Alabama top stories in brief

• Following the EPA’s decision denying Alabama Power’s coal ash plan, Alabama Power has announced a plan with Eco Material Technologies to recycle coal ash in Mobile. The original proposal would have allowed coal ash in Alabama to remain in unlined pits, enabling it to leach into groundwater sources. Coal ash is the waste leftover from burning coal for electricity. It contains substances like arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals. The deal with Eco Material Technologies focuses on the 22 million cubic yards of coal ash that are sitting in an unlined area along the Mobile River. Alabama Power and other companies however are waiting for a final EPA decision on coal ash regulations. If their initial decision is finalized it could cost billions to remove the coal ash waste across the state. 

• The Alabama State Department of Education invited organizations to participate in a federally funded program to help provide meals to children and teens during the summer. The program, Break for a Plate, reimburses organizations that provide meals to children during the summer. According to their site, 20% of children in Alabama live in families that struggle with providing food. During the school year, a majority of Alabama children eat either free or reduced price school lunches. Their website states that “While many receive free and reduced meals during the school year, children need healthy food all year long.”

• Last week, an officer at Staton Correctional Facility was arrested and charged with using an official position for personal gain and attempting to commit a controlled substance crime. She is the third Alabama Department of Corrections officer this month to have been arrested for using an official position for personal gain. 

• Alabama is one of 15 states that will not participate in the federal Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program. Nancy Buckner, the commissioner for the Alabama Department of Human Resources said last week that Alabama didn’t choose to participate because notice came too late for them to request funding from the state legislature, and it was outside of their normal budget capabilities. The Summer EBT is designed to help reduce child hunger and provides preloaded cards that families can use to purchase groceries during the summer. The program provides $120 in the summer per child for qualifying families. Alabama did participate in the program last year. 

• Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed with nitrogen gas on Jan. 25 by the state of Alabama. The execution was the first execution carried out with nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas began to flow through Smith’s mask at 7:56 pm, and he was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. Alabama’s Attorney General, Steve Marshall, described the execution as a success and suggested in a press conference that other states would likely follow suit using nitrogen gas to execute death row inmates. Critics of the execution, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said that the execution caused Smith to suffer and that the state had said the death would be painless and failed to deliver on that promise. 

Alabama legislative update

• As of Jan. 28, 72 bills had been prefiled with by legislators for the 2024 legislative session set to start on Feb. 6. 

• There have been 59 bills filed by members of the house and 13 bills filed by members of the senate.

• There were more bills connected to crime and incarceration than any other subject. Fifteen of the bills filed so far are connected to criminal offenses, criminal procedure and incarceration. 

• The other subjects with the most related bills were education, taxation and revenue and laws connected to state and state officers. Each of these subjects had five bills.

• Two constitutional amendments have been filed:

• One would divide the Alabama legislative session into two separate periods. Currently, the Alabama legislative session ends about midway through the year. HB35 would cause the first legislative session to start in the beginning of February and “be limited to 20 legislative days and 75 calendar days.” The second legislative session that would start in September would “be limited to 10 legislative days and 30 calendar days.”

• The other amendment, SB13, would replace a previous amendment to the Alabama constitution and would prohibit Alabama from taking actions that interfered with individual decisions regarding abortion. The amendment would still allow the state to prohibit abortions after fetal viability, which it defines as “the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures.” The proposed amendment also says that “abortion may not be prohibited if, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

• All prefiled bills can be viewed on the Alabama Legislatures website. 

Announcements

• Our travel columnist, Wesley Miller, will be expanding to work on his own platform. His last article with Sunrise will be released Feb. 2. We’ve enjoyed having Wesley as part of our team, and we wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors. You can check out The Alabama Ramble’s Facebook page for updates on his work.

• We are excited to announce a new column called The Longleaf Hiker, which will be published by Xander Swain, our Roundup writer. The column will focus on the outdoors of Alabama and surrounding states. From hiking and kayaking to adventuring deep below in the cave systems under the Appalachian and Smoky Mountains, Xander will be taking our readers through his own personal experiences outdoors. He’ll detail his excursions and write about the unique natural history in the southeast. The column will be published on our site on the first Friday of each month, with Ko-Fi members receiving it a week in advance. The first issue of The Longleaf Hiker will come out on Feb. 23 for Ko-Fi members and March 1 for regular readers and will feature a trip to the Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn for updates!

• We’ve made a quality of life improvement to our newsletters. Readers that wish to adjust wish to make adjustments to which newsletters they receive or to update the email address we send them to can do so by clicking “update your profile” at the bottom of our emails.