Louisville Gas and Electric has not changed its timeline for restoring power to the area. Friday is day two of what company officials say will be a seven to ten day operation.
As of Friday morning, 172,000 households were without power. Roughly 2,300 utility workers are on the job, many of them from outside the state.
LG&E spokesperson Chip Keeling says the company is providing the workers with food and has offered them places to sleep.
“There’s a good majority of them that are in hotels,” he says. “Some of them love to just stay with their truck and sleep in their truck. They’re used to it. They work this way and provide mutual assistance throughout the whole midwest and south.”
The crews are working sixteen hour shifts. Keeling says additional workers have been requested and could arrive in the area soon.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Kentucky’s Proposed Cigarette Tax
Earlier this month Governor Steve Beshear proposed a seventy cent increase in the tax on cigarettes. His reasoning? Kentucky needs the money, and we have one of the lowest cigarette tax rates in the nation (47th out of 50 as of January 2008). Needless to say, there are groups on both sides of the issue. Some say we need the money and it’s a good way to get it, others say it will cost retailers money and jobs by cutting into sales; another group claims it’s the best thing for our health, and the farmers, still reeling from the changes brought by the tobacco settlement are poised to see demand drop even farther. Tune in on Friday when we explore all sides of the debate over the proposed cigarette tax.
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Click here for Elizabeth Kramer’s interview with The Speed Art Museum’s Charles Venable and wHY Architecture’s principal architect, Kulapat Yantrasast.
The Speed Art Museum has chosen an architectural firm to design the expansion of its building on the University of Louisville campus. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports.
A Los Angeles-based firm — wHY Architecture — will design the expansion of the Speed Art Museum. The decision is the latest in a multi-year process that has involved staff and board members interviewing many architects and visiting museums around the world.
Museum director Charles Venable says wHY Architecture came with an impressive resume.
“They have enormous amount of experience working on specialized museum buildings,” Venable says. “And, practically speaking, museums are complicated places.”
Venable says that after reviewing many architectural firms, representatives from the Speed found that wHY Architecture understood the problems the museum has in its current building and that it proposed possible and appealing solutions for the interior and exterior spaces that could attract people to and through the gallery space.
Venable says the expansion will be an expensive as well as notable project.
“Clearly, this will be one of the most important architectural expansions in the history of Louisville,” he says ”So, we’re talking about something in the tens of millions of dollars.”
The firm designed The Grand Rapids Art Museum, the world’s first certified “green” museum, and has redesigned gallery space at the Art Institute of Chicago. Venable says a design should be unveiled later this year and construction should start next year. The new space should open in late 2012.
Many unemployment offices throughout the state are having problems due to the weather. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.
There are 19 unemployment offices in Kentucky that are not able to process electronic unemployment claims now due to power outages and other problems caused by current weather conditions.
Cathy Lindsey is with the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Office. She says people filing claims can find information at the offices even though they might not be fully operational.
“There should be instructions on the door that will basically direct them to an operable service location that’s nearest to them that will have the capability to help them file their claims,” Lindsey says.
She says people can still file claims by calling or visiting the website of the state Office for Employment and Training, and that this only affects people who haven’t filed their claims.
“People who have already filed their claims this week will receive their checks,” she says.
The offices concerned include those in Carrollton, Danville, Elizabethtown, Leitchfield, Brandenburg, Fort Knox, Bardstown, Lebanon, Springfield, Henderson, Louisville, Madisonville, Central City, Owensboro, Paducah, Mayfield, Murray and Richmond.
The offices should function as normal once power is restored.
“As soon as electricity is back and the local offices are up and running, they’ll be able to process unemployment claims electronically,” Lindsay says.
Additional crews have been coming into Kentucky to help with power restoration efforts.
By the end of the day on Thursday, E-On U.S. had hoped to have 18 hundred utility workers in the Louisville area.
The crews are mostly coming from the south, where winter storms were not as damaging. E-On Vice President of Energy Delivery Chris Hermann says many of the expected crews have already arrived.
“We are therefore moving beyond the hotel rooms that we have acquired and we are beginning to establish options and early plans to set up another staging area, which would be a place for not only feeding and assembling vehicles but also for sleeping, showering and so on,” he says.
As of Thursday evening, 190 thousand households in the Louisville area were without power. Statewide, more than 600,000 were without power.
Third District Congressman John Yarmuth of Louisville says the stimulus bill that passed the House this week could bring billions of dollars to Kentucky.
The bill is now in the Senate. Yarmuth says that body will likely make some changes to the $819 billion package, but he believes provisions that would help the Commonwealth will remain.
“It could be as much as I think about $2.5 billion for Kentucky over the two years,” he says. “That is in all sorts of categories. Funding to help with Medicaid shortfalls, construction and food stamps, the extension of unemployment benefits and roads and highways money.”
Yarmuth says he expects the bill to receive bipartisan support in the Senate. No House Republicans voted for the package.
Indiana stands to gain about $4 billion in the package.
About 1000 Kentucky National Guard troops have been mobilized to help affected areas of the state recover from this week’s crippling ice storm. Colonel Phil Miller says he expects the number of troops needed will continue to grow as Guard personnel clear roads and reach more isolated areas. Miller says the troops are performing numerous tasks.
“The missions right now are road clearance. We also have soldiers that are transporting water. And then initially we were putting a lot of generators out, supporting critical installations. And the priority there was going to power nursing homes as well as critical care medical facilities,” says Miller.
Miller says western and southern Kentucky have suffered the most damage. Some cell phone towers have been damaged in the region, making communications even more difficult.
