Category Archives: Water

Doublewide, Commercial, Professional, Residential, Landscape, Stormwater, Suburban, Agriculture, Schools, and Moody @ GLPC 2015-05-26

The busiest Planning Commission agenda I can recall, is scheduled at exactly the same time as the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session because of the Memorial Day holiday. The biggest item is REZ-2015-11 The Orchard at Stone Creek, yet another subdivision on Old US 41 N, this one due west of Nelson Hill on Val Del.

Greater Lowndes Planning Commission
Lowndes County City of Valdosta City of Dasher City of Hahira City of Lake Park
REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING
AGENDA
Lowndes County South Health District Administrative Office
325 West Savannah Avenue
Tuesday, May 26, 2015 * 5:30 P.M. * Public Hearing
Continue reading →

Videos: Bottled water, prisoner details, board appointees, and Easter Seals @ LCC 2015-05-11

One appointee bowed out, architect selection and public defender to the courthouse were clarified, and dog kennels were discussed, in these LAKE videos from yesterday morning’s 11 May 2015 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission, with a few notes. See also the agenda, plus a new item 6 f. Server Replacement/Network Core Replacement. Continue reading →

Bottled water, prisoner details, board appointees, and Easter Seals @ LCC 2015-05-11

Picture by Michael Rivera, CC

Why is the county accepting Bids for Bottled Water Service? If its own water, or Valdosta’s, is good enough for the taxpayers, shouldn’t it be good enough for Commission and staff? They’ve also got a Bid for Coffee Service, but we don’t grow coffee here, as far as I know, so that’s not the same issue.

With many local people needing jobs, why does the county continue to renew an Annual Contract Renewal for Prison Work Details?

Looks like Joseph G. Stevens will be reappointed to the Lowndes County Public Facilities Authority. Both G. Norman Bennett and incumbent Anthony Payton want to be appointed to the one slot opening on the Valdosta-Lowndes County Airport Authority. Their applications were not included with the agenda, so who can say which one is most qualified?

I guess they didn’t decide to relocate the Public Defender’s Office into the historic Lowndes County Courthouse, since on the agenda is a three-year Lease Agreement for the Public Defender’s Office at its present location.

Looks like J. Glenn Gregory will provide the Architectural Services for the Lowndes County Civic Center Renovations and the Architectural Services for the Naylor Community Center, both funded via SPLOST VII. Both apparently without competitive bids.

Here’s the agenda, which also has Declaration of Surplus Items and Authorization for Sale/Disposal and Easter Seals Southern Georgia Presentation (Work Session Only).

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Safety Problems at Southern Nuclear Plants Farley and Hatch

Not as obvious as Entergy’s Indian Point fire, Southern Nuclear’s Farley 1 on the Chattahoochee River is down and Hatch 1 and 2 on the Altamaha River have ongoing fire safety problems.

NRC Current Event Notification Report for May 8, 2015 says about Farley 1, near Dothan Alabama, on the Chattahoochee River, about 125 miles from here: Continue reading →

Fire at Indian Point nuke fire and shut down next to Spectra-planned fracked methane pipeline

Photo: Ricky Flores/The Journal News

A fire and shut down of Indian Point 3 didn’t even make the front page of the New York Times, and no mention that Spectra Energy wants to build its 42-inch fracked methane Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) only 1,500 feet from Indian Point. Plus an oil leak, all next to the Hudson River. Meanwhile, Oyster Creek (NJ), Three Mile Island 1 (PA), and Farley (AL) are all down, and numerous fire prevention deficiencies were reported for Hatch 1 and 2 (GA). When did you last hear of a solar leak or explosion?

Matt Spillane, lohud, 10 May 2015, VIDEO: Transformer fire, oil leak at Indian Point Energy Center, Continue reading →

Five non-NPL superfund sites in Lowndes County

Five superfund sites and many more supposedly cleaned up, all in Lowndes County.

Homefacts has a web page on Lowndes County, GA Environmental Hazards Report, which includes some you probably knew about, such as Perma Fix Explosion, 1612 James P Rogers Circle, Valdosta, GA 31601,

Perma Fix Explosion is a superfund site located at 1612 James P Rogers Circle, Valdosta, GA 31601. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identifies sites such as Perma Fix Explosion because they pose or had once posed a potential risk to human health and/or the environment due to contamination by one or more hazardous wastes. Perma Fix Explosion is currently registered as an Active superfund site by the EPA. However, it is not on the NPL (National Priorities List), which means the EPA does not consider it one of the nation’s most hazardous waste sites.

Remember the black clouds of smoke Continue reading →

Videos: Baseball and water; electric sign withdrawn @ ZBOA 2015-04-07

They’re meeting again today, and last month the baseball diamond west of Hahira was approved with conditions 4-1. The water connection variance on Jumping Gully Road, was approved 5-0, and the electric company parking variance on Norman Drive, tabled the previous month, was withdrawn by applicant (before the meeting), all according to ZBOA’s own Summary of Results.

See also the agenda for the 7 April 2015 Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. Here’s the LAKE video of the meeting:

Continue reading →

Videos: Justice, Trash, Telephones, Investment, DUI, Liquor @ LCC 2015-04-27

They vote tonight at 5:30 PM on what you can see them discussing yesterday morning in these videos.

They got a Deep South Sanitation, LLC Application for Franchise for trash collection, including use of the county’s collection facility at 345 Gil Harbin Industrial Blvd. Commissioner Demarcus Marshall asked what about recycling; Chairman Bill Slaughter said there would be recycling at the collection centers. Which means yes ADS’ price went up and service reduced since no curbside recycling collection anymore.

County Manager Joe Pritchard asked County Engineer Mike Fletcher to report and to be added to the Regular Session emergency Nankin Road Repair due to a water-eroded box culvert. And it’s a single-source no-bid, this time for Rountree Construction.

Commissioner Mark Wisenbaker had a few remarks about the letter to support plans to “renovate Arbor Trace II Apartments in Lake Park” by Investment Management Company of Valdosta, Inc.

The body armor request from two weeks before got Continue reading →

Divest Harvard is winning, and we all will win sun, wind, and water power

Changing the world is hard and takes courage, but that’s why we will win. Bill Sargent had given up on global projects and turned to smaller local problems where it seemed there was a greater change of making a real difference. He wrote for Harvard Heat Week 27 April 2015, Heat Week: Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks,

But then I met Divest Harvard. Here was a group of bright, eager, sleep-deprived young undergraduates and grad students — free of such skepticism and willing to take on both Big Oil and the richest University in the world in one fell swoop.

He listed a number of ways Divest Harvard is winning because they chose the biggest targets under adverse conditions. For example: Continue reading →

Videos: Trash, Vallotton agriculture, animals, body armor, HEAT, water, and a canopy road @ LCC 2015-04-14

ADS trash collection price and performance wasn’t on the agenda, but even former Commissioner Richard Lee stood up to speak about it two weeks ago at the April 14th 2015 Regular Session, along with two other citizens David Eaton and me. See also VDT trash story. The VDT didn’t pick up on Ann Swayze’s smoot and soot concerns also being related, because nobody stood up to complain about burning in Foxborough before the collection centers closed.

Commissioners did the right thing and unanimously rezoned Vallotton Farms back to Estate Agriculture, like it was before county-wide rezoning happened. It wasn’t like the County Planner said, “it has developed around it in an urban way”. The subject land and landowners didn’t do that: other people have built subdivisions around it the the county’s active promotion. And for once agriculture won, after landowner attorney Bill Langdale, Commissioner Demarcus Marshall, and I spoke up for it.

They’re even going to preserve the canopy on Boring Pond Road and I thanked the County Engineer for that.

The two Sheriff’s requests for Continue reading →

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange