Category Archives: Economy

County quantifies some infrastructure payback times @ LCC 2012 03 31

Water and sewer take decades for return on investment, and roads and bridges probably aren’t any better. That’s worth remembering whenever solar, busses, or trains come up.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT Sunday, Commission wraps up annual retreat: Utility payments, road projects and waste disposal discussed

The cost of one mile of construction for water takes 23 years for a return on the initial investment; sewer takes 21.3 years.

The VDT didn’t specify the similar return times for road paving or bridge construction, but it’s a safe bet they’re at least as long. The farther water or sewer lines or roads or bridges are from population centers, the more they cost both directly in installation and indirectly in trips for fire and sheriff vehicles, and especially school busses. The county commissioned a report on that several years ago, as Gretchen reminded them last year. In the particular rezoning case on Cat Creek they were discussing then (Nottinghil), they made a decision to table which seems to have caused the developer never to come back with that particular sprawl plan. I congratulated the Commissioners at that time, and I congratulate them again on not promoting sprawl.

Sprawl costs the county, payback takes years, and longer the farther out it goes. What if we did something different? More on that later.

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Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location @ LCC 2012 03 31

The Lowndes County Commission continues to hide when it talks about waste disposal. The VDT got slightly more specific about the undisclosed location of the Lowndes County Commission Retreat, and much more specific about what they were doing, yet according to state law their minutes need to be still more specific. And it’s not clear why they’re panicking about waste disposal when the deficit on that public good has come down rapidly in recent years.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT Saturday, Commission tackles key issues: Waste management, tax lighting districts and SPLOST discussed at retreat,

Commissioners and staff from Lowndes County buckled down Friday at Chairman Ashley Paulk’s guest home to address issues such as waste management, special tax lighting districts, SPLOST negotiations and necessary expenditures for equipment and staff.

A LAKE roving reporter (not me) observed many vehicles at Shiloh Farms’ recent acquisition in Berrien County on the north side of GA 122 a bit east of Old Valdosta Road (Cat Creek Road), so that seems likely the undisclosed location.

By the end of the afternoon, Commissioners made decisions on a few key issues.

It’s good to hear our elected representatives were working, even though they do not appear to have followed state law about this open meeting. And we can look forward to the names of which of them voted for each decision, according to the recent Georgia Supreme Court decision.

Here’s one thing they were working on:
Solid waste management, which is currently handled with collection centers, has run at a deficit of over $300,000.

That’s less than the deficit it was running last time (23 May 2011) the Commission had a meeting at an undisclosed location with no agenda where they talked about waste disposal. According to David Rock in the VDT 24 May 2011, Commissioners want Lowndes out of the trash business,

In total, the county is currently spending $782,058.34 each year for solid waste disposal, a reduction from $1,176,207.75 in 2007.

So that’s a rapid reduction in cost to less than a third of what it used to be, and less than half of what it was only a year ago. Back to Saturday’s VDT report:

County manager Joe Pritchard assured them the budget was in better shape than last year.

So why are they panicking about waste disposal?

Continue reading →

Fresh Kills Landfill Solar Farm

New York City’s new wind and solar farm will be a dump.

Mathias wrote for Cleantechnica 22 March 2012, NYC to Build Wind and Solar Farm on Old Dump Site,

Who would know that an old garbage dump at Staten Island in New York City would house 20 MW of renewable power? If they succeed with their plans, “Fresh Kills landfill” will be transformed into a combined solar and wind farm that could generate enough electricity to power 6,000 average American households!

The old landfill has serviced the city for 53 years, and taken care of a whopping two billion tons of thrash, before closing early in 2011.

Sounding like a mayor from Texas with a vision, Continue reading →

School lunches, speculators —Garry Gentry

Garry Gentry from Tifton at Saxby Chambliss's Farm Bill Forum in Tifton wanted to know how much of food prices was due to Wall Street speculation.

Here's the video:


School lunches, speculators —Garry Gentry
Farm Bill Forum, Senator Saxby Chambliss,
Gary Black, Charles Hall, Robert Redding, John Maguire,
Tifton, Tift County, Georgia, 16 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Bring our troops home —Gretchen Quarterman

Gretchen Quarterman asked the first question at Saxby Chambliss' Farm Bill Forum in Tifton:

Bring our troops home.

That way we'd have more money for everything else.

Here's the video:


Bring our troops home —Gretchen Quarterman
Farm Bill Forum, Senator Saxby Chambliss,
Gary Black, Charles Hall, Robert Redding, John Maguire,
Tifton, Tift County, Georgia, 16 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Solar eating fossil fuels’ cake in Germany

Why is Georgia Power still peddling misinformation about solar power instead of moving ahead with it? What’s happening in Germany could be a clue.


Giles Parkinson wrote for Crikey.com 28 March 2012 (it’s tomorrow in Australia), Why power generators are terrified of solar,
The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.
So solar is taking the profits out of coal and natural gas. So sad!
Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.

Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany’s gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

You know, if the utilities got out in front and generated energy from solar and wind themselves, they wouldn’t be having this problem.

Here in Georgia, even Georgia Power could get going and do that, instead of fighting this:

Continue reading →

Industrial Authority presentation @ LCC 2012 03 26

Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), made a presentation to the Lowndes County Commission at their Work Session 26 March 2012. VLCIA Board member G. Norman Bennett was also present. Congratulations to VLCIA on proactively getting the word out about what they are doing!

Here's a playlist:


Industrial Authority presentation
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

 

 

Videos @ LCC 2012 03 13

Here are videos of the entire 13 March 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission (LCC).

See separate items on the appointment of Sheila Cook to the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Addictive Diseases Region Four Planning Board and “We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment” —Ashley Paulk.

Other notable parts of this meeting were when staff said conservation status was a small detail and and Commissioners proceeded to get rid of it in a rezoning.

At the end of the meeting, County Manager Joe Pritchard didn’t listen to Commissioner Powell’s request and proceede to recount details of road paving property signatures until Chairman Paulk nudged him that the question was about tornadoes, after which Pritchard gave a recap of Ashley Tye’s tornado report of the previous morning.

Here’s the agenda. Here’s a playlist:


Videos
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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“We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment” —Ashley Paulk @ LCC 2012 03 13

A month ago (28 February 2012), Chairman Ashley Paulk chastised the VDT for how it reported on recent changes to the alcohol ordinance. This month he singled out an applicant for an alcohol license and said:
We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment. If not, we expect the Sheriff to enforce the law.
Sheriff Chris Prine nodded.

Here’s the video:


“We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment” —Ashley Paulk @ 2012-03-13
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC), Lowndes County Commission,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

What’s this about, and what’s the connection with the meeting of a month ago? The Chairman was referring to Continue reading →

ALEC, Trayvon Martin, CCA’s private prisons, and charter schools?

What’s the connection between the Florida law that’s letting the killer of Trayvon Martin hide, the private prisons CCA runs in Georgia and other states, and HB 797, the Georgia charter schools bill that’s on the floor today for Senate debate today? ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Paul Krugman wrote yesterday for the NYTimes, Lobbyists, Guns and Money,

ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

Same as private prisons. The only real benefit goes to private prison company executives and shareholders.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And today we have an organized threat to justice everywhere. That threat is called ALEC.

-jsq