Ordinance or policy?
That question comes up for at least two items,
Special assessment
and
Speed control devices,
in the
minutes of the 10 January 2011 Work Session
of the Lowndes County Commission.
-jsq
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
MINUTES
WORK SESSION
Monday, January 10, 2011
Commissioners discussed several items much more than last year’s Commission
at this morning’s Work Session; they vote 5:30 PM tonight at their Regular Session.
However, you’d think with an
ankle monitoring program Commissioners praised so highly,
they’d want the public to know the details.
Nope, still none of the documents related to that nor any of the other
items they were discussing were revealed to the tax-paying public.
They don’t have a press release about that,
nor about the
Parade of Champions
the Chairman talked about
(twice)
even though it wasn’t on the agenda.
He was silent, however, on who the
candidates for the Airport Authority
are, and none of them were present.
That’s four reports that were not on the agenda: Parade of Champions, ankle monitoring, the county’s wellness program and the upcoming Bird Supper.
Here’s the agenda, with links to the videos and a few notes, followed by the video playlist.
Continue readingA landowner asked Lowndes County to abandon a road leading to the Alapaha River, in this morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
Abandonment of a portion of Old State Road (CR 16)
Phillip Connell requests that Old State Road that goes through his property and dead ends at the river be closed.
They’re holding an initial hearing followed by a public hearing “I guess it will be in three weeks at the next regular meeting”
because state law requires it, according to County Engineer Mike Fletcher.
He also said the bridge had washed away, and there was no access into
Lanier County.
And the river (it’s the Alapaha River, although I don’t think anybody ever
said the name)
…is not classified as a navigable waterway; therefore Mr. Connell owns to the center of the river. You can navigate down the river by boat, but if you step out, if you get out of the boat and step on the land, you’re considered to be trespassing.Engineer did not cite any statutes for his assertions.
Chairman said he and Commissioners Marshall and Evans had been down Continue reading
An unscheduled report and testimonials by Commissioners
said the county’s ankle monitoring program is going well and saving money,
in this morning’s
Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
Ankle Monitoring:
In another item not on the agenda,
the Chairman asked “Mr. Steven Harmon” to give a report
(I’m guessing I got the right Steven Harmon in the picture here).
Lowndes County apparently saves over one million dollars each year
by using an ankle monitoring program, rather than keeping non-violent
offenders in the county jail.
That program
was
initially approved by the Commission 13 December 2011,
required
a budget adjustment 10 January 2012,
was
funded by the Commission 19 June 2012,
and was
in the budget approved 26 June 2012.
We the public still don’t really know what’s in this program, because Continue reading
Why is Plant Hatch Unit 1 running at well below capacity?
Saturday 19 Jan 2013 that nuclear plant was
at 100%, according to the NRC,
yet Sunday it was down to 45%, then 40% Monday and 64% today.
What's going on at Hatch 1?
And what happened to nuclear supposedly being 24/7?
There's no event report about this from the NRC; the last item the NRC has on Hatch 1 seems to be from 2003. Southern Company provides no information on this event. Another source (Platts, 4 January 2013) says Hatch 2 (and Vogtle 2) are to refuel in the first half of this year, among Fifty-six US nuclear units to shut for refueling in 2013. But Hatch 1 is not on that list, and a similar Hatch 1 brownout happened 5 and 6 January:
Continue reading
It's curious how the Lowndes County Commission can hold a public hearing
for a single beer, wine, and liquor license, but not for
doing away with the solid waste collection sites
that affect
5,000 county residents.
And what's this "Special Assessment Rate for 2013"?
At today's early morning work session maybe they'll say,
or perhaps at tonight's regular session, both on the same day
because of yesterday's holiday.
Here's the agenda.
-jsq
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
- Call to Order
- Invocation
- Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
- Minutes for Approval
- Work Session — January 7, 2013
- Regular Session — January 8, 2013
- Appointment — Valdosta/Lowndes County Airport Authority
- Public Hearing — Beer Wine & Liquor License — Rascal's — 4875 Hwy 41
- For Consideration
- Special Assessment Rate for 2013
- Abandonment of a portion of Old State Road (CR 16)
- Replacement of the Jail Fire Alarm System in Buildings 001 & 002
- Reports-County Manager
- Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address
Stopped by the main desk of the Conference Center Wednesday.
I asked for a list of the current members of the board
and was provided a photocopy of a February 2012 list.
See also
LCC 2012-11-13.
-gretchen
Continue readingBoard of Directors
February 1, 2012
Commissioner Joyce Evans
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
Term Expires: December 31, 2014
Councilman Tim Carroll
Valdosta City Council
Term Expires: December 31, 2015
Andy Anderson
Lowndes County Board of Commissioner Appointment
Term Expires: December 31, 2014
Rick Williams – Vice Chairman
Valdosta City Council Lodging & RV Appointment
Term Expires: December 31, 2012
Both
Meghan Duke (PR and Marketing)
and Andrea Schruijer (Executive Director)
invited comments and additional information for the new website.
They were speaking to their board at its meeting last night, but in the Industrial Authority’s
new conversational spirit,
maybe they’ll take suggestions from the rest of the community, as well.
Both Allan Ricketts (Project Manager)
and
J. Stephen Gupton (Attorney)
said the Hahira well site work was going well.
They’ve got a new intern,
and I reminded them about
the need for fast Internet access.
It was a long meeting by County Commission standards,
yet short for Industrial Authority
meeting: about half an hour.
Here’s the agenda, with links to the videos, and a few notes.
-jsq
Continue readingLet’s not forget the failed concrete on which Plant Vogtle’s unprotected stranded reactor vessel is supposed to sit.
A week before the reactor vessel train wreck, news stories said concrete pouring was delayed due to “noncompliant rebar”. Thomas Clements elaborated for the Aiken Leader 14 January 2013, Vogtle AP1000 Nuclear Reactor Vessel Discovered Unprotected, Stranded in Savannah Port since December 15 Shipment Failure,
Due to chronic delays in the pouring of “nuclear concrete” for the basemat of the AP1000 units at Vogtle and VC Summer, it remains unknown when or if any reactor vessels can actually be placed into the excavated holes at the sites. A January 10 meeting of the NRC confirmed that another basemat-related “license amendment request” (LAR) was soon to be filed by SCE&G for its AP1000 project and that the target date for granting of the LAR was March 18. It appears that the Vogtle project has fallen behind the V.C. Summer project and no strategy for the filing of a similar and necessary LAR by Southern Company is known.
Concrete, the long-time bane of
Seabrook Station
and also what’s keeping
Crystal River shut down because nobody wants to pay the
billions of dollars it would take to fix it.
What say we call the whole thing off, like
Dominion Power did with its existing
Kewaunee nuke,
and
TEPCO and NRG did
with their plans for new South Texas nukes.
Maybe it’s a sign that meanwhile
Google has invested a billion dollars in wind and solar and gotten
2 gigawatts of power, almost as much as the 2.2 GW the two new Vogtle nukes
were supposed to produce, except Google’s solar and wind projects
are online on time, and for less than just the cost overruns at Vogtle.
The Georgia legislature is in session. You can contact your legislator or the PSC today about toppling Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool and fixing that 1973 Territoriality Law so we can get on with solar and wind in Georgia, for jobs and energy independence, and oh by the way clean air and plenty of clean water.
-jsq
A writer for Forbes spells out the question of nuclear investment: how can something that expensive, over-budget, late, and phenomenally risky be a good investment, especially when cheaper and faster energy sources are readily available?
Peter Kelly-Detwiler wrote for Forbes today, New Centralized Nuclear Plants: Still an Investment Worth Making?
Just a few years ago, the US nuclear renaissance seemed at hand. It probably shouldn’t have been. Cost overruns from Finland to France to the US were already becoming manifest, government guarantees were in doubt, and shale gas drillers were beginning to punch holes into the ground with abandon.
Then came Fukushima. The latter proved a somewhat astonishing reminder of forgotten lessons about nuclear power risks, unique to that technology: A failure of one power plant in an isolated
location can create a contagion in countries far away, and even where somewhat different variants of that technology are in use. Just as Three Mile Island put the kaibosh on nuclear power in the US for decades, Fukushima appears to have done the same for Japan and Germany, at a minimum. It certainly did not help public opinion, and at a minimum, the effect of Fukushima will likely be to increase permitting and associated regulatory costs.
He goes into detail: they take too long (while gas and solar got cheaper), they’re extremely expensive to build and run, and they’re all-or-nothing investments.
I was going to compile this list of recent nuclear financial failures, but he saves us all the trouble:
Continue reading