Author Archives: admin

Georgia Power raising rates



Georgia Power is raising rates
in January, despite its recent announcement that it would lower
rates because of lower fuel bills.
Why raising?
Mostly the new nukes and for a new natural gas plant.
And 16% of the rise is for energy efficiency.
Does that seem like the right proportion to you?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 1 Nov 2012,

Georgia Power bills to increase,

The average Georgia Power bill will increase about 44 cents a month
starting in January, not decrease as many might have expected when
the company announced last month its fuel costs had dropped.

The utility, which serves 2.4 million customers, notified state
regulators in October that it would be applying for a residential
rate reduction because the amount it pays for fuel has fallen 7
percent, saving $122 million. The utility cannot profit from lower
fuel costs and must pass those savings on to customers.

So why are customer rates going up?

About $1.05 of the typical residential bill will go toward paying
for a new natural gas unit at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna.
That increase already was approved as part of a three-tiered rate
hike set in 2010.

Yep, that’s that

set-in-2010 and keep-rising-’till-2013 natural gas
rate hike
that Georgia Power got away with while complaining about
any potential solar subsidies.
The one
AJC complained would be “on autopilot”:

Continue reading →

Nuclear reactors near here

If you think of nuclear reactors as something far away,
or as much safer than Fukushima,
you’re in for a surprise.
The most notorious reactors are the ones not yet built,
units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and their

famous financial boondoggle.
But others are closer, older, and more numerous than you may know.

Here’s a map by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).


That map’s not clickable, so here’s a table,
selected from an

NRC table
by distance from Valdosta:

Name Owner Where Distance
from
Valdosta
Hatch 1 & 2* SNOC 11 miles N of Baxley, GA 100 miles
Farley 1 & 2 SNOC 18 miles SE of Dothan, AL 125 miles
Crystal River 3 PGN 80 miles N of Tampa, FL 160 miles
Vogtle 1 & 2 SNOC 26 miles SE of Augusta, GA 200 miles
Summer SCEG 26 miles NW of Columbia, SC 300 miles
Saint Lucie 1 & 2 FPL 10 miles SE of Ft. Pierce, FL 325 miles
Oconee 1,2,3 Duke 30 miles W of Greenville, SC 330 miles
Robinson 2 PGN 26 miles NW of Florence, SC 350 miles
Sequoya 1 & 2 TVA 16 miles NE of Chattanooga, TN 360 miles
Catawba 1 & 2 Duke 18 miles S of Charlotte, NC 390 miles
McGuire 1 & 2 Duke 17 miles N of Charlotte, NC 410 miles
Browns Ferry 1,2,3* TVA 32 miles W of Huntsville, AL 410 miles
Turkey Point 3 & 4 FPL 20 miles S of Miami, FL 440 miles
Brunswick 1 & 2* PGN 40 miles S of Wilmington, NC 480 miles
Waterford 3 Entergy 25 miles W of New Orleans, LA 495 miles
Shearon Harris 1 PGN 20 miles SW of Raleigh, NC 498 miles
* GE Mark I;
Duke: Duke Energy Power Company, LLC;
Entergy: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.;
FPL: Florida Power & Light Co.;
PGN: Progress Energy;
SCEG: South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.;
SNOC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company;
TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority

Five operating nuclear power reactors are closer to us

Continue reading →

Library Architect Submissions (part 3)

Here are the submissions from the final four architects


that were considered for the new Five Points Lowndes County Library.
This continues the series with

Library Architect Selection Documents (part 1)
and

Library Architect RFP and “Bible” (part 2)
which presents documents received by LAKE from SGRL in response to

an open records request.

The four architect submissions are linked

on this LAKE web page.
Here they are separately:

If we missed anything please let us know.


Architects: feel free to put your submissions on your own web pages
and

send us a link.

-jsq

Most Early Voting Ever in Lowndes County, Georgia


Backed up onto the street
More people have voted early in Lowndes County than ever before,
with cars often backed up onto the street waiting to get into
the Board of Elections.

Eames Yates wrote for WCTV Friday,

Record Breaking Number of Early Voters in Lowndes County,

More people have now voted early in Lowndes County than any time in
history. Sherrie Luther was voter 22,00[0]…

People waiting to vote
making her ballot the one
that broke the previous record set four years ago.

In the 2008 presidential election, there were 45 days of early
voting in Lowndes County. In this year’s election there were just 16
days. Nevertheless the record was broken.

Sherrie was rewarded

Continue reading →

Fair bidding practices and community public input —Barbara Stratton

Received today on

County trash plan already failing. -jsq

Yet another example of government contracting not following the fair
bidding practices or allowing community public input. Even if you
attend government meetings no bid information is made public & even
if bids are referred to the amounts are always in those elusive
"packets before you" that only the members have access to.

In a recent Hahira City Council meeting the city attorney ruled that
the city council did not have to put out the garbage service for
bids & that it did not even have to have a contract. As of December
31, 2012 the city collection services will not be under contract at
all so who knows what the rates may be or if a lower bid would have
saved citizens money?


Barbara Stratton
I've been involved in government contracting for years & I can tell
you that the recent path government bodies have endorsed is leading
further & further away from the bidding procedures that were enacted
to prevent good old boy politics & kick backs & is opening the door
wide for public/private partnerships that never answer to the
citizens.

The state attorney general's office which should regulate bidding
practices will not interfere with county or municipal issues unless
a citizen is willing to pay $500 to a lawyer to present the case to
them. They justify this as catering to "home rule" but in actuality
they are turning a blind eye because it is within their jurisdiction
to rule on non-adherence to proper bidding practices.

If the state believes in "home rule" why is Governor Deal pushing a
state charter school board amendment that will take away local rule?
The state seems to pick & choose its standards.

-Barbara Stratton

-jsq

Vote No on Amendment 1 —LAKE WALB Ad


John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange
The

WCTV news report
didn’t mention something else LAKE has done about
the Tim Golden use of a LAKE video without the required attribution:
LAKE paid for

a TV ad on the same WALB market as Golden’s ad.
That

LAKE ad
is still playing today: watch the news and football on WALB
in Valdosta and Hahira.

Bikram Mohanty is a man of integrity running for Georgia state Senate.


Creative Commons Attribution license
The incumbent Tim Golden’s attack ad misuses a video I took
of Bikram Mohanty, without the credit its YouTube license requires.

Tim Golden voted to put on the ballot an amendment that could siphon off
your local tax dollars for charter schools,
even if your school board doesn’t want them.

Vote for integrity;
vote for Bikram Mohanty for Georgia state Senate,

Vote No on Amendment 1 on Nov. 6th
and vote No for Amendment 1.

This WALB ad, like

the WCTV news interview,
is another rare instance of the LAKE politburo deciding LAKE would
go on record as an organization, so I was speaking for LAKE.

TL;DR: If you want to use LAKE materials, cite the source.

-jsq

County trash plan already failing

The recently

adopted-by-stealth Lowndes County waste disposal plan
is already failing.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday,

Garbage carts vanish,


VDT picture of bag of solid waste
Some residents in unincorporated Lowndes County have complained that
their garbage cans have been taken up, leaving them without a way to
dispose of their trash until Jan. 1.

Allgreen Services, one of the waste management companies ousted out
of unincorporated Lowndes County with the Oct. 9 Commissioners
decision to award a waste contract bid to Veolia Environmental
Service, has begun picking up the waste carts in anticipation of the
holiday season.

“We hate to have to remove them, but we have to,”
Allgreen General Manager Sam Sullivan said. “We thought about
waiting a month, but the problem is if we wait until the end of the
year, we would be removing the carts around Christmastime. We didn’t
want to be out there then.”


I don't think it could get any easier, said Richard Raines
Funny how there was no mention of this possibility in

the County Commission meeting that adopted this new solid waste plan.
“I don’t think it could get any easier,” said Commissioner Richard Raines.
It looks like it’s not getting easier for county residents who want
to dispose of their trash.

This is currently on

the county’s own front page:

Continue reading →

23,324 Early Voted in Lowndes County Georgia thru 2 Nov 2012

2,151 Friday and 23,324 Total voted early in Lowndes County Georgia
thru 2 November 2012.
I hear (unconfirmed) that those are both records, and you can see for yourself
in the table below that Friday’s count was the highest for any early voting day this election.
About half of active voters in the county voted early.
That leaves another half to vote Tuesday.
And there are more registered voters than typically active voters,
so we could break a record for active voters Tuesday!


2,151 Friday and 23,324 Total voted in Lowndes County Georgia thru 2 November 2012

Date Daily Total
Monday October 15 1,636 1,636
Tuesday October 16 1,225 2,861
Wednesday October 17 956 3,817
Thursday October 18 643 4,460
Friday October 19 1,433 5,893
Monday October 22 1,289 7,724
Tuesday October 23 1,449 9,173
Wednesday October 24 1,363 10,536
Thursday October 25 1,408 11,944
Friday October 26 1,783 13,727
Saturday October 27 1,279 15,003
Monday October 29 1,707 16,713
Tuesday October 30 1,533 18,246
Wednesday October 31 1,386 19,632
Thursday November 1 1,541 21,173
Friday November 2 2,151 23,324
Data courtesy of Lowndes County Board of Elections.


precincts
You can still vote
7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

on that great election day, November 6th,
at

your precinct.
To find out which is your precinct, plus a sample ballot,
go to

My Voter Page by the Georgia Secretary of State.


Vote!
Several recent elections here have been decided by less than 100 votes.
Your vote counts!

-jsq

Tim Golden campaign admits using LAKE video without attribution —WCTV


Greg Gullberg WCTV
WCTV got Tim Golden’s campaign on record admitting it used a LAKE video
without attribution.
Golden’s spokesperson claimed (erroneously) that they didn’t need to
cite the source.
As you can see below, that’s not what the license says.

Greg Gullberg wrote for WCTV last night,

Valdosta Man Takes Legal Action Against GA Senator Over Use Of Video,


John Quarterman, Lowndes Videographer
A videographer in Valdosta is taking legal action against Georgia
District 8 State Senator Tim Golden.

John Quarterman says video he shot was used in an “Attack Ad”
against Senate candidate Bikram Mohanty without his permission.

“A video posted on Youtube that clearly says that attribution is
required. And there’s no attribution, no sources sighted, and he
didn’t ask permission. That’s mis-use of our material,” Quarterman
said.

Continue reading →

Calvert Cliffs nuke terminated

Yesterday on Nuclear Information and Resource Service’s

website:



Update, November 1, 2012: UniStar is seeking review of decision by
NRC Commissioners, Nuclear Energy Institute filed motion in
support. NIRS and NRC staff support the ASLB decision. We
will post the Commissioners’ decision when filed. However,
today the ASLB officially issued an order terminating the
Calvert Cliffs-3 licensing proceeding.

That continues

what happened after EDF pulled out
and

neither Southern Company (SO) nor Duke would step in.
Another one down, SO:
watch out for your

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River!

-jsq

PS: Owed to Star Priscilla.