Category Archives: Safety

Fracking south Georgia and north Florida?

Potential fracking in north Georgia was too close, but what about right here in south Georgia? Florida has a snowballing anti-fracking movement. Looks like Georgia needs one, too.

300x149 South Georgia and North Florida Basins Map, in Shale gas basins in South Georgia and north Florida, by USGS, 4 June 2012 Dan Chapman, AJC Online Athens, 10 March 2013, Gas drillers turn to Georgia,

Jim Kennedy, the state’s geologist, says another company is considering the shale gas fields of the Mesozoic Basin that covers 60 percent of the Coastal Plain in South Georgia.

Most of the story is about proposed fracking in north Georgia that we noted back in 2013, plus fossil fuel industry propaganda about how great they say that would be for the local economy, with very little about the immense destruction, environmental hazards, and invasions of private property that would ensue. The AJC version of that Dan Chapman story didn’t seem to have Continue reading →

Videos: Day 3 of Budget Hearings @ LCC Budget 2015-03-05

The Airport Authority got inserted among the judges and lawyers, and the Coroner’s Office failed to turn in a budget. The day was mostly sitting around waiting, because most of the actual presentations were only a few minutes each, yet were scheduled hours apart, in the last day of the three days of “Budget Hearings” which aren’t really hearings because nobody from the public can speak and they don’t have a budget to hear yet. See the first day for the agenda.

Here are links to videos of each item with some notes by Gretchen, followed by a video playlist. No video for the first item, EMS, due to camera failure; sorry. For the rest, as the Chairman said, referring to Gretchen and the LAKE camera:

We have our videographer back there, so we’re ready.

Hm, maybe LAKE should submit a budget request to the county…. Continue reading →

Sabal Trail contractor yard at end of Valdosta Airport runway

300x388 Lowndes County, GA, next to Valdosta Airport, in Sabal Trail Contractor Yards aerial maps, by John S. Quarterman, for SpectraBusters.org, 20 February 2015 The same company that sued Lowndes County in 2007 to try to put a tall building above the 30-foot height limit in Valdosta’s Runway Protection Zone now appears to want to put a contractor yard for Sabal Trail’s fracked methane pipeline in the same location. Will this involve any tall cranes? What about Moody’s flights off of that runway at Valdosta Airport? And what about those aquifer recharge zones?

Among the contractor yard maps Sabal Trail filed with FERC 20 February 2015, there’s this one: Continue reading →

REZ-2015-02 Devine packet materials @ LCC 2015-02-24

Gretchen filed an open records request for all the natively-electronic materials from the board packet, especially including the list of the Commission’s own goals, but all we got was the one rezoning item, REZ-2015-02 Devine for the 23 February 2015 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission. At least they sent that much by email, but even so it’s missing important information that I wonder if the Commissioners noted wasn’t there before they voted.

New material in here, different from Continue reading →

Another oil train crashes and burns: CSC CSX near Charleston WV

Yet another fireball, water supply turned off, state of emergency, from an oil train. When did you last hear of a solar farm explosion? Do we expect hastily-built and unnecessary fracked methane pipelines to be any safer than these shoddy exploding shale oil train tank cars? How long must fossil fuel fireballs rain down before we all get on with clean sun, wind, and water to power the world?

Fireball above Boomer, WV; Photo credit: Deslyne Copening

Marcus Constantino, Multimedia reporter and Matt Murphy, Charleston Daily Mail, 16 February 2015, Crude oil train derails in Fayette County, WV, Continue reading →

Solar financing bill HB 57

You won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes, because you’ll be able to get reasonable financing.

Update 2015-02-07: HB 57 was favorably reported out of the House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee 28 January 2015, first time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle.

The actual solar leasing bill in the Georgia House as of 14 January 2015 is HB 57 “…to provide for financing of solar technology by retail electric customers for the generation of electric energy to be used on and by property owned or occupied by such customers or to be fed back to the electric service provider”, aka the “Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015.” It includes the same old generation limits from the 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act (10 Megawatts per individual and 100 MW per company), but it blows a huge hole in the prohibition on power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Georgia Power and the Electric Membership Corporations have reportedly already agreed on this bill. If so, it should sail through the legislature. Still, it won’t hurt to call your Georgia House member and ask them to vote for it, and maybe become a co-sponsor.

Here’s PDF of the bill, and here’s the key provision: Continue reading →

Valdosta City Council Retreats to Moultrie this weekend

Citizens can attend this open meeting to hear about that flooding study, traffic cameras, compensation, and other issues, even though it’s inconveniently located in another county, almost as if the Valdosta City Council didn’t want you to see what they’re doing. If City Hall wouldn’t do, why not the Convention Center? It has its own chef. Like the VDT editorialized, there was no need to go to a out-of-town fancy resort.

Joe Adgie wrote for the VDT 8 January 2014, Valdosta City Council retreating in Moultrie,

The two-day event will feature discussion of issues that Mayor John Gayle and the City Council want to focus on in the coming year, as well as priorities for the legislative delegation and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

In addition, the results of a city employee compensation study will be released and discussed at the retreat.

The number one issue listed by the council for the current year involves funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for a levee and pump proposal.

According to the city, Continue reading →

Sabal Trail like Keystone XL is for corporate profit not jobs

It would go through our land to be sold everywhere else, with no jobs here. It wouldn’t even be a nominal benefit for those of us whose land, water, and taxes it would take.

President Obama was half right:

Understand what this project is. It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.

In his press conference of 14 November 2014, he was referring to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Add Atlantic to Gulf and the above quote applies equally to the proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.

History has countered his next assertion: Continue reading →

Meet Greenlaw and EarthJustice in Waycross 2015-01-06

People are still sick and dying in Waycross, and answers are still few, but now there’s increasing help, and organization at a meeting next Tuesday. Remember wastewater from the Waycross SevenOut SuperFund site was sent to the Pecan Row Landfill in Valdosta, and we could have similar sites here, too. Helping Waycross is helping everyone deal with toxic chemicals. -jsq

Facebook event, Meeting Announcement – Tuesday Evening, January 6, 2014, Continue reading →

Housing, paving, appointments, solar, packets, wells, pipeline, and trash! @ Town Hall Meeting 2014-12-15

Very respectable turnout and impressive interaction at the first-ever Town Hall by an individual Lowndes County Commissioner: Demarcus Marshall, Super District 4, 15 December 2014. See and read his State of District 4 address. You can read his summary of issues and concerns, and you can watch citizens express those concerns in the LAKE video playlist: Continue reading →