Category Archives: Transparency

Southern Co. nuclear cost overruns expected? Let’s build solar and wind on time and on budget!

So if Southern Company expected cost overruns at Plant Vogtle, why didn’t they make a better estimate in the first place? What incentive do they have not to continue running up the cost and delaying completion, since they get to keep charging Georgia Power customers for construction, including for cost overruns, while floating $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans? Where is the financial integrity in all that?

AP reported yesterday, and even Fox News carried it, Building costs increase at US nuclear sites. They’re not talking about housing prices near the sites, either.

America’s first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry’s hopes for a jumpstart to the nation’s new nuclear age.

Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.

Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year’s meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said. The building slowdown would be another blow to the so-called nuclear renaissance, a drive over the past decade to build 30 new reactors to meet the country’s growing power needs. Industry watchers now say that only a handful will be built this decade.

“People are looking at these things very carefully,” said Richard Lester, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Inexpensive gas alone, he said, “is casting a pretty long shadow over the prospects” for construction of new nuclear plants.

AP continues with a list of late and over-budget nuke projects, including Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle $800 million over and seven months late, TVA’s Watts Bar plant $2 billion over and 3 years late, Duke’s Plant Summer SCANA and Santee Cooper’s Summer Station $670 million over and a year late.

Southern Co. and others in the nuclear business say cost overruns are expected in projects this complex…

So why are they wasting our money on nukes when they could be deploying a lot more solar and wind on time and on budget?

…and that they are balanced out by other savings over the life of the plant. Southern Co. expects Plant Vogtle will cost $2 billion less to operate over its 60-year lifetime than initially projected because of anticipated tax breaks and historically low interest rates.

Get that? “anticipated tax breaks” that leave we the taxpayers Continue reading →

SPLOST, LOST, TSPLOST Forum: Tuesday, July 10

The Chamber is holding a T-SPLOST event tonight. According to the announcement:

Make Sense of the 1 Cent Tax and know before you vote. Valdosta Lowndes Industrial Authority to host TSPLOST, LOST and SPLOST Forum for Young Professionals providing an opportunity for an informative discussion regarding the upcoming referendum.TSPLOST Referendum

Presenters at the forum will be Mayor John Gayle (City of Valdosta), Larry Hanson-City Manager (City of Valdosta), Andrea Schruijer (Valdosta Lowndes Industrial Authority) and Caitlyn Cooper (ConnectGeorgia).

At this forum YPs are encouraged to exchange and share ideas, questions and concerns about the legislation above. Leave more informed as a knowledgeable voter regarding the upcoming referendum on July 31. Please join other YPs in a supportive setting to listen, learn and voice your opinions.

LOCATION:

bas bleu
123 N. Patterson Street.
Valdosta, Ga 31601

TIME:

5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Click here to RSVP or call 229-247-8100
*Drinks and menu items available

Of these speakers, Mayor Gayle is famously for T-SPLOST, Larry Hanson previously appeared to be against it. I don't know Andrea Schruijer's position on T-SPLOST. ConnectGeorgia is pro-T-SPLOST, so presumably Caitlyn Cooper is, too. So this is likely to be a pro-T-SPLOST forum.

In any case, remember T-SPLOST is on the primary ballot for 31 July 2012, and early voting has already started, so you can vote on it today.

-jsq

VLCHA Appointment and a chatty audience: Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-07-09

Yet another start before the publicly advertised time, followed by a Hospital Authority reappointee and another person answering from the audience. Funding for computers, planning and preparedness, Code Red, and a block grant applicant, mostly with information in board packets that we the citizens paying for them don’t get to see. We did learn that nearly half the county uses Code Red, and at least 11,000 people are already signed up for weather alerts. I know I get them. They meet again to vote 5:30 PM this evening.

Continue reading →

Hospital Authority meets 9:30 AM 18 July 2012 @ VLCHA 2012-07-18

According to their web page at SGMC, the Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County (VLCHA) has open meetings:

Notification of Open Meeting of the Hospital Authority

Regularly scheduled meetings of Hospital Authority occur on the third Wednesday of each month at 9:30am in the SGMC Executive Board Room unless otherwise posted.

They added that since I last looked back last August. Hm, maybe somebody should go to that open meeting and record it.

And don't forget they're having a public hearing on selling Greenleaf 9AM Monday 23 July 2012.

-jsq

Budget, boards, and abandonment @ LCC 2012-06-26

The Lowndes County Commission appointed people to four boards, approved a budget for next fiscal year, made some unspecified changes to this year’s budget, and demonstrated they could both stop speeding traffic on a rural road and put a cap on a construction contract! All this in one meeting, their Regular Session of 26 June 2012.

Here’s the agenda. Here are videos of the previous morning’s Work Session. And here are videos of the 5PM (actually 4:57PM) budget hearing.

Here’s a video playlist:

Budget, boards, and abandonment
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 June 2012.

-jsq

County puts a cap on a construction contract! @ LCC 2012-06-26

The county can put a cap on a construction contract! That's welcome news.

At their 26 June 2012 Regular Session the Lowndes County Commission approved an item listed on the agenda as "9. FY 2010 Community Development Block Grant". They added three qualifications:

  1. That the grant applicant delivers the deed to the Board of Commissioners that is acceptable to the Board of Commissioners.
  2. That the construction contract not exceed 700,000.
  3. That the grant applicant is in agreement with the Board of Commissioners to pay the difference between the grant funds and project costs.

That's all admirable, and quite a difference from the approach the Commission took to another grant-funded project: the no-bid contract with Scruggs Co. for the new Moody AFB gate. Did we the taxpayers ever find out how much the final contract was for and how much the final cost overrun was?

Of course, in this new case, we never learned who the construction contractor was, or whether there were bids, of anything else about the contract. Why doesn't the Commission want us to know such things?

-jsq

 

Started early, no new information, no questions: Second and final budget hearing @ LCC 2012-06-26

Your last chance to hear about the budget for Lowndes County was 26 June 2012, just before the Commission’s Regular Session. It went really fast; even faster than the first budget hearing. And, as you can see, this second hearing started three minutes early: 4:57 Eastern, before the public notice time of 5PM.

Here’s the actual budget. In this second hearing, Finance Director Stephanie Black sped through her slides, so for more explanation see the videos the first budget hearing. This time she did allude to a budget adjustment coming up in the immediately-following Regular Session, but she didn’t say what it was. The second time she mentioned it, she said “We’ve received some information” about a revenue reduction, but she didn’t say what that information was. Commissioners either already knew what it was, or didn’t care, because nobody asked any questions. It’s almost like the Commission doesn’t want us knowing what they’re thinking of doing with our money until they’ve already decided.

See also the previous post about Public Works expenditures.

Here’s a video playlist:

Second and final budget hearing, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 June 2012
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Public Works Expenditures @ LCC 2012-06-26

Sheriff’s Office $0.35
Public Works (Facilities, Road Maintenance, Road Construction) $0.15
Court Services $0.11
Board of Commissioners and Administration $0.08
Recreation Authority (VLPRA) $0.07
Industrial Authority (VLCIA) $0.06
Other — including outside agency support $0.04
Tax Commissioner $0.03
Board of Assessors $0.03
Ambulance Service $0.02
Other Emergency Services (EMA, Coroner, Emergency Telecommunications) $0.02
Election Services $0.01
Engineering Services $0.01
Contingency $0.01
Animal Control Services $0.01

On the county’s web pages Finance Director Stephanie Black has made available Where does your money go? She narrated that table in the 26 June 2012 Second Budget Hearing. Here it is in plain text on the right. I’ve taken the liberty of sorting it by largest expenditures first.

That order is more or less what she showed in this pie chart, although the categories don’t quite seem to match. In the pie chart, public safety (Sheriff) and court services are lumped together, so they make the biggest slice. In the table, the second biggest category is “Public Works (Facilities, Road Maintenance, Road Construction)”. Hm, so how much do we spend on road construction?

-jsq

Georgia Sierra Club against T-SPLOST

The Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club opposes T-SPLOST, in all twelve regions, not just in Atlanta Metro.

Prepared by the Georgia Chapter RAIL Committee, April 2012, Metro Atlanta Can Do Better: Why Voters Should Say No to the T-SPLOST and Yes to ‘Plan B’

On July 31, 2012, Georgians in twelve regions around the state will vote on whether to impose a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (T-SPLOST). After much deliberation, the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club is recommending a “no” vote on the T-SPLOST in all twelve regions. The decision to oppose the Metro Atlanta T-SPLOST involved the most discussion, because unlike the other twelve lists, it has a significant portion devoted to mass transit. Ultimately, the Chapter Executive Committee concluded that the project list is too heavily focused on sprawl-inducing road expansion and will have a negative overall impact from an environmental perspective.

As they say, they spent the most time on metro Atlanta, and that’s what most of their position paper, executive summary, press release, etc., is about. But many of their reasons apply equally well to our south Georgia Region 11, such as these ones:

  • The Project List Does Not Present a Cohesive Transportation Vision, offering a hodgepodge of conflicting priorities when what is needed is a bold and consistent vision for a sustainable transportation future.
  • It Does Too Little to Address the Current Road-Heavy Funding Imbalance, instead reinforcing a funding framework that already heavily favors highway expansion over commute alternatives.
  • It Locks the Region into a Dysfunctional, Undemocratic Decision-Making Process, both through the highly politicized “roundtable” process and the blatantly anti-urban method for distributing local set-aside funds.

It favors highway expansion so much that Region 11 doesn’t even Continue reading →

Gretchen Quarterman is running for Lowndes County Chairman

In case you haven’t heard, one of the LAKE crew, Gretchen Quarterman, is running for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission. Today she’s at the Spirit of America Celebration at Valdosta Mall (next to Buffalo Wild Wing). As you can see, she’s been practicing.

Here’s her campaign website and her facebook campaign page. According to the VDT, 8 May 2012,

“Anyone who is entrusted with the resources of another human being or thing, you have to be a good steward of tax money, air, and water. They are entrusted to us and need to be handled with responsibility.”

Continue reading →