Category Archives: Economy

West Point aiming for net zero energy use

U.S. Army is serious about solar, installing solar panels as a “very visible and a very recognizable part of our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the general public” as it makes its military academy net zero, while encouraging cadets to become renewable energy leaders. Hm, sounds like Decatur County with its solar industrial park and what we could do here with solar Lowndes High.

Mike Strasser wrote Army PR 29 November 2012, Solar panels deliver new energy to West Point’s Net Zero initiative,

The installation of solar panels on the roof of the Lichtenberg Tennis Center—780 panels, to be exact—in recent weeks represents West Point’s continuing efforts to achieve energy sustainability.

Since becoming a Net Zero Energy pilot installation last April, West Point has been making strides toward the ultimate goal of producing as much energy as it uses by 2020. According to an environmental assessment for the U.S. Army Environmental Command and West Point Garrison, the installation currently generates less than .02 percent of the energy it consumes from renewable sources. Matt Talaber, Department of Public Works engineer and director, said the solar panels will be a step in the right direction.

“The solar panels are very visible and a very recognizable part of our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the general public,” Talaber said. “It’s a positive image that shows West Point is interested in renewable energy and is working on its Net Zero energy goals.”

And they’re also improving conservation and efficiency. Plus this:

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AZ invites CCA to help get more customers in School to Prison Pipepline

We could have slipped down this slippery slope with that proposed CCA private prison, down to where Casa Grande Arizona is, inviting CCA’s guards and dogs into our schools to collect our children as private prison customers.

Sadhbh Walshe wrote for the Guardian 13 December 2012, Arizona funnels business to CCA through its school-to-prison pipeline: Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest?

Drug sweeps of schools are not uncommon occurrences in the recent past in America, much to the chagrin of civil rights advocates, who see such sweeps as an efficient means of diverting certain kids to prison — in some cases, even before they make it to adolescence, via the much-criticized “school-to-prison pipeline”. What was unusual about this particular raid, however, is that, among the team of law enforcement personnel and canines put together by the local Casa Grande police department, there were prison guards employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s largest for-profit prison company, which owns and operates several prisons in the area. CCA was also kind enough to provide their sniffer dogs for the raid.

What’s even more unusual about this is that pretty much nobody in a position of authority in and around Casa Grande seems to think there’s anything wrong with that.

That’s where “jobs, jobs, jobs” with no consideration of the consequences leads you. Some jobs are not worth having. Private prison jobs are among them.

The state of Georgia spends a billion dollars a year locking people up, many of them for minor drug offenses, and around 85% of them for drug-related offenses. What if instead we spent a fraction of that money on drug counselling and mental health care, and the rest on public education? Then we’d have healthier people more prepared for real jobs.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Dante Acevedo.

Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead, and Coal is Crashing

Somebody is willing to read the sunshine writing: Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead and Coal is Crashing, as Kathleen Rogers and Danny Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch 14 Dec 2012.

As I wrote back in April when formerly coal-plotting Cobb EMC went solar:

Coal is dead. Nuclear is going down. Solar will eat the lunch of utilities that don’t start generating it.

Can Georgia Power and Southern Company (SO) read that handwriting on the wall? They can’t fight Moore’s Law, which has steadily brought the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy down for thirty years now, and shows no signs of stopping. This is the same Moore’s Law that has put a computer in your pocket more powerful than a computer that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1982 and was used by an entire company. Solar PV costs dropped 50% last year. Already all the new U.S. electric capacity installed this September was solar and wind. As this trend continues, solar will become so much more cost-effective than any fossil or nuclear fuel power that nobody will be able to ignore it.

Rogers and Kennedy explained this phenomenon:

The seismic shift in how we all use cell phones and mobile technology to access the internet almost snuck up on the incumbent technologies and the monopolies that made money selling us landline telephones and a crappy service. Now, we’re all using apps on smartphones all of the time. So too, the shift to a scaled, solar-powered future built around the modular technology at the heart of solar power—the photovoltaic solar cell—will come as a surprise to many. We call it the solar ascent, and it is happening every day in a million ways.

Will SO and Georgia Power continue to prop up that 1973 legal wall that inhibits solar financing in Georgia? Companies and even economic development authorities are starting to find ways around it, and of course there’s Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) trying to wedge into the law as a utility. After Hurricane Sandy, rooftop solar for grid outage independence has suddenly hit the big time (Austin Energy caught onto that back in 2003). The U.S. military got solar and renewable energy back in Afghanistan and are now doing it bigtime everywhere.

SO and Georgia Power can try to ignore Continue reading →

Industrial park from green grass to a green solar future: Decatur County

Our Industrial Authority is in favor of solar business now; what if they seeded some of their industrial parks with solar panels like Decatur County is doing? They think it will make them look like a progressive county. What do we think?

Ty Wilson wrote for WTXL 7 Dec 2012, A solar park is coming to the Decatur County Industrial Park,

The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass to having a green future.

A Lenexa, Kansas company is building a solar farm at the Decatur County Industrial Park.

The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass to having a green future.

Keith Lyle is the chairman of the Bainbridge Decatur Development Authority, he says, “We are just extremely excited to have this come for the community.”

Decatur County Solar Park in solar Megawatt context And, it’s private investment!

Trade Winds Energy is leasing at least 100 acres to put in solar panels at ten thousand dollars a year.

Company executives says they will invest 17 million dollars into the project.

Lyle says, “This will add from the tax aspect a significant revenue stream. When it is all said and done you are looking at a taxable amount of 40 million is assets. On the project that is 400 hundred thousand a year in tax revenue.”

Trade Wind Energy doesn’t list this project yet (and all the projects they do list are wind projects), but if we take a rule of thumb Continue reading →

Augusta high tech job growth: second in the country

What is Augusta doing that attracts so many high tech jobs?

Orlando Montoya wrote for GPB News 7 December 2012, Augusta High Tech Ranks Nationally,

A national group working to promote entrepreneurship says Augusta has the second highest growth rate of high tech jobs in the past five years.

Only Boise, Idaho grew tech jobs faster.

San Francisco based Engine Advocacy says between 2006 and 2011, Augusta increased its technology sector jobs by 81%.

City officials credit the area’s low cost of living.

If that was the only key, Lowndes County and Valdosta MSA would lead the country…. What else?

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Videos @ LCC 2012-12-11

Moody and the Chamber won, rural residents got wasted, and taxpayers still didn't get to see a single thing the Lowndes County Commission voted on last night in 45 minutes (very long for them) in front of the biggest audience I've ever seen there.

They appointed John "Mac" McCall to ZBOA. They revised the alcohol ordinance with some unspecified "changes to the fee schedule", and added another alcohol restriction to the Lake Park rezoning before approving it.

They approved the solid waste ordinance and granted a waste collection monopoly to a company from New York City despite all known public input being against it. Two more people spoke against it in Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.

Gretchen Quarterman recommended adding all the appointed Boards and Authorities to the county's calendar.

Commissioners accepted applicant's withdrawal of the rezoning request near Moody AFB and tabled indefinitely the related zoning code amendment. They approved rezoning for the Naylor Dollar General.

Commission approved four Decorative Lighting Special Tax Districts (forgetting it was supposed to be a public hearing), and a refund for one that wasn't.

Danny Weeks got approved a new netclock and new phones for the 911 center, and he and his staff got an award. The library railroad continues, the bonds renegotation was approved with about $2 million savings and some legal questions, the Annex has asbestos but they'll deal with it, and after Friday's demolition ceremony there will be a going-away reception for Chairman Paulk, and Bill Slaughter will be the new Chairman.

You missed all that and more at yesterday's Commission meeting.

Here's a video playlist of the Regular Session, followed by the agenda with the videos linked into it.

Update 2014-04-09: Fixed embedded video link.

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 December 2012.

For reference here are the videos of yesterday morning's Work Session. And here is the agenda with links to the videos and some notes.

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Videos @ LCC 2012-12-10

A surprising amount of discussion at yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session, on ZBOA appointment, alcohol Sunday sales, rezoning next to Moody, and more. They said nothing about the solid waste ordinance, however; maybe they’ll table that loser again. They vote tonight:

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Here’s a video playlist of the Work Session, followed by the agenda with the videos linked into it.

Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 December 2012.

Here’s the agenda, this time with links to the videos and some notes.

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Additional license fee for Sunday alcohol sales? @ LCC 2012-12-10

Why should businesses have to pay an additional license fee for Sunday alcohol sales, if the only justification is to raise money to pay for administering that license? That was a topic at yesterday morning's Lowndes County Commission Work Session for agenda item 6.a. Revision to the Lowndes County Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance.

Finance Director Stephanie Black mentioned the things we already heard from the staff, brown bagging, social hosts (serving alcohol at private events to underage drinkers), and the Sunday package sales. She said for the voter-approved Sunday alcohol sales the license fee would be $250, plus a requirement for an immigration affidavit. Commissioner Powell took exception to that additional license fee, which would be on top of a license fee already necessary for the rest of the week. Black and Chairman Paulk defended it as necessary to collect money to administer the license fee. Powell wondered if they'd need the money if they didn't have the license fee. Paulk said the city of Valdosta charges $1000 for a Sunday license. Powell said he disagreed with that, too.

Here's the video:

Additional license fee for Sunday alcohol sales?
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 December 2012.

-jsq

Rezoning near Moody: fire code would prohibit a single entrance @ LCC 2012-12-10 @ LCC 2012-12-10

Commissioner Crawford Powell may have found solid grounds to deny the proposed rezoning for a development near Moody AFB, he revealed at this morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

County Planner Jason Davenport explicitly linked this rezoning case,

7.a. REZ-2012-17 Lowndes Development, LLC, Davidson Rd MAZ II and MAZ III to R-10, County Water & Sewer, ~23.49 acres

to the zoning text code amendment on the same meeting agenda.

7.d. TXT-2012-02 MAZ II Residential Density

He also mentioned the TRC (the Technical Review Committee composed mainly of Lowndes County and Valdosta staff) had a split vote on this item, although he didn’t say how it was split. And he said the Commissioners had the Planning Commission recommendation before them, although he didn’t mention the Planning Commission recommended against.

Commissioner Crawford Powell brought up a good point:

The fire department and the TRC say in the notes that it fails to comply with fire rescue ingress-egress requirements.

Fire Chief Guyton appeared to confirm that was the case, although since he wasn’t at a microphone, it’s hard to hear. Commissioner Powell continued:

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Glimmers of open discussion about Moody AFB zoning by the County Commission @ LCC 2012-12-10

Lowndes County Commissioners had a small amount of open discussion about the proposed changes to the zoning code related to Moody Air Force Base at their Work Session this morning. However, most of the discussion was not about the changes currently proposed, which the County Planner once again explicitly linked to a rezoning case on the same agenda. At least they discussed tabling the zoning code changes until there could be more discussion. They did not, however, say they would make drafts available to the public or invite the public to discuss those drafts.

County Planner Jason Davenport introduced agenda item 7.d. TXT-2012-02 MAZ II Residential Density:

This text amendment is part of the response to some of the questions that were raised with the additional rezoning. At the end of the day what this text amendment is going to do is to take that very outer blue color, the lightest color, which is the MAZ-3, and recommend change the zoning to 1 acre. Currently it’s 2 and a half acres.

He mentioned they missed the 30 day requirement to inform Moody AFB by about a week, but Moody responded anyway. Hm, that’s not what he said to the Planning Commission; there he said they had allowed 31 days.

Commissioner Richard Raines said he’d prefer to table this amendment until next year, because:

I think there are other issues that we’ve discussed related to MAZ. If you have a mobile home and it becomes unlivable, under the restrictions you can’t replace it….

Chairman Ashley Paulk responded that he didn’t have a problem with that, and:

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