Latest / Eastern Kentucky Newspapers / Hazard Herald - 7.26.26

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Hazard Herald - 7.26.26 · Eastern Kentucky Newspapers

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Speaker 1: Now we turn to the reading of the Hazard Herald
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for news of Hazard and Ferry County. I'm Lee Townshend.
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We begin with the online edition dated July twenty second,
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twenty twenty six as a reminder radioizer of eating service
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intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
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that make it difficult to read printed material. Community members
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gathered in downtown Hazard July seventeenth to eighteenth for the
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annual north Fork Music Festival, which featured live music, a
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variety of food vendors, and a full carnival offering entertainment
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and activities throughout the weekend. Musical acts included Academy of Rock,
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Freebirg Kentucky, Karina Grove, Ben Fugut, and The Burning Trash
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Band and Lore. Court denies latest appeal by a man
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convicted of manslaughter in Perry County. The Kentucky Court of
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Appeals has denied the latest appeal of a man convicted
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of manslaughter in Perry County. According to the opinion rendered
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July seventeenth, the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of
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Perry Circuit Judge Allison C. Wells to deny the latest
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appeals of James Brewer, seventy two, who was convicted in
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twenty seventeen the first degree murdered. The opinion said Brewer
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was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after being convicted
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by a jury in Prairie County of shooting and killing
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Robert Miller. According to the opinion, Brewer's first appeal of
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his conviction was denied in April twenty twenty, but Brewer
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filed the motion in May twenty twenty to vacate, set
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aside or amend the sentence based on the grounds that
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his various health conditions made him particularly vulnerable to contracting
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COVID nineteen in prison. While Brewer was awaiting a decision
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on the appeal, the opinion said, he filed further motions,
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including motions seeking to have criminal charges brought against his
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trial attorney, a trial witness, and the Kentucky State Police
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detective in the case. All the motions were denied by
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Wales or passed on to the Court of Appeals due
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to the existence of the original appeal. In the July
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seventeenth opinion, Court of Appeals affirmed Wells's decisions in the case.
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According to Kentucky Department of Corrections, records. Brewer is currently
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serving his senates in the North Point Training Center in
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Danville and will serve out his senates in January twenty
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twenty eight. Perry Schools cooperating with DOE investigation into reporting
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and handling of sexual misconduct cases. The US Department of
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Education's Office of Civil Rights has initiated a directive investigation
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in the twenty school districts nationwide, including the Perry County
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Schools District, to ensure the districts have policies and procedures
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in place to ensure accurate data collection and reporting, and
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that it is handling of sexual harassment, including sexual assault
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of students by teachers, administrators, or staff members, is consistent
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with the requirements of the law. Perry County Superintendent Kent
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Campbell provided the Hazard Herald with the letter the district
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received on July tenth from OCR notifying the district of
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the investigation due to the Perry County District's inaccurate responses
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to the rape and or sexual assault data elements involving
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allegations against school staff of ocr's twenty twenty three twenty
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four civil rights data collection. The directed investigation will examine
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whether the district has policies and procedures in place to
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ensure accurate data collection and reporting, and that its handling
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of sexual harassment, including sexual assault of state students by
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district teachers, administrators, and or staff members, is consistent with
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the requirements of Title nine of the Education Amendments of
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nineteen seventy two and its implementation regulation. The letter said.
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Campbell told the Hazard Herald that the investigation has been
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mischaracterized in reporting. They have asked us for our policies
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and procedures. Campbell said, they have asked us for investigations
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that have taken place over a certain time. Pray we're
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compiling that information to provide them this week. Continued the
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district being under investigation, he said as a result of
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the data reporting, this investigation, from what we know about it,
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is only about the accurate data collection and reporting of
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sexual assaults sexual misconduct of staff toward students. Campbell said
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the letter makes it very clear this is about accurate
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data collection and reporting under Title nine. The district has
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done all appropriate investigations in reports that have been made
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to it. Campbell said, the facts are that all of
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the sexual abuse situations that we have been provided with
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in the form of allegations that come from staff, students,
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or the public. We've investigated those thoroughly, he said. Two
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allegations have been submitted which have led to further action,
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while one was found to be unsubstantiated. He said. Over
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the course of five years being examined, Campbell said, there
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have been two or three investigations. Campbell said the district
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is cooperating fully with the investigation. We have taken student
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safety as paramount as it always has been and always
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will be. Campbell said, we don't have anything to hide.
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Investigations part of ocr initiative. The investigations were launched as
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part of an initiative announced about the Department of Education
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on July tenth, which consists of two parts. The DOE
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has issued guidance reminding federally funded educational institutions of their
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legal obligations to safeguard children and appropriately respond to incidents
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of sexual misconduct. The US Department of Education's Office for
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Civil Rights has opened twenty directed investigations into school districts
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whose twenty twenty three to twenty four Civil Rights Data
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Collections submissions contain responses that districts might not have addressed
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staff or student misconduct appropriate. The investigations will determine that
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the districts have appropriate policies and procedures in place to
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ensure accurate data collection and reporting of these incidents occurs,
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and if they're handling of allegations of sexual harassment, including
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sexual assault by district employees, complies with the federal lay law,
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the statement said. In the statement, THEE said that Trump
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administration has observed a troubling and recurring pattern in schools
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across the nation of credible reports of sexual abuse and
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harassment by adults and positions of authority going uninvestigated, or
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of suspected offenders being transferred to new schools or roles
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in the district. When school administrators protect adults accused of
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assaulting or harassing children from meaningful consequences, enabling them to
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continue harming kids in another environment, that, according to the statement,
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is referred to as passing the trash. The guidance, according
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to the statement, instructs educational institutions to protect students from
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sexual misconduct, prevent past the trash practices, accurately collect and
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report data, and conduct meaningful investigations. Our schools must protect
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America's children, parents, should never have to wonder whether the kids,
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school employees and protects sexual predators, said US Secretary of
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Education Lendham Mayon. Schools that receive federal funding have a
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duty to protect students, report sexual misconduct honestly, and follow
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the law. Through this initiative, we're holding school districts accountable
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because every child deserves to learn in a safe environment
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free from sexual abuse and harassment. Hazard Native recognized following
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the Physician Assistant Program Azir Native Hannah Daniels Lovely, a
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twenty twenty three graduate of Morehead State University, has been
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recognized for her academic achievements after graduating from the University
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of Kentucky's Physician Existence Program, according to a statement for
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Morehead State University. According to the statement, Daniels Lovely pursued
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a career in medicine with the goal of improving access
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to healthcare and rural Kentucky. I decided to pursue a
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career in medicine because I wanted to serve the people
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of rural Kentucky and help improve access to quality healthcare
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in underserved communities, she said. I chose the physician assistant
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profession because it allows me to help close healthcare gaps,
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provides the flexibility to work across specialties and supports a
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healthy work life balance while making a meaningful impact on
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patient lives. The statement said Lovely chose Morehead State because
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of the reputation of its biomedical sciences program and the
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campus's resemblance to the rolling Hills of her hometown. While
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running a Bachelor of Science and Biomedical Sciences, she received
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the Outstanding Prepa Student Award and became involved with Cappa
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Delta and the MSU Prepa Club. Perry County officials condemn
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vandalism and outdoor recreation facilities. The Perry County Department of
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Outdoor Recreation is asking for the public's help after counting
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property was damaged at one of its recreational areas. According
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to a public statement issued by the department, individuals forced
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open and ramgates intended to prevent unauthorized motorized vehicles from
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entering the trails designated for non motorized use. Daisy Jerrold,
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director of Waterway and Outdoor Programs for the Perry County
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Department of Outdoor Recreation, said the damage was impacted county property.
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Emphasized that the trails are intended for pedestrians and other
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approved users. Someone has been wrenching our gates open and
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ramming them, damaging county property, said Gerald. Our trails are
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for non motorized use. That means no side by side,
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no dirt bikes, and no Class three E bikes. Gerald
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said it's disappointing to see public recreation areas damaged, particularly
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because they provide free opportunities for residents to enjoy the
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outdoors and improve their physical and mental well be It's
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a shame we have to make these statements like this,
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said Daisy Gerald, director of Waterways and Outdoor Programs with
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the Department of Outdoor Recreation. The facts are that the
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parks are free entertainment and offer free health and wellness
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alternatives in a place where we don't have a lot
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of access to gyms or therapy. She said. Protecting those
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spaces is essential to ensuring they remain accessible and enjoyable
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for everyone in the community. People should be respecting these
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spaces and keeping them safe, she said, safe for kids, families, pets, elderly,
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or for anyone who wants to confidently recreate. Gerald said,
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while many residents express the desire for more recreational opportunities.
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Maintaining these amenities depends on communities. Ship. A lot of
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community members complain that there's nothing for kids to do,
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she said. The truth is we have these spaces. They exist,
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but these free events and spaces are subject to this
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kind of vandalism. It's got to stop, or we can't
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keep building these kinds of infrastructures. The Department is encouraging
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anyone with information about the incident to come forward. Please
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tell your kids, neighbors, and friends that this isn't how
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we behave said Gerald. If you have any info into
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who may have done this, please send us a message
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on our Facebook. Ferris selected for Bright Kentucky Class of
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twenty twenty six. Appalachian Regional Healthcare employee Camera and Ferris
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has been selected as a member of the Bright Kentucky
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Class of twenty twenty six, a leadership development program for
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young professionals across Appalachian Kentucky, according to a statement from ARIH.
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According to the statement, Farris serves as a marketing analyst
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and digital campaign manager for ARH while also leading Dreams
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Delivered Daily three D of Kentucky nonprofits she founded to
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ensure children in foster care receive personalized birthday celebrations. I'm
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absolutely honored to be part of this program, she said.
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It's an opportunity that I do not take lightly. According
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to the statement, Ferris launched Dreams Delivered Daily on January
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twenty twenty five after recognizing that birthdays for children in
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foster care were often overlooked. While foster families typically receive
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a small sipe and the celebrate birthdays, Ferris sought to
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provide more personalized celebrations. Birthday should never be a burden,
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she said. The statement said each celebration through Dreams Delivered
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Daily is customized to the child, allowing a youth to
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choose their cape flavor in the vas, submit a wish list,
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and receive at least one gift. Ferris originally hoped to
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celebrate fifty two children during the nonprofits first year. According
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to the statement, that goal was exceeded thanks to an
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incredible community of volunteers, donors, and parents. We celebrated two
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hundred and forty three youth across Kentucky in twenty twenty five.
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She said, We're now on track this year to celebrate
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more than three hundred and fifty wright Kentucky is a
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Leadership Development Program established in twenty nineteen for young professionals
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ages twenty one to forty living within the Appalachian Regional
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Commissioner's fifty four county service area in Kentucky. The program
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focuses on developing communication, collaboration, community engagement, and leadership skills
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to strengthen community and economic development across the region. Opinion
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column Life, Love and Death by Jeff Vanderbeck. If you
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expect life to be cruel, you won't be disappointed. For
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the most part, we didn't ask to be born. We
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were either planned or an accident. Either way, we are
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here and we're faced with the dawning task of life,
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which is filled with happiness and sorrow. We didn't sign
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any contracts, We didn't ask to participate. We just arrived
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with a smack on the bottom and screened our way
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into becoming independent. We were immediately surrounded by adults who
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were discussing our future. Will you be a doctor? Will
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she be president? Will he be a wildcat or a
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volunteer fan. As soon as we can talk, people start
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asking what we want to do when we grow up.
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We barely survived using the big boy toilet, and already
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we have to choose whether we want to be an
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accountant or an astronaut. At that age, we should be
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only worried about naps, and if we can get a
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cookie for most for not being on the floor, then
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the rat race begins. We study hard or not. In
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some cases we get pimples and reach awkward stages of
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puberty where everything changes. Then it's continuing the education and
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deciding what our careers look like. We have to work
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to earn and save money. Rising costs prohibit ownership of
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homes until later in life. Then we decide if we
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want to bring more humans into this crazy, unsettled life.
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In the meantime, we're paying taxes, cutting grass, preparing meals,
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choosing a sigif in the other and their family, replacing
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the roof, gaining ten pounds, losing ten pounds, saving for retirement,
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and trying to remember every password we created over the
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last forty years. Society measures our success by our titles,
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the size of our homes, the cost of our cars,
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how many boats side by sides we have, the groups
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and clubs we belong to, and the boards on which
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we sit or what does all that really mean. Some
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people become rich and famous, Some do remarkable things like
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event things. Some walk on the moon sing songs in
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front of millions of fans, while others build companies that
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are worth billions. And that's a small percentage of the population,
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very small. The rest of us, which is the majority, well,
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we're struggling to figure out what to serve for dinner,
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how to pay the light bill, and for medicine for
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our parents and families. Most people will never be famous,
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or have a statue erected in their honor, or have
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a bridge named after them. Society and history books will
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never highlight the average worker who mine coal for forty years,
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ran a small hardware store, or was a bank teller.
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Those pages will not be filled with the love shared
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with a person's family, or the Little League team they coached,
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or that you help the neighbors. Our society relies on
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ordinary people who will most likely be forgotten to help out.
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I would like to see favors with change attire for
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a family that experienced a flat We spend a large
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amount of time on this earth worrying about our legacy
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and how we'll be remembered. If at hall we wondered
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that if getting through life and saving for retirement as
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the goal. The goal should be to slow down and
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actually live life as it presents itself. Within a generation
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or two of our death, most of us will become
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names on a family tree, Our old pictures will become dusty,
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and future generations will not have a clue who we were,
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what we did, or how we contributed to society. This
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is all depressing until we realize that maybe life was
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never supposed to be an art addition for popularity. Maybe
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we're here to just live the life we were dealth
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and understand what happiness comes from within, and when we die,
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which we all do, we may finally be at peace
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and not have to worry about bills, taxes, or the
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grass growing too high. Maybe life is about feeling loved
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and loving your family, regardless of what the rat race
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hands us, whether that's illness, poverty, crooked politics, or flat
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tires on our way to vacation. Maybe the evil that
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society offers and the ill informed viewpoints of ignorant people
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can't be negated. But in the four walls of our
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own sanctuary, we should not allow them to trespass. Will
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people remember you because you made them laugh, because you
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made them think or that you made them feel good
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about themselves. Will that grumpy cashier have a better day
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because you made them smile even though you're experiencing strife.
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These few moments don't make headlines. They won't get you
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a statue. Well, they might not even make you eulogy.
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But they may have changed someone's life. And that's the
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contract you were forced to sign when your ass was
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slapped into life. Every one of us will lie in
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a box while people look at us and say, he
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looks peaceful, he's finally at rest. They will tell stories
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about the dead, mostly nonsense, but stories that may be
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humorous during a sad time. Nobody will ever say he
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managed this his inbox well, or she really knew her
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way around a spreadsheet. But they will remember kindness, loyalty, happiness,
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and how the dead guy in the casket made them
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feel when he was alive. We strive to become unforgettable,
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but we should make sure the people who knew us
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best are thankful that they got to know us. It's
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not a bad goal, since we were never asked to
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join the game in the first place. No, I'm not
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sick or aware of my impending death anytime soon. I
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just got to thinking, and let me tell you that
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was painful about life, living, loving and death. What are
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we here for and how will we be remembered? I
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have a feeling about my circumstances, and frankly, I would
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love to be a fly on the wall at my
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home funeral. Until that time, I'll just stay in my lane,
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tell stories and write things that people may or may
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not agree with. I took you this far, and I
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hope you have some deep thoughts about your legacy. Thanks
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for reading The Hazard Herald. The guest collum is Why
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data centers need so much power? By Roger Ford, Rural
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Renewal Institute. A data center can be misleading from the road.
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It may look quiet, no smoke, sticks, new trucks, little traffic,
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but the electric system sees something different, a large continuous load.
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AI may be digital, but it's not weakness. It runs
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on specialized chips, transformers, cooping systems, substations, backup capacity, and
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transmission planning. Every what that feeds processors becomes heat. Cooing
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design affects power demand, water use, site selection, costs, and resilience.
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The scale is what changes the conversation. Lawrence Berkeley, National laboratory,
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and a US Department of Energy funded report found that
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US data center electricity use rowse from fifty eight tarrawa
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hours in twenty fourteen to one hundred seventy six in
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twenty twenty three. By twenty twenty eighty reach three hundred
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twenty five to five hundred and eighty tahrawa hours, potentially
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as much as twelve percent of total US electricity consumption.
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That is not ordinary economic growth. It is a new
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class of electric demand, and utilities are already planning around it.
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This is no longer theoretical for Kentucky. Terrewolf's Musky Data
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Campus near Ashland is expected to support more than one
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gigawatt of data center capacity over time, with five hundred
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megawatts targeted for the second half of twenty twenty eight
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and another five hundred megawatts targeted for two thousand and thirty.
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One gigawatt running continuously equals eight point seven six billion
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kilowat hours per year, based on federal data showing the
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average Kentucky household used one thousand and forty seven kilowatt
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hours per month in twenty twenty four. That's roughly the
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annual electricity use of about seven hundred thousand Kentucky homes.
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Not every facility runs full capacity every hour, but that
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scale is too large for ordinary real estate thinking. At
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this level, electricity does not arrive through a routine extension.
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It may require transmission upgrades, dedicated substations, high voltage inner connections,
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large transformers, back up systems, and firm power contracts. Poor
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cost allocation can leave customers who never ask for the
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project carrying the risk. That is why Kentucky's Powers monopoly
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structure matters. The company says it serves about one hundred
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and sixty two thousand customers across twenty eastern Kentucky counties.
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Local families, businesses, schools, hospitals, and governments cannot simply shop
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for another distribution utility. The question is whether the terms
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protect great payers and require private load to carry private costs.
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Ohio provides a warning. A EPO how reported seventeen thousand,
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eight hundred and sixty one megawatts of contracted data center
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projects schedule through two thousand and thirty five, compared with
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a historic peak demand of roughly eight thousand to ten
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thousand megawatts across all customers. That is not normal growth.
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Its structural change. The standard for Appalachias should be simple
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new power for new loan. If a private AI data
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center wants industrial scale electricity, identified delivery structure must be
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part of the bargain before incentives are granted. Transmission and
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substation costs should be clear. Contracts should be including credit requirements,
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minimum payments, exit fees, water cooling plans should be disclosed
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up front. The term should be clear new power for
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new load, no hidden rate power increase, and no developmental
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deal that leaves Eastern Kentucky families paying for someone else's algorithm.
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Here are the obituaries. Merril Coots seventy seven of Viper
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died Wednesday July fifteenth. Chirley Jane Field sixty died Tuesday
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July fourteenth. Carla Jeannette Combs Jones sixty four of Hazard
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died Wednesday July fifteenth, Joey Rice fifty eight of Viper
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died Saturday July eighteenth, Then to Sue Wells seventy nine
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to Study died Wednesday July fifteenth, and Maggie White ninety
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six to fifteen Miles died Saturday July eighteenth. Addiction Recovery
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there announced in a statement on July sixteenth that it
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had settled two civic matters facing the Addiction Treatment and
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Recovery Services provider, including one brought by the US Department
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of Justice. In the statement, ARC said it has reached
27:03
a settlement with the Department of Justice's Civil Division in
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an action related to historical medical building practices. Among the
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RC's operations are the River Place Men's Residential Treatment Center
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in Pike County, the white Oak Hill Residential Treatment Center
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in Martin County, and the former Our Lady of Bellefonte
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Hospital in Ashland. This concludes the reading of the Hazard Heralds.
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Please stay tuned for continued programming. Thank you for joining
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me and on behalf of everyone here at RADIOI. This
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is Lee Townsend, wishing you a good day.