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Keep County Road 16, leading to the Alapaha River open to public access —Christopher L. Graham

Received Sunday; he sent it to all the Lowndes County Commisioners. -jsq

My name is Christopher L. Graham I’m a citizen of Naylor. I am
concern about the river shutting down to the public. Because it is

Christopher L. Graham
the only public access to the Alapaha river in Lowndes county.
Because then we have to go to lake land in Lanier county to there
public access boat ramp to put in or go to Stateville in Echols
county to there DNR public access boat ramp to put in. The
Hotchkiss Bridge or now people are calling it Hotchkiss landing is a
good check point for the fisherman. I’m concern because there is
not many public a ccess on this Alapaha river. Well if Naylor ever
expands there wouldn’t be any water recreation use in this
community. That is not good for our community. People all over this
area use this public access for fishing & they bring there kids and
there family together to have a family picnic, swimming. People go
down there to relax and listen to the water hitting the rocks and
hear the birds making different noise. This is a nice place to take
picture of the nature. The Hotchkiss Bridge is a top location for
bird watching in the State of Georgia. Birding enthusiasts
interested in experiencing the many wonderful bird families in the
surrounding areas of Hotchkiss Bridge. The Hotchkiss Bridge has a
historic value to our community. It use to be the old major highway
to go to the next town. Many of our community had there ancestry use
that old Hotchkiss Bridge. I know the bridge has been gone for many
years. Now it’s a public boat ramp. The Hotchkiss Bridge has history
and It would be a good asset for Lowndes county to have….

P.S. I would like a park down there and a sign that tell the history
of the old Hotchkiss Bridge.

Vermont Yankee may be next nuke to close



UBS predicts Entergy will close its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant soon:
that’s the same Entergythat couldn’t keep the power on during the SuperBowl
and that

can’t keep Pilgrim 1 nuclear reactor up in Massachusetts during a winter storm
(down 3 days now, for the third downtime in a month).
A few days later, UBS
set Entergy up on a quarterly earnings call to mention that
Vermont Yankee had already been taken off the New England energy
capacity auction, which would make it easy to replace.

San Onofre still down in California,

Dominion Power closing Kewaunee in Wisconsin,

NRC terminated Calvert Cliffs in Maryland,

Duke closing Crystal River in Florida,
and maybe Vermont Yankee next?
How about

we pass HB 267 to stop Georgia Power charging for cost overruns
for Vogtle 3 and 4 and see how long before Southern Company stops that project?

Andrew Stein wrote for vtdigger 6 February 2013 (updated 7 Feb),

In report, financial firm forecasts that Entergy may close Vermont Yankee,

In an investment research letter, the Swiss financial services
company UBS Securities anticipates Entergy Corp. will retire one of
its nuclear power plants in 2013, and it cites “Vermont Yankee
as the most tenuously positioned plant.”



UBS representatives met with Entergy’s new leadership team on Feb.
1, the same day Leo Denault became CEO and chair of the board for
the Louisiana-based company that operates the Vermont Yankee nuclear
power plant.

And that’s how a clean-broom new CEO often signals his intentions:
by bringing in outside experts to provide him cover for what he
already intends to do anyway.
And this new-broom CEO

is Entergy’s former Chief Financial Officer
who as CFO has repeated fiddled with Vermont Yankee to try to
make it less unprofitable.
What did those experts say?

Continue reading →

Videos: Surprise trash, Hotchkiss Landing, 3 rezonings, 3 contracts @ LCC 2013-02-11



Surprise! Veolia, excuse me, Advanced Disposal showed up to try to
defend their record so far with their new exclusive franchise solid
waste contract.
Also at this morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission,
three rezonings, three contracts,
and some new wrinkles on

the proposed closing of
the part of Old State Road leading to Hotchkiss Landing on the Alapaha River,
revealed after the session was over.
They vote Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM.

Here’s

the agenda,
with links to the videos, and a few notes, followed by a video playlist.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

Surprise trash talk: repeat scheduled for tomorrow! @ LCC 2013-02-11

Not on the agenda, Veolia, excuse me, ADS,
stood up to talk about trash collection

Monday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
All of the new Commisioners had questions, some of which were answered.
A repeat performance is scheduled for Tuesday evening: don’t miss it!




Dave Shepler, regional manager of Advanced Disposal (not on the agenda)

He said ADS wanted to start March 1 in order to give people time to
mail in their cards and sign up, but the February 1st date was
“what the county wanted to do.”
About 400 accounts that had slow delivery, even though they called
in very early; “coding error”.
Can deliver about 200 carts a day, one crew is doing nothing
but handling complaints.
Some carts delivered without pickup information; he blamed that on the wind.
Missed pickups.
When the Bemiss center (presumably the one at Pine Grove)
was closed over 3,000 people had not signed up,
and there is trash on the ground that ADS is picking up.
After 30 days

Continue reading →

News about Hotchkiss Landing @ LCC 2013-02-11



After the

Monday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session
was over, a couple of Commissioners indicated to inquiring citizens
that they had seen a contract by which Acree Investments LTD
sold land on both sides of Old State Road to the Alapaha River
to Phillip Connell.
This contract has not been filed with the county,
and that’s why the Tax Assessors’ database doesn’t show it.
I confirmed later today with Dr. Acree that he had sold 16 acres
to Phillip Connell several years ago.
Very interesting; if it is even Old State Road they’re considering closing (see below).


Public Hearing sign on Old State Road
What sort of public hearing is it going to be tomorrow evening
when this new information was not revealed to the public even
in the Work Session, and the only way the public could find out
was by going and asking a Commissioner personally?

In positive news, various Commissioners expressed approval of the
idea of

Continue reading →

Acree Park at Hotchkiss Landing?



How about if Lowndes County buys the land next to Old State Road
at Hotchkiss Crossing on the Alapaha River and turns it into
Acree Park?
That would be a much better solution to the trash, tresspassing,
and hunting problems there than closing the road.
And Lowndes County itsels claims it has plenty of money available
for just such a purpose.

As we’ve seen, Lowndes County’s own Comprehensive Plan says
the county has $500,000 in Acquisition Funds Available to
“Adopt, implement, and update provisions of the Greenspace Initiative Plan to include land acquisition and resource enhancement/protection.”
And that it plans to
“Continue preparation and implementation of the Withlacoochee River Greenway Plan.”

What say the county acquires parkland at Hotchkiss Landing
from

Continue reading →

What does Lowndes Comprehensive Plan say about river corridor protection?


Future Development Map Lowndes County 2030 Comprehensive Plan
Is the Lowndes County Commission a “Qualified Local Government”?
Georgia state law says perennial river corridors

shall be protected,
all of the major rivers in Lowndes County
(Alapaha, Withlacoochee, Little)

qualify as perennial,
and

GA EPD rules say
to be a “Qualified Local Government” a comprehensive plan including
River Corridor Protection Plans with protection for a natural vegetative
buffer area bordering each protected river is required.

GA DCA keeps a list of

all the comprehensive plans in the state.
Here’s

Lowndes County’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan.
The main document is the

Community Agenda
and here is

the map.
Hm, the map shows a light blue color for “Park/Recreation/Conservation”
for parts of the Little, Withlacoochee, and Alapaha Rivers in Lowndes
County, but not all.
What about the rest of those rivers in the county?


What does the Community Agenda say?
It doesn’t mention any River Corridor Protection Plans.
However, it does say this:

Continue reading →

Ways to fix the trash problem

I commend Commissioner John Page for
his op-ed in the VDT today,


attempting to do what no other Commissioner has tried:
to explain the trash issue.
Indeed, like him, most of the people I talked
to while campaigning for Gretchen were for keeping
the waste collection centers open, and of those
the vast majority were willing to pay more,
which is the main reason the previous Commission
made a big mistake in closing those centers.
Unfortunately his letter seems to indicate nothing can be done.
Well, here are some things that can be done.

Let the contract lapse.

Commissioner Joyce Evans insisted on the contract
with the sole provider being only for one year.
Let it lapse after that year!

Publish the contract.

What’s in the contract?
How do we even know it’s for only one year?
The new Commission already had to

do over a decision of the previous Commission
(remove license fee from Sunday alcohol sales)
because the ordinance written up afterwards wasn’t what
they thought they passed.
Publish the contract and let everyone see!

Publish an accounting for the waste collection sites.

Commissioner Page wrote:

The county was losing hundreds of thousands
of dollars each year because the fees for the permits
were not bringing in enough money to fully fund
the sites.

How do we know that?

Continue reading →

Return of water misinformation by Forrest H. Williams in the VDT

Seen today on the
WACE facebook page
is an image of an op-ed in the VDT, and alongside it I include here
Michael Noll’s initial comments, plus a few links.


There is good reason why Stephen Hawkins once said “the greatest
enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of
knowledge.” When entities like Fox News can claim that “solar won’t
work in America because it’s not as sunny as Germany”, we shouldn’t
be surprised by the results of such “educational” efforts. The fact
is that we have a number of clean and renewable forms of energy
(e.g. wind, solar, geothermal) that already work. Just go to

Spain,

Germany,

Denmark, Iceland, or simply stay in the US and visit places
like from

New Jersey
and

New York
to

California
and

Arizona. Combine
these pieces of a larger energy puzzle with meaningful initiatives
of

energy conservation and energy efficiency, and we find a way out
of our current predicament (i.e. continuing dependence on finite and
dirty sources of energy), while saving money (see

solar vs. nuclear),
preserving our natural resources (e.g. water, forests),
and providing clean, healthy and safe environments to live in (e.g.
wind and solar do not produce radioactive waste, pollute our air and
groundwater).

The guest columnist appearing above is the same individual who
thought

Continue reading →

Pilgrim nuke shut down in winter storm again this weekend



Entergy, the company that blacked out the Super Bowl,
now has taken down Massachusetts’ Pilgrim nuclear reactor
in a winter storm.
And that’s not the first time this year.
Plus, what will happen with sea level rise to that nuke on the coast?

Beth Daley wrote for Boston.com this morning,

Pilgrim nuclear plant shuts down in storm,
Pilgrim Station nuclear plant automatically shut down in the thick of the storm Friday night after losing power, according to a statement by Entergy, the plant’s owner.

Authorities said there is no danger and backup diesel generators are
powering safety systems.

“The plant is in a safe, secure condition and will remain on backup
power supply until off-site power is restored,” the statement said.

But that’s hardly the whole story.
Pilgrim Station has been down about a week lately, and at 80%
still other days, according to the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC):

Continue reading →