Adoptions

On Monday, September 14, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $721,757 to South Carolina for increasing the number of children adopted from foster care. States use the funds from the adoption incentive award to enhance their programs for abused and neglected children. The Adoption Incentives program was created as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. The original program authorized incentive funds to states that increased the number of children adopted from foster care. In order to get payments, states had to increase the number of children adopted relative to baseline data.

A problem Columbia doesn't have — not now, anyway

Atlanta City Council is debating over a proposed major reservoir the city might build on city- owned land in North Georgia. The city would sell 10,000 acres in Dawson County for the reservoir. The land was first bought in the 1970s as a potential site for Atlanta's second major airport. The reservoir would need only 2,000 acres, and the remaining 8,000 would remain as protected wilderness. The project could result in an output of 100 million gallons of water a day. A federal judge in July declared illegal Atlanta's decades of withdrawal from Lake Lanier.

A problem Columbia should want to debate

Charlotte's internal debate over its proposed $450 million streetcar line is stalled while the city council grapples with the $5.5 million preliminary engineering study. Charlotte already has one streetcar line open and operating, connecting the southwest of town with the northeast. Columbia has no light- rail transit and has no plans for such while it continues woefully inadequate bus service without permanent funding.

Speaking of rail transportation...

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently awarded a $14.2 million study grant for a proposed magnetic levitation (maglev) high- speed rail line linking Atlanta with Chattanooga, Tenn., which would also link Hartsville- Jackson Atlanta International Airport with Chattanooga's Lovell Field, essentially establishing a second major airport for Atlanta. As a maglev project, it is beyond the reach of the $8 billion for other forms of high- speed rail set aside by the federal economic stimulus package approved last winter by Congress.

Best vittles in town closes down

The Dining Room at The Ritz- Carlton in Atlanta's Buckhead section will close Ocober 1. In 1997, The Dining Room was the only restaurant in the Southeast to receive the Mobil Five Star Award.

Big news for Boeing (cont'd.)

Last week's feature story in the Business Section of The

Columbia Star covered the real possibility of a full-scale passenger jet aircraft (Boeing 787 Dreamliner) assembly line in North Charleston. Also last week (on the afternoon of Thursday, September 10), Boeing workers in North Charleston voted to decertify the machinists union by a vote of 199 to 68.

Carolina First

The president of Carolina First Bank resigned in the second week of September. The bank gave no explanation for the resignation, and there was no announced replacement. The South Financial Group, parent company of Carolina First Bank, has suffered six consecutive quarterly losses, including $111.5 million in the most recent report for the second quarter of 2009. At the beginning of 2005, a share of TSFG was worth more than $30, and currently it's about $1.70. The CEO and chairman in control for most of that time, Mack Whittle, left the company during the past year with a severance payment of $18 million.

Newspapers

Augusta- based Morris Publishing Group has received another extension to cover two unpaid semi- annual interest payments of $9.7 million originally due Feb. 1 and August 3, 2009, on $278.5 in senior subordinated notes.

Mungo Co. and Greenwood Communities meet up

Columbia- based Harbor Homes, a division of Mungo Co., is part of The Ponds, a master- planned community in Summerville developed by Greenwood Communities and Resorts, managed by Columbia native John W. Morgan III.

Port play

The S.C. Supreme Court will review in early 2010 the Southern Environmental Law Center's ability to challenge the proposed port terminal being planned on the former Navy Base in North Charleston. If the court rules in favor of the law center, the center returns to the administrative law court, where the center argues the DHEC permits for the port's construction did not properly account for the water and air pollution the terminal would create. The law center apparently prefers seeing its fellow citizens changing sheets, waiting tables and tending bar rather than creating wealth through world trade.