Category Archives: Forestry

SB 409, the “Georgia Forest Product Fairness Act”

State Senator Tim Golden

reported May 1 on the April 2010 end of the Georgia legislative session:

Forest Tax Fairness: As a lead co-sponsor of legislation that would ensure property tax fairness for the owners of forest land, I am pleased to report that the House gave final approval to SB 409 last week and sent it to the governor for his signature.

This bill, which passed unanimously in both the Senate and House, requires that any tax break or exemption granted to a business that uses “raw forest products,” such as a biomass energy plant, must also be granted to the owner of the property where that product is harvested.

This is good legislation for PCA and other manufacturers in our district, as well as the forest industry.

Unlike the VDT,

Sen. Golden’s own website
includes
a link to the bill, SB 409, the “Georgia Forest Product Fairness Act”
which reads in part:

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Perspectives on Biomass Permit

This is Karen Noll’s LTE to the VDT as sent on 12 Aug 2010.
It doesn’t seem to have ever turned up in the online version of the VDT,
but here it is:


While certain entities see no negative environmental impact of the proposed biomass plant, the information and data that I have does not indicate that incineration of wood is efficient, environmentally sound, or safe for our citizens. Yet others see this as a win-win scenario claiming a vastly different perspective on the situation; economically, environmentally and in regard to the health of our citizens. Why is that?

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Video of Biomass Air Quality Hearing, Valdosta, 27 April 2010



A video of
a hearing about the biomass plant Wiregrass Power LLC proposes
to build in Lowndes County just outside of Valdosta was held

in Valdosta on 27 April 2010
by the Air Protection Branch (APD)
of the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) of the Georgia
Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Eric Cornwell of APD explains location,
process flow, and specific items
covered by the permit (soot, SO2, NOX, CO, VOC, HCL, etc., but not
CO2).
He remarks that Wiregrass Power LLC is building a small plant with a
“lower emission limit in order to avoid some of the red tape”
by getting a minor permit instead of a major permit.
The first half hour concludes with Bob Turner, the plant manager,
presenting similar material, ending with:

“No new carbon is added to the atmosphere when burning woody byproducts.”

I beg to differ on that:
in the time it takes trees to grow back,
there is indeed new carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere.
More from

Dr. William Sammons on that.

Back to the video of the hearing.

Questions start at 00:29:44.
Here are some time markers and very brief summaries
of Q and A; see the video for the full questions and answers.

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Where the biomass plants are

For months I’ve been asking who at least knows where all the
biomass plants in Georgia are proposed to be.

Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) doesn’t know.

National Geographic knows some, but not all.

The State of Georgia maybe knows, but isn’t telling where they all are.

Who does know?


Energy Justice Network!

We are mapping all of the existing, proposed, closed and defeated dirty
energy and waste facilities in the United States. We are building a
network of community groups to fight the facilities and the corporations
behind them.

The detail map shown includes the Wiregrass Power LLC proposed plant
(the orange oval I just south of Valdosta),
two plants in Hamilton County, Florida

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Sprawl to ruin, or dense with green space for quality of life



Jeffrey H. Dorfman,
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural & Applied Economics,
The University of Georgia:

Local governments must ensure balanced growth, as
sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to
fiscal ruin*

* Or at least big tax increases.

See

The Economics of Growth, Sprawl and Land Use Decisions.

  • Green spaces increase property values of surrounding land
  • Green and open spaces can provide environmental amenities for free
  • If green spaces contribute to quality of life, you
    attract people and jobs to community

Note and jobs, not just people: jobs so the people can work
and afford the houses they live in.

But this doesn’t mean exurban subdivisions with big yards:

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Dr. William Sammons on Biomass Sustainability and Economics



Here’s an interesting
video interview
with Dr. William Sammons,

the doctor who spoke in Traverse City just before that biomass plant was nixed.

Is it more important to reach the target … or to say we have new information
and we need to revise the targets and what qualifies?

He’s talking
about potential billions of dollars of health costs from particulates,
about

“waste” wood (what they say they will burn) vs. whole trees (what they end up burning),
and most importantly about sustainability.

Biomass plants don’t have to report their CO2 emissions,
so if all the proposed biomass plants get built
we’re talking about as much as 800 million tons of CO2 from
biomass plants by 2020, 12 to 14% of total CO2
emissions for the U.S. (not just power emissions: total national emissions).

Trees don’t grow fast enough to suck all that back out of the air in ten years.

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Valdosta in bottom 10 metro areas for wages

Richard Florida writes about

The Geography of High-Paying Jobs,
including this map based on Bureau of Labor Staistics (BLS) data:

The Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comes in the bottom 10
nationwide.
That’s for overall average wages.

It doesn’t look quite as bad for specific classes of jobs (creative, service,
and working class),
but that’s mostly because there are almost no MSAs in the lowest
pay tier.
However, for service jobs, Valdosta is not as good as Tallahassee,
and makes it into the bottom 10:

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Candidates, Lowndes County Commission, District 2, at LCDP BBQ



Every year the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP)
has a barbecue to which it invites candidates for public office.
These include local candidates. Here we have the two Democrats
running for Lowndes County Commission in District 2, in alphabetical order:
Debra M. Franklin
and
John S. Quarterman.
Notice the two candidates dining amicably side by side.

Debra M. Franklin:

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Biomass Town Hall, 8 July 2010



On July 8th there was a
town Hall meeting about the biomass plant proposed for Valdosta.

Pastor Angela Manning of New Life Ministries sums up why she called this Town Hall meeting:

Speakers included:

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Center of Innovation – Energy

Where’s Waldo?
And where’s the

state renewable energy strategy for Georgia, or for the southeast, or for just south Georgia?
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
Project Manager Allan Ricketts

found another candidate.

“Forests Dominate Georgia’s Land Use”



That’s the title of slide 10 of 21 in

Center of Innovation – Energy (CIE)
by Jill Stuckey, Director.
Actually, massively pesticided planted pines dominate south Georgia’s land use;
not the same as actual forests with species diversity and diverse ages of trees.
The same CIE slide equates

Georgia Forestry = Biomass Energy

That is what the state government seems to want it to be.

Back on slide 9, solar is defined as a southwestern regional energy
source; nevermind that the solar map on that page shows Georgia
with the same insolation as most of Texas (more on that later).
And wind is defined as a central U.S. regional strength,
nevermind that even Georgia Power has started exploring the
possibility of wind off the Georgia coast.

I get it that Georgia has trees and forestry is a big industry in Georgia.
I’m a tree farmer myself.
I’d love to be convinced that biomass from trees is one good way to go.
But at what costs?
And compared to what?

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