Category Archives: Forestry

Still no suppliers or buyers for Wiregrass Power LLC –VLCIA



According to an open records request of 17 February 2011,
the Industrial Authority says Wiregrass Power LLC still

“has not yet identified or completed a comprehensive list
of potential suppliers of raw materials,
goods and services required to construct and operate
the biomass electric generating plant.”

This is on a sheet entitled
“Owners/Investors/Suppliers/Contracts”, which also says:

“Site preparation and construction is not scheduled
to begin until June 1, 2011.”

Hm, what happened to breaking ground in January 2011?
The document also said a “Project Critical Path time-line is attached”
but it wasn’t.

Regarding buyers for the plant’s power:

Continue reading →

The owl in Hahira: March 2011 LAKE meeting



The owl in Hahira:

Monthly LAKE Meeting

When: 5:30-6:45 PM, Tuesday 1 March 2011

Updated meeting location

Where: home of Thomas Ieracitano

414 East Main Street, Hahira

229-251-2462

That’s on US 122, just east of the Masonic Lodge.

Thomas says:

“Bring a lawn chair, laptop (I will have Mediacom wireless)
and your own food and drink.”

If it rains or there are too many bugs or something,
we will move to:

Down Home Pizza

103 South Webb Street, Hahira

229-794-1888

Help cover food, water, transportation, incarceration, solar energy,
biomass, and regular local government meetings: you never know when
news will be made!

Popular topics lately on the LAKE blog,

On the LAKE Front, include

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Tranquility Trail –James Wright and students @LCC, 8 Feb 2011



Valdosta City Council member James Wright and students speak
to the County Commission about

Tranquility Trail.
The students have a number of good points, such as

“It’s not about me but our community”
and

“Don’t Litter, Make Our Trail Glitter”,
and

trees have educational and recreational benefits,
and

“We need our community to come in with us…
how our community can get involved.”
James Wright wraps up with

“Development of our community and our citizens.”
There’s more. Here’s the whole thing:





Regular meeting of the Lowndes County Commission, 8 February 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Georgia forests worth more standing than incinerated



Sandi Martin writes in

Southeast Farm Press:

A University of Georgia researcher has found that Georgia’s forestlands
provide essential ecosystem services to the state worth an estimated
$37 billion annually.

This is in addition to the value of timber, forest products and
recreation. This is the first time these indirect benefits of Georgia’s
private forests have been estimated.

That’s substantially more than the $28 billion annually from the
conventional wood-products industry.

What are these ecosystem services?

Continue reading →

GA biomass bubble bursts



Dan Chapman

writes in the AJC:

The premise, and the promise, were brilliant in their simplicity:
Turn tree waste into fuel, help break the Middle Eastern choke hold on
America’s economy and bring hundreds of jobs to rural Georgia.

What wasn’t there to like?

Plenty, starting with the closing last month of the Range Fuels cellulosic
ethanol factory that promised to help make Georgia a national leader
in alternative energy production. Then there’s the money — more
than $162 million in local, state and federal grants, loans and other
subsidies committed to the venture.

Hm, who was involved in that?

“Range Fuels represents a new future for our country,” proclaimed
then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, flanked by dignitaries and beauty queens. “With
Georgia’s vast, sustainable and renewable forests, we will lead the
nation.”

That reminds me

of this press release from 15 Sep 2009:

“Georgia’s status as the nation’s Bioenergy Corridor continues to
grow with the location of a renewable energy power plant in Valdosta,”
said Governor Perdue. “Our vast supply of biomass, technology innovations
and business-friendly environment are very attractive to companies such
as Wiregrass Power.”

Will history repeat itself?

-jsq

Why “jobs, jobs, jobs” isn’t good enough for the public good and the general welfare –John S. Quarterman



Sure, everyone wants jobs for the people right now and jobs
so the children don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water
those children need to drink?

This is the problem:

“What I believe the three most important things are,
not only for our community, and our state, and our country,
but for our country,
thats jobs number 1, jobs number 2, and jobs.”





Brad Lofton, Executive Director,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
speaking at the
Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner,
Lake Park, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

I shook Brad Lofton’s hand after that speech and told him I liked it,
because I did: in general it was a positive speech about real accomplishments.
I’ve also pointed out I had a few nits with that speech.
This one is more than a nit.
This one is basic philosophy and policy.

Now one would expect an executive director of an industrial authority
to be all about jobs.
And that would be OK, if

Continue reading →

Suppressing fire forest fires: a bad idea then and now



The
Longleaf Alliance
came up with some doozies of old fire-suppression propaganda
at the

Longleaf Workshops at Wiregrass Tech today.



WOODS FIRES

EVERYMAN’S ENEMY

Just in case you couldn’t visualize this enemy well enough,
how about as a pale skeleton on a white horse with a B-movie torch?



DEATH RIDES
THE FOREST

Ooh, those shadowy letters!

If all else fails, go for fake religious injunctions, such as

Continue reading →

Your local fire forest: Longleaf Workshop, Valdosta



This sums it up:

“Taking fire out of the longleaf forest is like taking rain out of the rain forest.”

But there’s a lot more to learn about the formerly largest-ranging forest in North America.
The
Longleaf Alliance
is doing a series of

Longleaf Workshops around Georgia, in conjunction with the

Georgia Forestry Commission


I went to the one at

Wiregrass Technical College at Valdosta.

Here is EJ Williams giving an overview:





Longleaf Workshop, Valdosta, 10 February 2011.

Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.



Good crowd: more than 50 people.
More later.
We’re on break now.

-jsq

Russell Anderson Responds

Received this morning; see
What is Fiery Roots? and
Paulk interrogates Noll
for backstory. -jsq



From: Russ Anderson

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:18:02 -0500

Subject: Russell Anderson responses to article about Fiery Roots and
Commissioner Paulk Accusations

Dear L.A.K.E.,

My name is Russell Anderson. Thank you for taking an interest in the
Wiregrass LLC Biomass incinerator issue and my affiliated organization

Collectiveprogression.org.
I am writing today with hopes of clarifying a few things.

First, I’m glad to see there is such an effort as L.A.K.E. in the Lowndes
area. L.A.K.E appears to use strategies that could be modeled by other
communities seeking a more informed population. Information sharing is
critical to achieving a more just and equitable world. The objective of our
organization is simply to share the narratives of community struggles,
solutions, and efforts in hopes of creating better channels of communication
and resource sharing between communities dealing with justice issues. Any
similarities to LAKE’s efforts to

“Cover the planners to connect the dots”
are nothing more than pleasant coincidence.

Hopefully, as our website develops from its infancy, our mission will become
more apparent in the content. We have interviewed people across the country
to uncover ways that people working for justice can be more connected and,

Continue reading →

“no way shape or form” –Brad Lofton on Dr. Teaf



A week after Brad Lofton failed to produce evidence and offered

to file Dr. Noll’s correspondence “in the appropriate file”,
VLCIA has still not published the videos or slides from their
6 Dec 2010 event at the Rainwater Conference Center.

However, Brad Lofton and Col. Ricketts summarized that event for
the VLCIA board at their recent board meeting,
and they never presented any actual evidence there, either.


Brad Lofton said his toxicologist says the biomass plant in
“no way shape or form” will cause health problems.
Then he rattled off a long list of supporters of a Gainesville biomass plant.
The rest of this post has videos of what he and Col. Ricketts said, plus screenshots
of each of Dr. Teaf’s slides: see if you can find the details.

Continue reading →