House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration and state Sen. Clint Dixon, both Republicans, made their case for a large new city in northeastern Gwinnett before a crowd of hundreds Monday night at the Hamilton Mill United Methodist Church.
Voters in the 26-square-mile footprint of the proposed city of Mulberry will be asked May 21 whether to approve the new city’s charter — and by extension, the city itself. Early voting begins April 29.
The new city would handle planning and zoning, code enforcement and storm water management. Its population would total about 41,000. With a median household income of about $121,000, it would be the wealthiest city in Gwinnett. The city would also be majority white in a county with an overall population that is about 36% white.
“We are not going to recognize our community in 10 years if this doesn’t pass,” Efstration said.
The proposed charter states Mulberry could not provide additional services, or levy municipal property taxes, unless voters approve such measures in a referendum. However, experts and the Legislature’s attorneys have said such provisions unconstitutionally infringe on the city council’s powers.
Efstration said the Georgia Supreme Court has not ruled on the matter and he believed the proposed charter would stand up to legal challenge.
Mulberry would be ruled by a five-member city council. Council members would choose one of their own as mayor. Several people at the town hall expressed opposition, saying they would prefer to directly elect a mayor. Efstration urged them to adopt the charter and change it in the future.
More Democrats than Republicans moved to Georgia, according to the AJC.
Georgia gained about 13,500 more likely Democratic voters than Republican voters since the last presidential election, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of voter registration data from L2, a political data vendor.
“I’m not surprised that they are disproportionately Democratic,” said Bernard Fraga, a political scientist at Emory University. He said the voters moving into Georgia mirror national trends of people leaving more Democratic-leaning states such as California and New York due to high costs of living.
Fraga said that since these voters were previously registered in another state before coming to Georgia, they are likely to vote in the upcoming election. “That might give Democrats a small advantage,” he said.
In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden won Georgia by just 11,779 votes, a 0.24 percentage point margin of victory. Fraga said that a small change in the mix of voters could swing this year’s election one way or the other, including shifts in voting preferences among existing Georgians.
Over the past three years, about 140,000 registered voters moved to Georgia, according to the analysis. When accounting for Georgia voters who moved away, the state had a net gain of about 30,000 voters. Roughly two out of every three of these new voters are likely Democrats, accounting for about 19,500 voters. About 6,000 of the new voters are likely Republican voters, while the remainder were not registered with a political party in their prior state or belonged to third parties.
An additional 50,000 registered voters have moved to Georgia leading up to the 2024 election than during the same time period before the 2020 election, and more of the new arrivals appear to lean Democratic than compared with four years ago.
The AJC analysis found that the three states that sent the most voters to Georgia were Florida, California and New York in that order. While voters from Florida are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, those from California and New York are more Democratic.
Out of the registered voter data from L2, about 20% of voters who moved to Georgia since 2020 are self-reported Africans or African Americans. Self-reported white voters lead with 57%. Of the remaining voters, 5% are Hispanic, 4% Asian and 14% are other ethnicities or unknown.
Dougherty County Commissioners rejected (again) the application of former Administrator Michael McCoy to return to his old job, according to the Albany Herald.
A former Dougherty County administrator’s application for the job from which he was fired in a 4-3 vote last year was met with a polite response suggesting that while he is a “well-qualified” candidate he likely would not be a good fit for this particular position.
The Dougherty County Commission voted on May 22, 2023, to terminate former Administrator Michael McCoy with a majority made up of Commissioners Victor Edwards, Gloria Gaines and Clinton Johnson and Commission Chairman Lorenzo Heard.
However, after there were questions about the legality of that vote, as the issue was not on the commission agenda for that day, McCoy was reinstated on a subsequent vote two weeks later, with another vote taken immediately to again terminate his contract. That motion was approved by the same four in December 2023 and extended through December 2024.
A third vote was taken on June 27, 2023, at the conclusion of a personnel hearing requested by McCoy, with that vote confirming the earlier votes with the same 4-3 majority. Commissioners Russell Gray, Anthony Jones and Ed Newsome were in the minority in all of the votes taken to terminate McCoy.
The former administrator applied for his old position. Since his firing he has filed a lawsuit in Dougherty County Superior Court seeking reinstatement, $5 million in damages and other unspecified damages.
McCoy’s attorney in the case, Maurice King, said in response to the letter that McCoy is the victim of “a textbook example of retaliation.”
“Gloria Gaines, the current District 5 commissioner for Dougherty County, teamed up with Chairman Lorenzo Heard and (Commissioners) Victor Edwards and Clinton Johnson to unlawfully terminate the employment of Mr. McCoy, and now they are retaliating against Mr. McCoy.“The voters of District 5 have the opportunity to voice their displeasure with Gaines, Heard, Edwards and Johnson by voting to elect Thomia Thomas, the District 5 challenger to Gaines.”
Thomas, a political newcomer, is challenging Gaines in the May 21 Democratic primary election for the district. The winner in the contest faces no Republican opposition in the fall and will be sworn in as the District 5 seat in January 2025.
The four commissioners who made up the majority in the votes for McCoy’s termination, who are named individually in the lawsuit, filed a countersuit against McCoy on March 8, seeking to nullify McCoy’s 2024 contract.
Flock surveillance safety cameras helped locate a missing Columbus-area woman, according to WTVM.
The family of Diana James of Phenix City says they were worried when she went missing last month, but a camera like this one is what brought her back home.
“I didn’t know if someone had carjacked her, or what the problem was, I know she had been gone for a while and that’s not usually like her or her style,” said Bobby James. Bobby talked about the moment he knew something was wrong when his wife of 50 years, left for a trip to get their granddaughter but never made it.
“Well I was just, going to my granddaughters, at least I thought I was going to my granddaughters where she was staying with her other grandmother,” said Diana. She does remember ending up at a motel, paying for one night after getting tired, but her family was still searching. “It started getting dark and after it getting later in the hours, I said I better make a move,” said Bobby James.
James said it was a Flock camera that spotted her. “I gave the tag number and the vin and gave that to the police department, they called me later on and said that car was spotted in Perry Georgia,” said James. That’s exactly how the flock technology works. According to Muscogee County Sheriff Greg Countryman, it gives a clear image of what they need to solve several crimes.
“It identifies tags it helps us to take pictures and images of who the drivers are, so when we have that information, we can run it through Flock,” said Countryman. The cameras are in the Chattahoochee Valley and across the nation, helping law enforcement close cases.
But the James family says they are thankful for the technology. “I was thankful for these new camera systems they have, had it not been for that I don’t know how long it would have taken to find her,” said James.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Atlanta yesterday, according to Georgia Recorder.
“None of us have achieved success without support. None of us,” she said during a panel discussion at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park. “And without someone or people who understood our talent and our dreams and encouraged us to achieve it and showed us how to achieve it. And as much as anything, the spirit behind the push for access to capital, and in particular on this tour, focusing on minority small businesses and Black-owned small businesses and small businesses and entrepreneurs who are Black men, is to recognize the disparities that have existed around the access to the opportunity to achieve success.”
Harris highlighted what the administration calls the fastest creation of Black-owned small businesses in more than 30 years, the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the lowest gap between Black and white unemployment, as well as increasing the wealth of American families with Black wealth up by 60% relative to before the COVID-19 pandemic.
She spoke about “The Stitch,” a park project in downtown Atlanta intended to reconnect minority communities split by the construction of I-75 and I-85 in the 1950s and 60s.
“During the late 50s and 60s, there was this whole policy push, national policy push, that was called urban renewal,” she said. “It was supposed to be about making life easier for people that lived in the areas where it happened, but essentially, it was about a policy that was directed at making it, many people would say, easier for folks who had wealth and means to move to the suburbs and still have access to downtown.”
Atlanta’s Stitch received a $158 million dollar grant from the Department of Transportation’s $3.3 billion Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program, meant to fund projects around the country that aim to resolve harm done to minority groups through discriminatory transportation policy.
“So what we have been doing through our infrastructure bill is putting resources into basically reconnecting communities,” Harris said.
Harris’ visit marks her third of the year and 12th since being sworn in.
“With all of your visits, I’m beginning to think that you might want to call Atlanta home,” joked Congresswoman Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat.
President Joe Biden himself is set to visit vote-rich Atlanta May 19 to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College. Just last week, numerous high-ranking officials came to Atlanta, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, to speak in front of important constituencies.
Georgia Power announced that Plant Vogtle’s newest reactor is online and feeding the grid, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Georgia Power announced Monday that Unit 4 at Plant Vogtle has entered commercial operation, producing enough electricity to power approximately 500,000 homes and businesses throughout Georgia.
Vogtle Unit 3 entered commercial operation on July 31. With all four units now in operation, Plant Vogtle is expected to produce more than 30 million megawatt hours of electricity each year, according to a news release.
“The new Vogtle units are a key piece of our strategy to meet the energy needs of our customers not only tomorrow, but 20 years from now,” said Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power in a news release. “… I’m also proud of the teams who have worked tirelessly to deliver the first newly constructed nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years – representing a long-term investment that will benefit our customers and the state of Georgia for decades to come.”
The nuclear expansion project at Plant Vogtle was originally scheduled to conclude in 2016 and 2017. The project encountered a series of delays that drove up the cost to more than double the $14 billion anticipated when the Georgia PSC approved the reactor construction in 2009.
The Public Service Commission voted late last year to let Georgia Power pass on to customers almost $7.6 billion of the project’s costs, which caused an increase in the average monthly residential customer’s bill by $8.95, according to reporting from Capitol Beat.
The plant is operated by Southern Nuclear on behalf of co-owners Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R-Cobb County) joined a lawsuit against the Biden Administration over it’s revisions to Title IX, according to WALB.
The expanded guidelines of Title IX offer measures to stop schools from banning transgender students and teachers from using restrooms that match their gender identities, according to NBC News. The Title IX rules also allow transgender athletes to compete in sports that fit their gender identity.
Those measures are part of the focus of Carr’s lawsuit.
“The Biden administration is destroying women’s sports by gutting commonsense provisions that protect female athletes and demanding that biological males be allowed to compete against females,” Carr said in a statement. “Today we have taken action to defend women’s rights to fair competition, and we will keep fighting until we end this absurdity once and for all.”
Carr previously pushed back against Biden’s administration updates to Title IX in 2022.
Three other attorneys general are also a part of the lawsuit including those from Alabama, Florida and South Carolina.
Republican Darren Pierce announced he is running in the Republican Primary for Whitfield County Sheriff, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.
Rocky Face resident Darren Pierce has announced he is running for the Republican Party nomination for Whitfield County sheriff in the May 21 primary. Early voting is underway for that primary in the courthouse.
“I have dedicated the majority of my adult life to a career in law enforcement, completing 18 years of service with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office,” Pierce said in a press release.
State Rep. David Sampson (D-Albany) faces three challengers in the May 21, 2024 General Primary Election, according to the Albany Herald.
Incumbent David Sampson is being challenged by Albany firefighter Tracy Taylor, who was the chair of the local Republican Party before switching over to the Democratic Party this year, and college student Joshua Anthony, who despite his youth, notes that he has been working on political issues for the past eight years and even wrote a gun bill proposal at age 19, a bill he hopes to bring before the state legislature if he claims the House 153 seat.
Sampson, who underwent surgery during his first two-year term in the legislature, forcing him to miss several days of the session, said he had indeed considered not seeking a second term in office before being encouraged to reconsider by supporters and state officials.
“Most people don’t understand that, if you want to have an impact, you must be aligned, must have contacts with, officials in the majority party. I’ve done that, and I’m too mature – way too grown – to come up here and embarrass Dougherty County by being a rabble-rouser. This seat is only one vote, and people can send whoever they want up to Atlanta. But I have that first-term learning process under my belt, and I know how to network. It’s like someone moving their money from Bank of America to Regions Bank for no reason. Why would you do that?”
Sampson pointed to his efforts to get HB 77, which brought another Superior Court judge to the county, passed as an example of working with Republicans like Gerald Greene of Cuthbert to get needed legislation passed. He said the county would be “set back four or five years” by changing representatives now.
“I am absolutely engaged in this process; I’m all-in,” he said. “Once I’m elected, I’d like to meet with city and county officials — the commissions, the chamber of commerce, the school board, Albany State, Albany Tech and other stakeholders — to discuss the issues that are important to the community. It’s vital that we prioritize.”
The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican Brenda Battle in the Nov. 5 general election.
Former University System of Georgia Board of Regents member Donald Leeburn, Jr. has died, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.
In 1991, then-Gov. Zell Miller appointed Leebern to the USG Board of Regents. Leebern served five consecutive terms, including as chairman from 1994-95. In 2019, he retired from the board and was given the title of regent emeritus.
Leebern returned to Columbus to join the family business, the Georgia Crown Distributing Co., a wholesaler and importer of liquor, wine, beer and bottled water. He became president of the company in 1968 and board chairman in 1992.
Among the professional and civic organizations he served, Leebern was a founding member of the University System of Georgia Foundation, past board chairman and past president of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America and the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Georgia.
Northeastern Judicial Circuit Juvenile Court Judge Matthew G. Leipold has resigned, effective at the end of May according to AccessWDUN.
Leipold was appointed to the bench in March 2022. Court officials said, in accordance with Georgia law, the Superior Court judges of the Northeastern Circuit will appoint a new judge to the bench for a 4-year term to begin August 1.
“Judge Leipold has done a great job for our circuit,” Chief Judge Jason J. Deal said. “We appreciate his dedication to public service in both the Public Defender’s Office and the Juvenile Court for the last ten years. With a growing family, we understand the need to pursue a more lucrative career in the private sector.”
The Northeastern Judicial Circuit serves Dawson and Hall Counties.
Nearly half of commercial ships off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas are exceeding speed limits set to protect whales, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Nearly half of commercial container and bulk vessels operating off the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas – including ships using the ports of Savannah and Brunswick – are exceeding seasonal speed limits created to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Those are the findings of the non-profit Whale Safe and other organizations that analyzed boat-traffic data in zones established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency Fisheries division, including the Mid-Atlantic Seasonal Management Area off Georgia and the Carolinas.
Current federal regulations set a maximum of 10 knots (11.5 mph) from mid-November to mid-June for vessels at least 65 feet long in sections of the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to New England, where right whales are typically found during birthing season.
“We’ve already seen that asking ships to travel less than 10 knots where whales have been sighted can save these creatures’ lives, but not all ships are abiding by these limits.” said Douglas McCauley, director of the California-based Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, one of the organizations involved in the assessment. “Thanks to a range of innovative technologies, we can now pinpoint speeding ships and provide data to help companies save whales.”
NOAA says it has assessed cival penalties of nearly $1 million in 56 cases involving vessels violating the speed limits in right whale speed zones in 2022 and 2023.
The agency also reports sending about 1,000 compliance letters to vessel owners along the Atlantic coast.
“Reacting in near-real time and using satellite-based technologies, we have sent more than 250 alerts to vessels operating in close proximity to right whales,” the agency adds.
Female right whales travel as much as 1,000 miles from Canada and New England to give birth and nurse calves in the warm Atlantic waters between Cape Fear, North Carolina, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to NOAA.
At least three right whales have died from vessel strikes so far this season, including two discovered off the coast of Georgia.
The Georgia Sea Turtle Center released ten rehabbed sea turtles, according to The Brunswick News.
Staff members released three Kemp’s ridley turtles, six green turtles and a loggerhead in front of a crowd of hundreds who had gathered at the Great Dunes Park access.
Center Director Michelle Taylor said the release occurred Friday because only recently has the water warmed enough to release them.
It was water temperatures that landed all but one in the Sea Turtle Center for treatment. Nine were cold-stunned and one, green turtle found upside down March 16 in the marsh near Savannah, was debilitated. The turtle, named Shamrock, came to the center with a lot of barnacles.
Comments ( 0 )