Category Archives: Sterling Planet

Turning on Wiregrass Solar –Col. Ricketts



At the February VLCIA board meeting, Col. Ricketts said groundbreaking
for the solar plant is scheduled for February 21st with production
less than two months after that.

Here you can see his timeline slide.


It’s a bit hard to read, but he mentioned at least these items:

  • Site preparation starts 16 Feb 2011.
  • Groundbreaking Monday 21st Feb 2011.
  • Commissioning ceremony and turn the switch on Wednesday 16th April 2011.

Apparently deploying a solar plant takes a lot less time than some types of projects. You can watch and listen to his presentation:

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Valdosta NAACP Claims Environmental Racism



Brad Lofton says

“all of a sudden we haven’t heard anymore about environmental racism.”
I guess he hasn’t looked at the local NAACP’s

front page on the web.

Valdosta NAACP Claims Environmental Racism

The Valdosta-Lowndes branch of the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution
of Environmental Racism concerning the siting of Sterling Planet’s
Wiregrass Power, LLC, Biomass Incinerator, slated for construction in
Valdosta, Georgia, next to the Mud Creek wastewater treatment plant.
This incinerator is sited in a predominantly black community: within 2
miles of the incinerator are 2 predominantly black elementary schools,
J.L. Lomax with 607 students and Southeast with 304 students, and
one predominantly white elementary school, Moulton-Branch with over
500 students. The “Little Blue School” Head Start program serves over
165 children ages 3-5. There are 7 large black churches including
Valdosta’s largest African-American church, New Life Ministries,
pastored by Dr. Angela Manning, who has organized one Town Hall against
the Biomass incinerator. Other churches include the Church at Pine
Hill, Morning Star Baptist, Evangel Temple, Church of God of Prophecy,
and others, with congregations numbering hundreds. In the area is
Sands-Horizon assisted living facility which serves over 60 families,
2 large apartment complexes, Brittany Woods and Park Chase, as well as
Valdosta’s largest and most affuent black residential community.

Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority,
Brad Lofton, rejects the claim of environmental racism, and at the
September 27, 2010, Valdosta Board of Education meeting called Valdosta
NAACP President Touchton “irresponsible” for making the public claim.
He says there are seven times more white people who live around the
proposed plant. He did not address the fact that school children and
church members do not show up on census forms.

The incinerator will emit 87-89 tons per year of tiny particulate

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“I don’t feel my interests were adequately represented” –Matt Flumerfelt



First-time speaker Matt Flumerfelt notes the Valdosta City Council
and the Lowndes County Commission both disclaim responsibility for the
Industrial Authority even though both appoint its members,
and he thinks that may make VLCIA’s contract for the biomass plant
challengeable on constitutional grounds.
He also sent LAKE the appended article on 20 Jan 2011.

Video by John S. Quarterman of the regular meeting
of the Valdosta City Council, 20 January 2011,
for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Faith In Technology Is What Got Us Into This Mess

by Matt Flumerfelt

Many people in the Valdosta-Lowndes County community have faith that the
proposed Biomass incinerator won’t harm anyone or anything, but faith in
technology is what got us into our current environmental mess in the first
place. Those old enough to remember the nuclear power debate will remember
how many people gave assurances that nuclear power was safe, yet we see
today how difficult nuclear waste is to dispose of and how much damage it
has caused when things go wrong, which, human nature being what it is, they
inevitably do. The recent gulf oil spill would not have happened if

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Text of letter from Russell Anderson to officials

Can you find a

“veiled threat” in the appended letter?
LAKE couldn’t.

Some people

seem to be forming opinions
of that letter without ever having read it.
LAKE has published links to a PDF of it from four previous posts:

“Far from Over”,

“What is Fiery Roots”,

Russell Anderson Responds,
and

“We got off on the wrong foot”.
Formerly LAKE only had

a PDF of a scan of a paper copy of the email of 3 Jan 2011.
Per request, Russell Anderson has sent plain text, which appears below.
-jsq



All,

My name is Russell Anderson. I am the Co-Director of
Collectiveprogression.org and graduate of Valdosta State. I am writing to
inform you of my intent to publish the below piece on our website and to our
readership as well as produce a full length documentary about the community
struggle against the proposed Wiregrass LLC biomass incinerator.
I have you all on this email {Sterling Assets, Langdale’s, Council, Commissioners,
Authority, Attorneys} and

ALL of you have continued to pass the blame and
buck on the building of this plant.
Rather than doing the more responsible
thing (pending EIS),

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“folks come into the community.” –Col. Ricketts responding to WACE in VLCIA board meeting

Previously
I promised to post the rest of what Col. Ricketts and Brad Lofton said
about biomass in the 21 Dec 2010 VLCIA board meeting.



In these two videos, Col. Ricketts responds to materials sent to VLCIA
by WACE.
He dismisses certain material as being

from Massachusetts
or being from

“folks come into the community.”
That’s rather rich, since as near as I can tell,
all of VLCIA’s “expert” panelists at their

6 Dec 2010 event
were from not from around here.
Some were from states a thousand miles from here.
Maybe somebody can transcribe

Brad Lofton’s enumeration of those “experts” from the board meeting,
since as near as I can tell VLCIA has provided no written list of them.
And of course Sterling Planet is located in Atlanta, not Lowndes County.

In the first video, Col. Ricketts says he’s responding to WACE materials:

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Where’s the wood to come from and who will buy the electricity?



Here’s video of what I asked at the recent VLCIA biomass event
(6 Dec 2010) and the answers from the panel.

So there’s actually not any new study of wood sourcing
(Brad Lofton told me after the meeting that the study had been “completed”
after we met in June),
and the study that exists is not publicly available.
Someone from Sterling promised me after the meeting to redact the
private parts of the wood sourcing study and provide the rest
for public distribution. We’ll see.

Regarding my question about who will buy the electricity and
whether we’ll end up like Plant Scherer, selling electricity
to Florida while keeping the pollution here, the answer was:

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