I wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural Georgia have not improved much if at all. This isn’t just about playing Farmville. It’s about communicating with your relatives, about competing in business, Continue reading
Category Archives: Planning
Angela Manning and her extended ovation @ VCC 24 March 2011
This time, 24 March 2011,
Angela Manning, minister of the 1500-member New Life Ministries
in Valdosta near the proposed site for the Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant,
read from the Valdosta City Council’s own mission statement and
asked,
How do you adhere to your mission statement?Here’s the video: Continue reading
What Are Our Priorities? –Dr. Noll @ LCC 22 March 2011

The Sierra Club letter he mentions was posted last week. For NOAA Weather Radios see previous posts. Here is the video:
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
South Georgia already in drought: parameters for industry?
According to the AP, Ga. foresters brace for busy wildfire season:
The nearterm effects:A cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape, but in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some of the lowest points that would be expected in a century, said David Stooksbury, Georgia’s state climatologist at the University of Georgia.
“We have a good fuel load with plenty of dry vegetation, the soil is dry and there’s a low relative humidity and there’s wind,” Stooksbury said. “That is the simple recipe for a trash fire to get out of control very quickly and become a wildfire.”Yes, Sunday Georgia Forestry cut off burn permits in Lowndes County because some fires had gotten out of control.
The long term problem? Continue reading
Communities watching boards

Here is her comment from 15 March 2011 on this blog:
Not to be rude, although honesty is very often perceived that way these days, but, the industrial authority executives rarely thank their communities. In the six states I’m most familiar with, these fellows see themselves as beholden only to their employers. After all, they work with their directors, elected officials, a few bankers and city/county department heads. Rarely do they come in direct contact with the average voter, employee or homeowner, although all those people often pay a large part of their salaries and office operating expenses. Despite the public funding, these groups are usually tight lipped about how they do business and rarely provide the public with records or audits. We’ve all put up with that manner of doing business for so long we now see it as just that — the way you do business. We’d never accept that from a nonprofit organization, a charity group or most elected officials. Shame on us all.Susan, you’re helping by reading, and you’re helping more by posting. Many local officials have noticed LAKE and this blog because they know people read it.
Anyone who wants to help still more, you, too, can go to a meeting. The Industrial Authority is a good one to attend, but I hear the Tree Commission isn’t trying as hard to enforce things, and does anybody know anything the Hospital Authority does? The Airport Authority? Continue reading
Urban growth boundary –Portland
Local governments must ensure balanced growth, as sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin*Here’s a place that does something about it: Portland, Oregon.
* Or at least big tax increases.
Thanks to Matthew Richard for pointing out this documentary.
As the documentary says, the key to Portland’s way is: Continue reading
Biomass or carbon trading or something else?

People have long debated whether there is a sound if a tree falls in a forest but nobody is there to hear it.Continue readingThe fall of revenue from Georgia’s forestry industry, however, has attracted a lot of attention — but $10 billion is hard to ignore.
Adage and Gretna’s mayor

Mayor Anthony Baker of the City of Gretna announced today that in light of Adage, LLC’s decision to suspend activity on its proposed Bioenergy facility slated for construction in Gretna (as well as suspension of its application for an air permit through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) that the City now considers this matter closed and will take no further action on Adage’s request to locate this facility in Gretna. Inasmuch as the Bioenergy Plant could neither legally operate nor be sited in Gretna without an air permit, the City concluded that this was no longer a viable project and Adage’s decision to suspend activity on its air permit indicated that further consideration of the project by the City was unwarranted. Since there were no issues pending before the City of Gretna requiring action by its Commission relative to the Plant, the Mayor deemed termination of the project as final disposition of this matter as far as the City is concerned.This is despite promises of jobs, jobs, jobs: Continue reading
Particulate matter is a killer. –Lisa Jackson, EPA, 17 March 2011
Particulate matter is a killer. We know it results in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

That matches some local concerns in Lowndes County.
How much of a killer? Continue reading
Georgia Power plans to decertify two coal plants
ATLANTA, March 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Georgia Power expects to request approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission to decertify two coal-generating units totaling 569 megawatts, the company announced Wednesday.This matches with a report from last July that gapower was turning away from coal. And they suspended work on Plant Branch a year ago. Unfortunately, mostly they’re turning to natural gas and nuclear. Continue reading
The request to decertify units 1 and 2 at Plant Branch in Putnam Co. will be included in Georgia Power’s updated Integrated Resource Plan filing with the commission in late summer. The company expects to ask for decertification of the units as of the effective dates of the Georgia Multipollutant Rule, which are currently anticipated to be Dec. 31, 2013 for unit 1 and Oct. 1, 2013 for unit 2.
The decision to decertify the units is based on a need to install environmental controls to meet a variety of existing and expected environmental regulations.
“After an extensive analysis of the cost to comply with environmental regulations, we have determined the continued operation of these units would be uneconomical for our customers,” said Georgia Power President and CEO Paul Bowers. “This decision is in keeping with our focus to provide affordable and reliable electricity for our customers.”