Category Archives: Lowndes County Commission

Lowndes County Political Forum, AAUW, 15 Sep 2009

By Kenny R. Bush and John S. Quarterman, with videos by Gretchen Quarterman.

On Sept 15, residents of Lowndes County gathered inside VSU’s Whitehead
Auditorium for a political forum concerning the upcoming 2009 General
Municipal Elections.
It was the competing Mayberrys, Hahira and Dasher,
in the shadow of the big city of
Valdosta with its council and school board.
The 100 or so people who watched learned about the candidates.
You can too, by watching the videos of each speaker

provided by LAKE on YouTube.
Perhaps VSU can also be encouraged to release online the videos it took, which are
probably of higher quality.

Update: VSU TV rebroadcast schedule for this forum.

Perhaps VSU can also be encouraged to release online the videos it took, which are
probably of higher quality.

The event was sponsored by the American Association of University Women
(AAUW) and moderated by Jim Peterson, chair of the Political Science
Department at VSU. Before the forum began, the audience was provided
note cards and encouraged to write questions for forum participants.
A three person committee then decided which four questions that would be asked
on stage for each set of candidates.

Valdosta City Council District 2

The forum began with the five candidates competing to be the newest councilman of Valdosta’s 2nd district.
Willie T. Head, the incumbent, is not running,
but five other people other are:
David G. DeMersseman, David L. Dempsey, Rodney R. Flucas, Deidra A. White, and Dr. L. W. Williams.

(All the other LAKE videos of this AAUW forum are also available online.)

The first question of the night concerned annexing land neighboring
Valdosta and if candidates believed it to be a good idea or not.

Continue reading →

Biomass: Twice the CO2 of Coal?

Dr. Thomas D. Bussing, Ph.D., former mayor of Gainesville, Florida, is among the
numerous signatories of a
Letter to the U.S. Senate from Environmental Groups (including SAFE) Regarding Biomass, which says in part:

When compared to coal, per megawatt, this burning [biomass and the like] emits 1.5 times the carbon dioxide (CO2), 1.5 times the carbon monoxide (CO, a toxic air pollutant), and as much particulate matter.

Georgia already has the country’s dirtiest coal plant, at Juliette, near Macon.
Do we need still more CO2?

Maybe
the Wiregrass biomass plant planned for Valdosta is somehow more efficient than the one
near Gainesville.
If so, it would be good to hear about that; I don’t recall the topic coming up
at the Lowndes County Commission meeting in which this plant was approved.

Dr. Bussing elaborated in a recent letter:

The fallacy is in believing that plants take up all
CO2 emissions. In fact plants absorb some, the
ocean absorbs more (and as a consequence is
becoming more acidic by the year), but a
portion just stays and builds up in the
atmosphere. That buildup is associated with
global warming, and it doesn’t matter if the
CO2 comes from coal, gas or biomass.

Thanks to Seth R. Gunning for bringing this up.

New Stories of Lowndes County

Here’s the Lowndes County Commission (most of it), posing about the new StormReady County designation:

We love the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), WCTV, and WALB, but if they published anything about that, we missed it. They have space constraints, and we don’t. Local governments do a lot of good things (and other things) that don’t get reported in the traditional press. This is where LAKE comes in.