Author Archives: admin

Why must the small business owner be discarded? —Deep South Sanitation

Cary Scarborough, owner of a local sanitation business, previously

asked the Commission not to grant a monopoly on waste collection.
He was quoted in

today’s VDT article,
and he has elaborated on his company’s facebook page.

To the Commission,

13 November 2012:



Don’t do this to private enterprise, to an individual. If it’s done
to me, it will get easier later down the road to do it to someone
else.

In

the VDT:

“I have not been told by the County that what I’m doing is
illegal,” Scarborough said. “But I realize they’ve drawn
up an ordinance, and they’re probably going to say that it’s
illegal. If they come after me, I guess they have to come after
me.”

Scarborough believes that if the citizens aren’t required to
contract with Advanced Disposal, they are then allowed to choose.

“If the citizens can choose, why can’t they choose me?”
he said.

On Deep South Sanitation’s

public facebook page:

“REGARDING THE ISSUE OF THE TRASH ORDINANCE IN LOWNDES COUNTY”

Continue reading →

No choice on trash —”representatives from Lowndes County”



The VDT went deep under the Lowndes County government’s anonymous cover
for an interview with “representatives” who
confirmed that unincorporated residents have no choice
for trash collection other than

the monopoly the Commission granted
to a company from New York City.

Jason Schaefer wrote on the front page of the VDT today,

County trash ordinance goes into effect Friday:
VDT has Q&A with county leadership about new law, burning,

VDT:
Lowndes County has said residents aren’t required to sign a
service contract with Advanced Disposal. What other services are
there in the area, and do they include Deep South Sanitation in
Valdosta?

LC:
“According to the solid waste ordinance, Advanced Disposal
will be the only residential hauler licensed to serve unincorporated
Lowndes County. There’s been some confusion about trash collection
service in the city. This ordinance is just for unincorporated
Lowndes County, not for any of the cities.”

Maybe these were the same “representatives” who sent

an unsigned letter
saying there were 5,000 residents of unincorporated parts of
Lowndes County who didn’t already have curbside service, and they
have one choice now: the one-and-only
county-appointed purveyor of waste bins.
What could possibly go wrong?

Continue reading →

San Onofre and Diablo Canyon status graphs (NRC data)

Graphs for San Onofre and Diablo Canyon from
NRC daily reactor status reports, per request.



Pride of Southern California Edison Co.,

San Onofre 2 in San Clemente, California,
has been down for more than a year now, since 10 January 2010.
Interesting the way it ramps down down from 100% to below 80% over a week, almost as if
they were trying to cool it off.
Will it
stay down permanently?


San Onofre 2


San Onofre 3
has been down almost a year, since 1 February 2012.
Cost of outage for both reactors so far:

$317 million as of November.

Continue reading →

Created by the newspaper, not the county —Joe Pritchard



Thanks to County Manager Joe Pritchard for responding to

my letter of Monday.
He partly (but not completely) answered my question by saying the VDT did it.
More on that later.

He included a PDF copy of

Bill Slaughter’s letter of January 18th.
Perhaps Mr. Pritchard was unaware that letter didn’t
reach me until after my letter of Monday, because the
county sent it to the wrong address.
Mr. Pritchard’s email response was also sent to the wrong address,
although fortunately email to that business address does reach me.
He also copied the Chairman at his business address instead of at
his Lowndes County address.
In any case, electronic copy is almost always more useful than paper,
so I thank Mr. Pritchard for sending that PDF copy.

Here’s Mr. Pritchard’s letter. -jsq

Continue reading →

Regarding the recently refinanced bonds —Bill Slaughter

Many thanks to Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter for taking
the time to respond to a citizen's question in Citizens Wishing to Be Heard!
The response didn't actually answer my question, but that may be because
the question wasn't clear enough without a copy of

the flyer that claimed the county's new judicial and administrative complex
was "100% Paid by SPLOST" and "$0 Balance Owed";
see

next post.

An hour or two after I sent

a letter to County Manager Joe Pritchard Monday,


someone from the county called to say Chairman Bill Slaughter
had sent me a letter in response to

my question to the Commission about bonds,
but it had been returned by the Post Office.
As you can see by the image of the envelope,
they sent it to my residence address, where I don't get mail.
That's why I always include my postal address on Citizens Wishing
to Be Heard forms, open records requests, etc.
Anyway, they made it available for pickup at the county palace.
Ten days after the PO sent it back to them is better than never.

Here's Chairman Slaughter's letter. -jsq

Continue reading →

NRC Power Reactor Status Reports Graphed

Do you know how many outages nuclear reactors near here have had?
Probably not, because that’s usually not in the news,
and you have to dig into day by day NRC reactor status reports
to find out.
It turns out nuclear power is 0/7 instead of 24/7 on many a day.

Looking at all nine
nuclear reactors within 200 miles of here,
the graph drips downtime like tears.


Reactors within 200 miles

The available data on NRC’s website and graphed here goes back to 31 March 2006,
through 29 January 2013.
Let’s look at each of our closest reactors one by one. Hatch 1 on the Altamaha River,
in addition to its recent

40% power on 21 January and 87% on 5 January,
has had quite a few outages:

Continue reading →

Tourism Board Meeting @ VLCCCTA 2013-01-23



Last week I went to the Rainwater Conference Center to attend the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Conference Center & Tourism Authority Board
Meeting.

I had discovered

the time and date of this meeting by asking at the
information booth at the Conference Center one day when I was there
for another event.

I arrived slightly before the 8:00 appointed time and was greated
warmly by

Councilman Tim Carroll
and

Conference Center Director Tim Riddle.


Being the Conference Center, they served a hot breakfast
(other morning boards have fruits and sweets but this was something
that you might get up for).

As 8:00 came there was apparently not a quorum, so calls went out to
missing

members to see if one more could be attacted. At 8:15 it was
clear that there would be no additional members coming so no formal
meeting was held, no votes were taken but an informal review of the
agenda was performed:

Continue reading →

Power source growth rates like compound interest

What if instead of
projecting percentages, we project gigawatts from
FERC’s December 2012 Installed Operating Generating Capacity table?
Solar and wind still win in less than a decade.


FERC 2012 power source gigawatts and growth rates projected 20 years

Ignore the fastest-growing curve for a moment; I added that.
All the other curves start with the December 2012 gigawatts
for each power source in the FERC table, and an annual compound
growth rate computed by comparing that installed operating capacity
to the capacity added in 2012 for that power source.
That compound annual growth rate for solar is 60.9% and for wind is 22.8%.
Nothing else comes close.

Solar passes coal in about 8 years, wind in about 9, and natural gas in
about

Continue reading →

Planning Commission yesterday: did you know? @ GLPC 2013-01-28

Did you see an agenda or an announcement that the Greater Lowndes
Planning Commission (GLPC) was meeting yesterday?

Agenda @ GLPC 2013-01-28
Nor did LAKE.
Matt Martin, Valdosta City Planner, usually sends an agenda to
Gretchen, but there were no Valdosta items on this agenda,
so he apparently didn’t even get one.
And the county still doesn’t publish GLPC agendas,
so if there was an item on there that affected you, how could you know?
Does that seem right to you?

On the agenda were three Lowndes County rezoning items,
all involving C-H (Highway Commercial),
and one Lake Park rezoning case, going to
R-P (Residential/Professional).
Here’s a summary of the cases.
You know, if I can do this in a couple of minutes by
typing it in from a photograph that Gretchen took, Lowndes County could
do it in a second by pressing Export to PDF.
Now that there’s a new Chairman, maybe he’ll say they should do that.

Lowndes County,

Final action

Tuesday 12 Feb 2013 		4. REZ-2012-20 Corbett

US 41 South and Newsome Road, Valdosta

Request to rezone ~5 acres from E-A (Estate Agriculture) to
C-H (Highway Commercial)
5. REZ-2013-01 Barrentine

102 Davis Road East, Valdosta

Request to rezone 1.2 acres from
C-H (Highway Commercial)
to
R-1 (Low Density Residential)
6. REZ-2013-02 Interstate Land Management

Briarwood Road along I-75, Valdosta

Request to rezone 4.87 acres from
R-1 (Low Density Residential)
to
C-H (Highway Commercial)
Lake Park,

Final Action

Tuesday 5 Feb 2013 		LP-12-2012-01 Karen K. Nolan and Blanche C. Bush

105 Broadway Street, Lake Park

Request to rezone 0.46 acres from
R-15 (Single Family Residential)
to
R-P (Residential/Professional)

-jsq

Georgia Power to announce 20-year plan Thursday

What will Georgia Power announce for a 20 year energy plan Thursday?
Will they (1) just double down on their rate-hike boondoggles for

nuclear and

gas,
or (2) they could flip like

Austin Energy in 2003 and

Cobb EMC in 2012
and suddenly go solar?
The wording here looks like it’s going to be the former.
That they even feel compelled to announce some sort of formal plan instead of just

shovelling disinformation out another 50 years
indicates they’re feeling

the pressure to change direction
to real sustainable energy: wind and solar power.

Matt Shedd wrote for WUGATV today,

Georgia Power To Release Energy Plan,

Georgia Power is set to release a 20-year energy plan on Thursday


which will outline a way for the company and the state to be less
reliant on coal power. The AJC reports that just 5 years ago, the
company’s reliance on coal was at 70 percent.

That number has now dropped to 47 percent. These changes are coming
in the wake of Georgia Power’s parent, the Southern Co., being
pushed by environmental rules to rely less on coal. Georgia Power
won approval to buy electricity produced by natural gas from its
sister company Southern Power, which may be part of the company’s
future plans.

Thomas A. Fanning, CEO of Georgia Power’s parent The Southern Company (SO),
has been touting 70% to 35% reduction in coal since at least

May 2012 at the SO shareholder meeting.
Fanning continues to

emphasize nuclear, gas, and “clean coal”
instead of real sustainable energy, namely wind and solar power.
He also continues to assert electricity demand will increase,
while

ignoring conservation and efficiency, which for Georgia
could remove all need for new energy,
enabling solar and wind to shut down more coal and gas plants,
as well as nukes.

So, get out the popcorn and take your bets.
Will it be (1) or will it be (2)?
I’m betting this time it will be (1), but sooner or later it will be (2),
and even Georgia Power, and yes, even Southern Company,
will stop digging in their heels and get on the solar
train to profits, jobs, energy independence, and oh, by the way, clean
air and plenty of clean water.

-jsq