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VALDOSTA, GA (WALB) -

A gaping hole in the brick retaining wall in the 2400 block of Gornto Road remained Monday night, evidence of a crash that occurred just after 7 p.m. Friday when 58 year-old Danny Dunkin lost control of his 2001 Ford truck while traveling South on Gornto Road.

It was the third incident of a car crashing into a building in Valdosta in the past two weeks.

"The driver lost control, hit the bricks, and actually traveled a little further and struck a portion of the home there. Fortunately, no one was hurt during the incident," said Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress.

But unlike the incident Sunday night, December 14th, in which 28 year-old Lee Caquelard is accused of driving drunk and smashing into two homes on Fawnwood Circle, Chief Childress said Dunkin simply got choked up.

"[The] driver indicated to us that as he was drivin' down the road, he was drinkin' somethin' and got choked. During the course of choking, [he] lost control of his vehicle," Chief Childress said.

But, police don't believe that alcohol is what Dunkin was drinking. "We did check," said Chief Childress. "There was no indication the driver was drunk. I wanna rule that out right now."

The third incident happened on December 9th at the McDonald's on South Patterson Street. 45 year-old Michael Pannell suffered a medical issue, causing him to slam into the McDonald's.

Both Caquelard and Pannell were facing charges for their respective crashes as of Monday. Dunkin, however, was not.

But, Childress reminded drivers that Georgia law allows drivers to be charged in a crash even if they were simply eating a sandwich or drinking a cup of coffee while driving.

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Driver gets choked up, crashes into house

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Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch (left) accounted for seven touchdowns Monday, and celebrates one of them with wide receiver Keiwone Malone in the Miami Beach Bowl in Miami.

Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press

Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch (left) accounted for seven touchdowns Monday, and celebrates one of them with wide receiver Keiwone Malone in the Miami Beach Bowl in Miami.

They battled for 60 minutes, then again for two overtimes and literally fought after the final play.

And for Memphis, the end result was a win 76 years in the making.

Paxton Lynch threw four touchdown passes and rushed for three more scores, Jake Elliott kicked a 54-yard field goal to end the first extra session and Memphis wasted a pair of double-digit leads before rallying to beat BYU 55-48 in the inaugural Miami Beach Bowl on Monday.

It wasnt always pretty, Memphis head coach Justin Fuente said.

No, but it was memorable largely for the right reasons, though also for a scene that got out of hand at the end.

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Beach brawl: Memphis decks BYU in double OT

Dresbach's hopes for a communal solution to its residents' sewage problems are in doubt after a 5-2 vote by the Winona County Planning Commission to recommend the denial of a conditional use permit (CUP) for a waste water treatment plant. The multimillion dollar sewer project has caused a political upheaval in Dresbach Township. Was the county's decision the one that Dresbach residents wanted?

Tucked between the Mississippi River and Interstate 90 with homes on tiny lots built long before modern regulations, many of the homes in the unincorporated cluster of riverside homes known as Dresbach have septic systems that do not meet state requirements. Fourteen have been labeled "imminent threats to public health" because of sewage reportedly seeping to the surface of residents' lawns or running down ditches. The owners of those systems and many other noncompliant septic systems have been under pressure from state and county regulators for years to install new systems that will not contaminate ground water or the Mississippi River. However, the tiny lots do not have room to have new septic systems installed.

"On some of these lots there isn't room to walk between the house and the neighbor's garage," explained Planning Commission member Richard Hunnewell.

Some do not have enough room to meet county setback requirements, and variances are commonly granted to allow them to be squeezed in. Others are too close to the property owner' wells or neighbors wells, and some Dresbach residents have been forced to drill new wells when they replaced their septic tanks. Some lots are too small for buried septic tanks and are forced to install above-ground mound systems. An average mound system costs $15,000 and last 30-40 years, according to Winona County Zoning Administrator Eric Johnson. Lots that are smaller yet must use holding tanks. Toilets, washing machines, and showers drain into the tank until it is full and the wastewater must be pumped and hauled away by truck at a cost of about $100. Tanks serving a three-person home typically need to be pumped every two weeks, according to Johnson. According to the Dresbach Township Sewer Committee, some lots are so small they cannot even accommodate holding tanks.

"When they built I-90, they left a little sliver of land right next to the highway, and they should have bought those houses," Town Board Chair Joan Solum said. "They have right-of-way that has more square footage than what they left there with people's houses. And then the rules change. You used to be able to have this much room for septic and then they cut it down and cut it down, and now they're all in violation and there's nothing they can do."

The neighboring city of Dakota has similar problems, and for years, Dresbach and Dakota have been studying and planning a potential sewer system that would serve the two communities. Dakota scrapped its plans to be part of the sewer project and withdrew from the process. Now Dresbach is pursuing the sewer plant alone, increasing the cost of the project per property.

Just how expensive would it be? Solum stated that there were no definite cost estimates. However, SEH Engineering submitted an proposal estimating the sewer plant would cost $2.4 million and would incur ongoing operational costs of $28,000 per year. If the township receives a 50 percent grant from the state, the project would cost the average home $118 per month or $1,416 per year, SEH reported. County Board Chair Marcia Ward, who served on the Planning Commission as a substitute for commissioner Steve Jacob at last week's meeting, claimed she had heard much higher cost estimates. "I'd seriously have to look the number up," Mike Davy of Davy Engineering told Ward. "Oh, come now," Ward responded. She asserted that it was approximately a $4 million project. Davy did not refute her.

Davy helped prepare designs for the sewer plant, which the township wanted to locate in a gravel parking lot on Riverview Drive. The lot is surrounded by houses and currently provides overflow parking for a nearby park and boat launch. The sewer plant would consist mostly of buried tanks with hatches for each tank above ground and a small concrete control building. Once a month, sludge from the plant would need to be hauled to Winona or La Crosse for disposal.

Sewer committee member Stephanie Swartz explained that the township had considered piping their sewage all the way to La Crosse, but that was too expensive. They considered piping it to La Crescent, but La Crescent insisted on annexing the township, she said. The township considered other sites, but the one promising property, a gas station, was rejected as an option because of the cost: around $490,000.

"After years of study, literally years of study, they determined this is the only site they have available for a wastewater treatment plant," Davy said. "It is not the first choice. No engineer would pick a small site in the middle of town that's small and try to build a wastewater treatment plant there as their first choice."

Excerpt from:
Dresbach sewer plans derailed

By Elisabeth Hulette The Virginian-Pilot December 23, 2014

VIRGINIA BEACH

Alice Phillips was on the phone when the gift arrived the first time.

She and a Florida friend exchange Christmas presents every year. She had sent him a Virginia ham. But by the time she got to her front porch, she said, his gift to her wasn't where a delivery person had left it.

Turns out, her parcel was one of more than 100 stolen off city front porches this month. Over the weekend, police announced the arrest of a suspected Grinch: Leigh-Anne Larson, 49, is charged with two counts of grand larceny.

Now, officers are returning the gifts, a cache that includes movies, clothing and toys, from Legos to marshmallow shooters.

Detective Chris Cutrer spent his day off Monday on the delivery route on Maharis Road in Bayside.

"It's cold but it's fun. You don't always have a good interaction with the public as a policeman," he said, so it's nice to have positive encounters.

He laughed at a suggestion that he wear a Santa hat.

Cutrer said about 150 of the gifts are unwrapped and, so far, unmatched with owners. Police are asking potential victims to call 385-2724.

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Beach officers return gifts stolen from front porches

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CAPE CORAL, FL -

Churchgoers are calling on the head of the Diocese of Venice for answers to why unlawful construction work was being done at St. Andrew's Catholic Church in Cape Coral.

The church went ahead with renovation projects without permits, which is also against diocesan policy.

All year, the NBC2 Investigators have uncovered allegations of financial misuse within the diocese.

Monday, we learned back on December 2, 2014 Cape Coral inspectors halted work on a construction project after finding out the church was doing major renovations without a single permit.

Tina Cohen is a concerned parishioner and says the work was going on for several months.

Cohen says it appears to be a safety issue, the building currently under construction has a leaky roof which leads to mold issues.

Cohen says this is another example of mistrust after allegations came out earlier this year about a lack of financial transparency in the church.

We don't know where the funds are coming from in order to do all this work and that has not been made clear to the parish as a whole Cohen says.

Parishioners say they're also in the dark as to who approved the unlawful work and exactly what is being done.

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Cape Coral halts construction at Catholic church

Bethlehem: It's Christmas season and the little town of Bethlehem is jammed with a big-city problem: Traffic snarling streets everywhere, including around the church marking the spot where tradition says Jesus was born. The city is considering a dramatic solution to the problem - digging a tunnel under Manger Square.

Traffic is a mess year-round. It may be the biblical town of grottos and shepherds' fields in the minds of many around the world, but Bethlehem is a modern densely populated town of 28,000 with a dizzying weave of small streets that practically guarantee traffic jams.

"Bethlehem is going through a crisis," said Anton Salman, a city councilor. "We think that the solution to this traffic is to build an underground passage between the two sides of the square."

Bethlehem's municipality hopes to eventually build several tunnels around the Palestinian city, where the urban development problems are myriad. Bethlehem is sandwiched on three sides by other towns. From the north and southeast, it is hemmed in by Israel's separation barrier and Jewish settlements, leaving it little choice but to build vertically.

It is also a main transit point for drivers between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank, compounding its congestion.

The area around the Nativity Church, built atop the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, is particularly busy, with a mix of tourists swarming the area and cars squeezing across the central Manger Square. Streets all around face a constant backlog because of traffic in the square, where beeping horns are heard as much as clanging church bells.

Even worse, during the holidays, the square is closed for annual events like the Christmas tree lighting and Christmas Eve celebrations, when it is thronged with revelers. That plunges traffic nearby deeper into chaos.

The plan proposes an 80-meter-long (260-foot long) tunnel passing under a narrow two-lane street that crosses Manger Square in front of the Nativity Church. The project would take about two years to complete and would cost $4 million to $5 million, with the Palestinian Authority pledging to foot the bill. If the plan is approved, construction could start next fall.

With the tunnel ensuring the flow of traffic, Manger Square would be closed to cars entirely under the plan and turned into a pedestrian expanse.

But the tunnel project could run aground before even breaking ground. The municipality would need to get a stamp of approval from the U.N.'s cultural agency UNESCO, which has listed the Nativity Church as a world heritage site and would want to ensure its protection. Junaid Sorosh-Wali, an official at UNESCO's Ramallah office, said the agency would study the plan once approached by Palestinian officials and then determine its position.

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Traffic Jam Woes At Jesus's Birthplace

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The owner of the Colony Apartments in SouthPark on Monday filed a rezoning request to allow a $400million mixed-use redevelopment of the site, which could add more than 1,100 homes, a 300-room hotel and a new grocery store.

The 27-acre tract of land at Sharon and Colony roads is currently home to the 353-unit Colony Apartments. Charlotte-based Synco Properties and Schlosser Development Corp. of Austin, Texas, said the new development would better serve the area with a mix of residential, retail and office uses.

Frankly, we believe the redevelopment opportunity offers a lifestyle more representative of what wed like to offer residents at the Colony, Tim Hose, president of Synco, said in a statement.

Synco has owned the apartment complex for 38 years. But there are major infrastructure repairs needed, including settling foundations and burst pipes underground, the company said in a news release. The apartment complex would be torn down to make way for the new development.

A public hearing on the rezoning proposal is likely to be held in early spring. The companies have launched a website, http://www.thecolonyredevelopment.com, to provide information about the development and the schedule for community meetings.

Building the new development, which would rival nearby Phillips Place and Piedmont Town Center in size, could begin in early 2016.

The companies said the first phase of construction would include about 300,000 square feet of retail space along Sharon Road and a five-story building at Colony and Roxborough roads with 350 multifamily units. The retail center including a potential grocery store could open by early 2017.

The companies say they would base the decision to start the second phase on demand. That could include a 10-story office building with 250,000 square feet of space, more multifamily housing and a 300-room hotel. A third and final phase would follow. Total development would take five to six years, Synco and Schlosser said.

In total, the redevelopment plans call for:

1,100 residential units, a mix of apartment and for-sale.

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Apartment owner files for major SouthPark-area rezoning