Impact report clears Isotopes

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Since 1927
I
I
News - S u n
EUNICE
I
No. 213
Community News
The New Mexico
Legislative
RADIOACTIVE &
HAZARDOUS
MATERIALS
Committee will meet
at the New Mexico
Junior College’s Bob
Moran multipurpose
room on Sept. 5 at 10
a.m. Agenda items
include WIPP and a
tour of URENCO USA
on Sept. 6.
New Mexico Legal Aid
will host a FREE CLINIC on how to file your
own divorce and custody petition at
Options Inc. in Hobbs
on Friday. Assistance is
for low-income individuals. Call 1-866-4161920 to see if you are
eligible for the free
legal assistance.
HOBBS
I
LOVINGTON
I
TATUM
SEMINOLE
I
I
DENVER CITY
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012
50 cents
Why choose Hobbs?
That’s what a magazine asked about Hobbs and 5 other thriving cities
BETH HAHN
NEWS-SUN
Usually a headline including the
word “failed” is not followed by optimistic news.
But in the case of Lea County, a
national publication singled out the
area for continued optimism following the flight of Pegasus Global
Holdings and its proposed $1 billion
ghost town project.
“There’s always disappointment
(when a company leaves),” Lea
County Commission chairman Gregg
THE SERIES is available at
www.fastcompany.com/why-here
Fulfer said Monday. “But ... you
always take a positive from every negative.”
Fast Company, a business magazine
online and in print, featured Hobbs
and Lea County in Monday’s edition.
In a series titled “Why Here?” Fast
Company profiled six cities in the
U.S. — Pasadena, Calif., Detroit,
Madison, Wis., Rochester, New York;
Nashville and Hobbs — that are working to rejuvenate business and attract
innovation.
“(Fast Company) wanted to know
why businesses are choosing Hobbs,”
Economic Development Corporation
of Lea County president and executive director Lisa Hardison said
Monday.
Fulfer said when his conversation
with the Fast Company reporter
started, it was focused on disappointment about the Pegasus Holdings
SEE MAGAZINE, Page 4
Impact
report
clears
Isotopes
A Hobbs FARMERS’
MARKET will take
place 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Saturday at Del Norte
Park. Fresh fruits and
vegetables and a variety of crafts will be
offered by local vendors.
The AFRICANAMERICAN
CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE will host
Orrin “Checkmate”
Hudson, a motivational speaker, who will
speak at 9 a.m. and 6
p.m. at Hobbs High
School on Thursday,
Aug. 30. Hudson uses
tools, including the
game of chess, to promote self-esteem,
responsibility and analytical thinking among
at-risk kids.
Inside Today
Obituaries ...........................2
Lottery.................................2
Mark the date ....................3
Fun & Games ......................5
Weather ..............................6
Sports ..................................7
Classifieds..........................10
TV ......................................12
OIL
PRICES
I NRC license set to be
signed on Sept. 30
LEVI HILL
NEWS-SUN
ful for the jury’s service and the law
enforcement’s work.
“It was a hard case to hear,” Luce
said Monday after the defendant was
sentenced.
The victim’s mother Dianna Smith
said there will never be closure for
her and she will always miss her
daughter.
“I have nothing against him,” she
said Monday morning.
An interview between HPD detective Corey Helton and the defendant
was played for the jury during the
trial in June.
A proposed nuclear deconversion
facility slated for Lea County is in
the final leap to clear federal regulations that will open the door to
the project breaking ground.
The
Nuclear
Regulatory
Commission announced last week
it
has
issued
its
Final
Environmental Impact Statement
for the proposed $115 million
International Isotopes Inc. nuclear
deconversion facility. The facility
would deconvert depleted uranium
hexafluoride from the uranium
enrichment industry to make it
more suitable for disposal while
simultaneously extracting fluorine gases and acids that can be
used in the production of solar
panels and microchips.
According to the NRC, the FEIS
contains the staff ’s assessment
that there are no impacts that
would preclude licensing the proposed facility. The facility is slated
for a site 14 miles west of Hobbs.
Roger Hannah, senior public
affairs officer for the NRC’s region
2, said the project’s NRC license is
tentatively set to be signed on Sept.
30 and it is the final federal hurdle
for the company to clear.
“The safety evaluation report
was issued at the end of May and
those are the two big documents
SEE MURDER, Page 4
SEE ISOTOPES, Page 4
TODD BAILEY/NEWS-SUN
Auction gala
Steve Henry, left to right, Vicki Henry, Brittny Brumley, Angela Cranfill, Esther Agnew and Magistrate David
Finger, were part of the audience during the Crystals and Cowboys auction gala Saturday at the Zia Park
Horseman’s Annex to raise funds for House of Hope, a proposed domestic violence shelter.
Husband sentenced for killing wife
ALMA OLIVAS-POSADAS
NEWS-SUN
Lovington — A Hobbs man was sentenced to 51 years in prison Monday
morning for killing his wife.
Eric Davis, 42, was convicted of
killing his wife, Patsy Davis, 29, of
Hobbs and burying her. She died in
July 2010.
A jury found Eric Davis guilty of
first degree murder, kidnapping and
tampering with evidence on June 28
after a three day trial and more than
five hours of deliberations.
Monday morning, District Judge
Gary Clingman ordered the sentences of 30 years for the conviction
of first degree murder, 18 years for
the conviction of
kidnapping
and
three years for the
conviction of tampering with evidence to all run
consecutively.
Before Clingman
read the sentence,
defense attorney
Douglas Vitt asked
for a life sentence
Davis
for his client.
In the state of New Mexico, a life
sentence is 30 years.
Chief Deputy district attorney
Diana Luce said she was pleased
with the sentencing and was thank-
West Texas intermediate
Price Change
Spot
Posted
Sour
N. Gas
$95.47
$91.50
$86.00
$2.653
- .68
- 1.25
- 1.25
- .049
HPD: Rifle used in
stepfather’s killing
ALMA OLIVAS-POSADAS
NEWS-SUN
Computer Tune-up
& repair
Virus Removal
& Data Recovery
Certified Dell Partner
1021 E. Bender,
Hobbs, NM
(575) 391-NOTE (6683) Certified Dell Partner
Police reports on a Friday deadly shooting
reveal a rifle was used.
At 12:25 p.m. Friday afternoon police responded 612 S. Dal Paso in reference to a shooting
involving a man and his stepfather.
Hobbs Police Department spokesman officer
Mike Stone said 22-year-old Keith Heaney and
his stepfather, 47-year-old Frankie Vine, were
arguing when Haney allegedly shot Vine.
According to a police report, while Heaney
was being detained he allegedly told officers he
didn’t mean to kill his stepfather and the last
bullet was meant for himself.
Police reportedly found a large rifle on the sofa
of the living room in the residence and four
SEE KILLING, Page 4
Eunice car
show
Caleb Weldy of
Denver City,
left, and
Tayveon
Mitchell, right,
of Eunice look
at the engine
of a vehicle on
display during
the third annual Eunice
Chamber of
Commerce car
show Saturday
at Marshall
Park.
TODD BAILEY
NEWS-SUN
FROM
HOBBS NEWS-SUN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012
THE FRONT PAGE
4
Isaac a threat well beyond New Orleans
KIMBERLY RYAN/NEWS-SUN
Math lesson
Jesse Tavarez builds with blocks during a math lesson
recently in Amanda Laird’s fourth-grade class at Will Rogers
Elementary in Hobbs.
Magazine
from PAGE 1
project called the Center for Innovation,
Testing and Evaluation.
“They wanted to see if we were upset
about losing CITE,” Fulfer said.
The conversation then turned to what
Lea County gained during the past 10-plus
years — URENCO USA, Joule Unlimited,
Eldorado Biofuels, SunEdison solar
farms, and more.
“We’re so busy ... we can’t dwell on
everything we don’t get,” Fulfer said.
The CITE proposal drew media attention
from around the world. Fulfer was interviewed by the British Broadcasting
Corporation and several other media outlets after the June announcement.
Although CITE — a proposed $1 billion
vacant city for technology testing — will
not be built in Lea County, Fulfer said
Isotopes
from PAGE 1
that have to be signed off on,”
Hannah said.
International Isotopes first
came to Lea County in 2008
looking for a site for its
planned facility. The company
submitted its application to
the NRC in December 2009.
International
Isotopes
President Steve Laflin said the
turnaround on the project has
been quite fast.
“For a nuclear-related project
this is about as fast as it can
happen,” Laflin said. “It is
right on track where we wanted to be time- and schedulewise.”
Hannah
also
said
the
approval went quickly considering the amount of research
an EIS requires.
“Obviously, when we review
an application for any applicant for the process of nuclear
material, there are a lot of
areas that have to be looked
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With its massive size and ponderous movement,
Tropical Storm Isaac was gaining
strength Monday as it headed toward the
Gulf Coast. The next 24 hours would
determine whether it brought the usual
punishing rains and winds — or something even more destructive harkening
back to the devastation wrought seven
years ago by Hurricane Katrina.
The focus has been on New Orleans as
Isaac takes dead aim at the city, but the
impact will be felt well beyond the city
limits. The storm’s winds could be felt
more than 200 miles from the storm’s center.
The Gulf Coast region has been saturated thanks to a wet summer, and some officials have worried more rain could make
it easy for trees and power lines to fall
over in the wet ground. Too much water
also could flood crops, and wind could topple plants such as corn and cotton.
“A large, slow-moving system is going to
pose a lot of problems: winds, flooding,
storm surge and even potentially down
the road river flooding,” said Richard
Knabb, director of
the National
Hurricane Center in Miami. “That could
happen for days after the event.”
The storm’s potential for destruction
was not lost on Alabama farmer Bert
Driskell, who raises peanuts, cotton,
wheat, cattle and sod on several thousand
acres near Grand Bay, in Mobile County.
“We don’t need a lot of water this close to
harvest,” Driskell said.
However, Isaac could bring some relief
wooing the project opened eyes to what
the area has to offer.
“It pointed out a lot of good things that
will keep us stronger,” he said.
Hardison said recognition from a large
publication — Fast Company claims to
have about 15 million readers — is flattering.
“Anytime you can get that kind of
national press, it’s wonderful for the community,” she said.
To be selected alongside large cities such
as Madison, Nashville and Pasadena is
flattering, Hardison added.
“We’ve built a business-friendly community,” she said. “We’ve worked so hard to
get businesses interested.”
Hardison said the piece not only brings
national attention to Lea County, but also
opens the door for more opportunity.
Grant Taylor, executive director of the
Hobbs Chamber of Commerce, said Lea
at,” Hannah
said.
“We
have to look
at
transportation,
air quality,
flora
and
fauna in the
area — it
requires not
o n l y
researching Laflin
literature in
the area, but also holding public meetings and speaking with
local officials, wildlife and
environmental officials from
the state.”
Laflin said the company will
not begin seeking funding for
the construction of the facility
until the license is signed and
in hand.
However,
he
said
the
announcement by the NRC has
opened
dialogue
with
investors previously reluctant
to invest in a nuclear project.
“The signing is a formality
now,” Laflin said. “(The
announcement) was a major
Murder
from PAGE 1
Before the video was displayed, Helton testified he was the lead detective in the case and
went to Eric’s resident at 2505 West Midwest
where Eric was standing outside and seemed
errie.
“It made the hair on the back of my head
stand up,” Helton told the jury.
Audio of Eric’s confession to police about
killing his wife was played after the interview
video.
“She told me for the first time last night she
wanted a divorce because she had found somebody else,” Eric told police in the audio. “ ... I
told her it wasn’t going to happen.”
He told police he killed his wife, put her in the
truck of her car and buried her near N.M. 529.
Eric told police he squeezed his wife’s neck
Killing
from PAGE 1
shell casings several feet from a gold Ford
Taurus parked in the alley of the residence.
One of the witnesses told police Heaney and
Vine were arguing earlier and the 22-year-old
allegedly shot the 47-year-old man.
“ (She) said K.C. fired the rifle several time at
Frankie,” reads the police report. “(She) said
she observed K.C. (Heaney) take the rifle and
begin pointing the barrel at his own head.”
to places farther inland where farmers
have struggled with drought. It also may
help replenish a Mississippi River that
has at times been so low that barge traffic
is halted so engineers can scrape the bottom to deepen it.
Forecasters predicted Isaac would intensify into a Category 2 hurricane, with
winds of about 100 mph, by early
Wednesday around the time it’s expected
to make landfall. The current forecast
track has the storm aimed at New
Orleans, but hurricane warnings extended across 280 miles from Morgan City, La.,
to the Florida-Alabama state line. It could
become the first hurricane to hit the Gulf
Coast since 2008.
Evacuations were ordered for some lowlying areas and across the region, people
boarded up homes, stocked up on supplies
and got ready for the storm. Schools, universities and businesses closed in many
places.
Still, all the preparation may not matter
if flooding becomes the greatest threat. In
Pascagoula, Miss., Nannette Clark was
supervising a work crew installing wood
coverings over windows of her more than
130-year-old home. But she said all that
won’t matter if a storm surge reaches her
home, as it did after Katrina in 2005.
“The water was up to the first landing of
the stairs,” she said. “So I get very nervous about it.”
Isaac’s approach on the eve of the
Katrina anniversary invited obvious comparisons, but Isaac is nowhere near as
powerful as the Katrina was when it
struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Katrina at one
point reached Category 5 status with
winds of over 157 mph. It made landfall as
a Category 3 storm and created a huge
storm surge.
Federal
Emergency
Management
Agency officials said the updated levees
around New Orleans are equipped to handle storms stronger than Isaac. Levee failures led to the catastrophic flooding in the
area after Katrina.
“It’s a much more robust system than
what it was when Katrina came ashore,”
said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate
in a conference call with reporters.
In New Orleans, officials had no plans to
order evacuations and instead told residents to hunker down and make do with
the supplies they had.
“It’s going to be all right,” said New
Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
Isaac could pack a watery double punch
for the Gulf Coast. If it hits during high
tide, Isaac could push floodwaters as deep
as 12 feet onto shore in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama and up to 6 feet
in the Florida Panhandle, while dumping
up to 18 inches of rain over the region, the
National Weather Service warned.
As of 8 p.m. EDT on Monday, Isaac
remained a tropical storm with winds of
70 mph (110 kph). Its center was about 230
miles (370 km) southeast of the mouth of
the Mississippi River, and it was moving
northwest at 10 mph (17 kph).
The storm left 24 dead in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, but left little damage
in the Florida Keys as it blew past.
County’s natural resources and open
mind makes the area attractive for businesses.
“What we do best in the Hobbs area is
energy,” he said. “The ‘Fast Company’
story was a great opportunity to showcase
what makes the EnergyPlex so special
that a sitting president (Barack Obama)
and presumptive (Republican) nominee
(Mitt Romney) would set foot on Lea
County soil within six months of each
other to speak about energy policy.”
Fast Company was founded in 1995 and
is focused on business and innovation. It
was launched by Alan Webber and Bill
Taylor, two former editors of the Harvard
Business Review.
The series is available at www.fastcompany.com/why-here.
Beth Hahn can be reached at 391-5436 or
[email protected].
milestone, but even with the
30-day window, there are still
folks out there saying, ‘When it
is done. It is done and it isn’t
done until it is signed.’ We are
having more traction getting
meetings now.”
The company had planned a
joint equity and stock offering
in second quarter 2011, but
investor interest in nuclearrelated projects disappeared
following the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear
power plant in Japan caused
by an earthquake and resulting tsunami. The company
withdrew its stock offering following the Japanese disaster.
“Stock and equity was the
plan,” Laflin said of the previous attempt to secure funding.
“We are getting some guidance
on the market and general
appetite for debt. All of that is
on the table now.”
On the state side, the company has several minor permits
and one major permit to
acquire. Laflin said the company will begin the work on
until she stopped kicking and when he realized
she was still alive he drug her to the bathtub
and hit her with a pipe wrench until she died.
“I was standing on her neck for awhile ...,”
Eric told police. “ ... while she was bleeding out
in the tub, I got a mop and started cleaning up
the mess.”
He told police he hit her with a pipe wrench
more than once but less than 100 times.
During opening statements of the trial, Luce
told the court the couple had been married for
about four years but were separated at the time
of Patsy’s death.
“If Eric Davis couldn’t have Patsy Davis no
one else was going to be a man in her life,” Luce
told the jury at the beginning of her opening
statements on the first day of the trial.
Alma Olivas-Posadas can be reached at [email protected] or call her at 391-5446.
The witness told police she ran and moved the
barrel from Heaney’s head and ran to help Vine.
The victim was transported by ambulance to
Lea Regional Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
Heaney was arrested and charged with an
open count of murder and is being held on a $1
million bond. He reportedly refused to talk to
police without an attorney present.
Alma Olivas-Posadas can be reached at [email protected] or call her at 391-5446.
acquiring those permits as
soon as the NRC license is
signed.
“The only major (permit) is
the groundwater permit, and
we will start some actions with
monitoring wells and some
things when the (NRC) license
is received,” he said.
A date for a groundbreaking
of the project has not been set.
The project is expected to hire
125 full-time workers for the
first phase of operation and
several hundred construction
workers during the project’s
build.
Levi Hill can be reached at 3915438 or [email protected].
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