At a news conference today, Alabama officials will announce an $11 million expansion at Montgomery medical equipment manufacturer Steris Corp. that will soon mean 80 to 100 new jobs for the area. Besides adding new jobs, the expansion will save the 270 current jobs at the site.

 The news conference, with Montgomery Area Chamber Chairman of the Board Lee Ellis, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange, Montgomery County Commission Chairman Elton Dean, along with other elected officials and Steris Corp. executives expected to attend, will announce that construction will start by Aug. 1 at the 300,000-square-foot facility, with the expansion scheduled to be in operation by the end of next year, according to project agreement documents obtained by the Montgomery Advertiser. 

 AIDT will handle the recruitment and training of new employees, with at least 40 new hires scheduled to be on board by June 30, 2013, and at least 80 new workers employed by June 30, 2014, according to the project agreement the Montgomery County Commission unanimously approved earlier this week. 

 While the new jobs will provide a boost to the local economy, Strange said the stakes were much higher.

 Nearly 30 years before Hyundai came to Montgomery, one of the state's first major manufacturing relocations landed in Tallassee.

 Neptune Technology Group Inc., a utility systems and metering company, moved there from New York in 1972 with a $3.72 million investment. 

Its workers were trained by a division of the state Department of Education that eventually would become Alabama Industrial Development Training, and the groundwork was laid for the next three decades of industrial recruitment and development.

Forty years later, the state's manufacturing industry is booming. And Neptune is still there.

"When Hyundai came into town, I think we lost two people. We have very little turnover," Neptune president Chuck DiLaura said. "We've never felt threatened as new business comes in because it's a very nice environment."

DiLaura has been with Neptune 36 years, and he said he's only No. 30 in seniority with the company.

Some of the current workers were there when the plant opened. A lot more have come aboard through the years, including a burst when the city's textile plant closed in 2004.

"When the mill closed, there were 300 employees there," Tallassee mayor George McCain said. "A lot of those employees came over here to work for Neptune.

 ATLANTA - Federal officials responsible for a dam at the center of a long-running water dispute between Alabama, Florida and Georgia say they have the legal authority to give metro Atlanta more water, though the agency has not yet decided how much to release.

 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in documents released Tuesday that it can legally grant a 2000 request from Georgia to get 705 million gallons of water per day from Lake Lanier on the Chattahoochee River by 2030. The federal agency said it will need to conduct an environmental review before making any final decisions on exactly how much water Atlanta should get. Federal officials said Georgia would have to live up to its promise to return more than 100 million gallons of treated water daily to the lake. 

 The Corps' decision became public after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in a dispute over metro Atlanta's use of water from a federal reservoir that severs all three southeastern states. The Chattahoochee River flows past Atlanta, then runs along the border of Alabama and Georgia. It merges with the Flint River at the Florida border to form the Apalachicola River, which cuts through the Florida panhandle and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. 

 Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said he welcomed the Corps' report as federal officials prepare to decide how much water Atlanta can get. 

 "That decision will help us not only plan for Georgia's future growth, but it will also give us greater certainty regarding existing resources," Deal said in a statement.