So many they need their own power substation. And there’s corn growing in the same fields.
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Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 August 2012.
20120811_161358:
Apparently the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle will use more water than the City of Savannah, and more than agricultural uses for the middle Savannah River watershed. Much of the water (3/4?) is evaporated, leaving less for drinking, farming, and everything else. What goes back in the river is rest warmer than it came out, affecting everything that lives in the river. Remind me: why are we building those nukes instead of solar and wind generators, which use no water while producing power?
Plant Vogtle currently uses 43.2 million gallons of water a day, and with all 4 units, is planned to use 86.4 million gallons of water a day, or 2% of the *average* flow of the Savannah River, according to UNC’s Powering A Nation journalism team, 9 June 2010.
That’s more than the City of Savannah, according to the City of Savannah.
Continue reading 
Demarcus Marshall is one of two Democrats running for the new County Commission District 4 that covers the eastern half of Lowndes County. He spoke at a baseball reunion in Naylor, 14 July 2012.
Here's the video:
Invest in our future now or watch our kids leave —Demarcus Marshall for Lowndes County Commission District 4
1st Annual Reunion, South Georgia Semi-Pro Baseball & Softball League (Baseball),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Naylor, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 July 2012.
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Hahira Third Thursday has been cancelled for today! Hahira City Manager Jonathan Sumner tells me rain is coming, and they have cancelled the whole thing: movie, farmers' market, etc.
Here's the contact web page for Hahira. City Hall is 229-794-2330.
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Tomorrow is Third Thursday in Hahira, the monthly outside get-together with food and fun. According to the signs they hang up on the streets, it starts at 5PM and ends at 8PM. According to the Hahira Happenings facebook page:
July 19th 3rd Thursday.. Movie night ( Mirror, Mirror) really cute and funny movie!!
That facebook page also says:
Any framers or anyone who has veggies, fruits can set up in front of the red caboose on saturdays or third thursday.
Also:
If you know anyone who would be intrested in market days please have them call 229-794-2567!
I plan to be there with okra and other vegetables for sale. Looking forward to getting a call-back from that number….
See you at the red caboose. That picture is from last year's Hahira Honeybee Festival, 11 October 2011.
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Local rural Georgia electric co-op Colquitt EMC nets USDA smart grid funding! Just not for actually doing smart grid. Funny how almost no states within Southern Company's sphere of influence got any of that funding. Too bad; we could use some of those jobs and retention of existing industries.
USDA PR 11 July 2012, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Funding to Improve Rural Electric Infrastructure: Funding Includes $10 Million for Smart Grid Technology
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that rural electric cooperatives and utilities in 15 states will receive loan guarantees to make improvements to generation and transmission facilities and implement smart grid technologies.
"Maintaining and upgrading rural electric systems creates jobs and
supports economic development," Vilsack said. "These loans I am announcing today will have a lasting impact on the rural landscape for generations to come. They will help ensure that rural areas can retain existing businesses, support new ones and have reliable, up-to-date infrastructure."
With this funding, USDA Rural Development moves closer to reaching Secretary Vilsack's goal to fund more than $250 million for smart grid technologies. Today's announcement includes support for more than $10 million in smart grid technologies, which help utilities make efficiency improvements to the electric grid and help consumers lower their electric bills by reducing energy use in homes and businesses.
Here's the one project in Georgia:
Colquitt Electric Membership Corporation — $20,000,000. Funds will be used to build and improve 478 miles of distribution line and make other system improvements, serving 3,284 customers.
That's my EMC! Go Colquitt EMC!
Wait, where's the smart grid project? Well, not in Georgia. In 
Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, North Carolina (two in that state), Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas. The only state in Southern Company's "Competitive Generation Opportunities" area with a smart grid project on that list is North Carolina. Just as North Carolina is the only state in that area with a renewable energy standard.
Southern Company and its child Georgia Power, successfully repelling electric innovation since 1973!
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Increased population is using increasing resources in Lowndes County, Georgia:
Increased population is using increasing resources
Chart by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE) from Georgiainfo data.
| Census | Pop. |
|---|---|
| 1830 | 2,453 |
| 1840 | 5,574 |
| 1850 | 7,714 |
| 1860 | 5,249 |
| 1870 | 8,321 |
| 1880 | 11,049 |
| 1890 | 15,102 |
| 1900 | 20,036 |
| 1910 | 24,436 |
| 1920 | 26,521 |
| 1930 | 29,994 |
| 1940 | 31,860 |
| 1950 | 35,211 |
| 1960 | 49,270 |
| 1970 | 55,112 |
| 1980 | 67,972 |
| 1990 | 75,981 |
| 2000 | 92,115 |
| 2010 | 109,233 |
| Georgiainfo data | |
The population of Georgia has almost tripled during my lifetime, has about doubled since 1970, and has increased 18% in just the ten years from 2000 to 2010. That blip up between 1950 and 1960 is Moody Air Force Base.
That kind of growth doesn’t happen without increased resource use. If we want a livable county and region for ourselves and our descendants, we need to think about what we’re doing, with water, with transportation, and with energy, not to mention education, jobs, and pretty much everything else. We already cut down and sold off almost all the forests. Now we need better ways than using up all the resources that were here.
Hm, how about some knowledge-based jobs in energy and telecommunications and agriculture?
Speaking of Moody, the U.S. military learned in Afghanistan that shipping oil to places where you can generate solar energy produces a vulnerable supply chain. Moody is already leading in local solar energy. How about we help our base help us help them to move ahead in solar for everybody in Lowndes County and the state of Georgia?
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Water, the next oil: many big companies have already been betting on that for years now. Do we want privatize companies controling our water supplies for their profit, running up prices at our expense? We can prevent that, and we should get on with it.
Jeneen Interlandi wrote for Newsweek 8 October 2010, The New Oil: Should private companies control our most precious natural resource?
…privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can
bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection. Other commodities are subject to the same laws, of course. But with energy, or food, customers have options: they can switch from oil to natural gas, or eat more chicken and less beef. There is no substitute for water, not even Coca-Cola. And, of course, those other things don’t just fall from the sky on whoever happens to be lucky enough to be living below. “Markets don’t care about the environment,” says Olson. “And they don’t care about human rights. They care about profit.”
Well, that couldn’t happen here. Or could it? What about this:
Many of us have no idea where our water comes from….
Do you know what’s upstream of you, that might be getting into your water? Do you know what’s downstream of you, that your runoff migh be getting into? If you’re like me, you’ll have to look that up.
Remember what Ben Copeland said: Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee “all have their straws in that same aquifer.” The Floridan aquifer, which is the source of most of our drinking water. Our rivers and streams help replenish the Floridan aquifer, but we’re using it up faster than rain falls.
The article goes on about Bolivia privatizing water as a condition of “austerity”, until Continue reading
The Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club opposes T-SPLOST, in all twelve regions, not just in Atlanta Metro.
Prepared by the Georgia Chapter RAIL Committee, April 2012, Metro Atlanta Can Do Better: Why Voters Should Say No to the T-SPLOST and Yes to ‘Plan B’
On July 31, 2012, Georgians in twelve regions around the state will
vote on whether to impose a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (T-SPLOST). After much deliberation, the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club is recommending a “no” vote on the T-SPLOST in all twelve regions. The decision to oppose the Metro Atlanta T-SPLOST involved the most discussion, because unlike the other twelve lists, it has a significant portion devoted to mass transit. Ultimately, the Chapter Executive Committee concluded that the project list is too heavily focused on sprawl-inducing road expansion and will have a negative overall impact from an environmental perspective.
As they say, they spent the most time on metro Atlanta, and that’s what most of their position paper, executive summary, press release, etc., is about. But many of their reasons apply equally well to our south Georgia Region 11, such as these ones:
- The Project List Does Not Present a Cohesive Transportation Vision,
offering a hodgepodge of conflicting priorities when what is needed is a bold and consistent vision for a sustainable transportation future.
- It Does Too Little to Address the Current Road-Heavy Funding Imbalance, instead reinforcing a funding framework that already heavily favors highway expansion over commute alternatives.
- It Locks the Region into a Dysfunctional, Undemocratic Decision-Making Process, both through the highly politicized “roundtable” process and the blatantly anti-urban method for distributing local set-aside funds.
It favors highway expansion so much that Region 11 doesn’t even Continue reading
Solar power is the smart thing to do for jobs, energy independence, and profit. It’s also what we need to do to save water.
Julia Pyper and ClimateWire wrote for Scientific American 29 June 2012, Electricity Generation ‘Burning’ Rivers of Drought-Scorched Southeast: A new report reckons the water cost of electricity generation
Power plants are guzzling water across the United States and increasing the risk of blackouts in the Southeast, where the precious resource is drying up.
“Burning Our Rivers,” a new report by the River Network, found that it takes about 40,000 gallons of water to meet the average American household’s energy needs, which is five times more than the amount of water used directly in that home….
Table 3. Total Water Footprint of a Kilowatt-hour
(Gallons per kWh)
2009 U.S. Electric Grid
(National weighted average)Hydroelectric 29.920 Coal 7.143 Natural Gas 1.512 Nuclear 2.995 Geothermal 0.002 Solar 0.002 Wind 0.001 Total 41.575 In the Southeast, which has been battling a drought for more than a
year, the impact of power plants is especially worrisome and could lead to brownouts and blackouts throughout the summer and beyond.
“The conflicts between energy and water needs are ones we’ve seen before … and will only worsen as the frequency of drought increases and water temperatures rise driven in part by climate change,” said Ulla Reeves, regional program director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The report’s number 1 recommendation:
1. As a nation, we should focus on renewable energy sources and low water technologies.
Why?
Continue reading