FEMA responds to flood map questions

by MATT HUGHES

J-E News Editor

Seven months after initially rejecting new FEMA flood maps, the topic was back on the table at last week’s Webster County Fiscal Court meeting. Judge Executive Jim Townsend and Webster County EMA Director Jeremy Moore recently attended a meeting hosted by Todd Bass from FEMA’s Atlanta office in which Bass warned counties that they were at risk of losing FEMA monies if they continued to not adopt the maps.

Magistrates decided to table the discussion until their next meeting, but it was clear the tides of opinion have changed since February. At the core of that change seems to be FEMA’s threat of withholding disaster funds.

Boat pilot sets sale for retirement after 57 year career

by MATT HUGHES

J-E News Editor

Most people aren’t aware that any commercial shipping is done by water Webster County, but coal barges have been moving in and out of the Sebree area for years. For more than forty years one man has been at the center of that little known industry, but Friday, October 3, 2014 is expected to be his last day in the pilot house as he begins his well deserved retirement.

John ‘Johnny’ Fulkerson has worked almost continuously as a boat pilot in Webster County for more than four decades. For the last eleven years he has served as pilot of the Eva Sue at Steamport Dock, the facility that loads coal barges for Sebree Mine (formerly Advent Mine) near Onton.