Tag Archives: Agriculture

Industrial Authority Response to Two Letters to the Editor

The appended message from a tax-supported public official to many people about official business was forwarded to me; perhaps the public would also like to see it.

The CCA press conference he mentions seems to have been covered by the VDT in this article: to be about Private prison company picks Valdosta as potential site.

The rest of the letter is about issues related to the biomass plant proposed for Lowndes County by Wiregrass Power LLC (wholly owned by Sterling Energy Assets of Atlanta) and backed by the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), of which Brad Lofton is the Executive Director. Here’s the letter from Leigh Touchton of the NAACP to which he refers.

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From: Brad Lofton [mailto:blofton@industrialauthority.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 4:37 PM
To: ‘Brad Lofton’
Subject: Industrial Authority Response to Two Letters to the Editor Yesterday
Importance: High

Good afternoon everyone:

Thanks to all of you that were able to attend our CCA press conference and breakfast yesterday. We’ve had positive feedback today from around the region, and we’ve received congratulations from most of the other 15 communities competing for the project.

After reading the two letters to the editor yesterday, I felt compelled to e-mail our stakeholders to provide you an update with facts and information related to the biomass plant. We have intentionally avoided a response in the paper because we do not want to energize a forum for continued misinformation. Despite numerous town hall meetings and other meetings we’ve facilitated for two years, there is still plenty of misinformation on the street.

Continue reading →

LTE: Biomass is Environmental Racism

This is a letter to the editor that appeared in the VDT on about 17 August 2010.

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When Wiregrass Power chose the site for their Biomass plant, they put it near one of Valdosta’s most affluent black communities. There are at least six black churches:  New Life Ministries, Morning Star, Evangel Temple, Southside Church of Christ, Church of Prophecy, Church at Pine Hill. Two predominantly black elementary schools are in the area: Southeast and Moulton Branch. A large senior citizen assisted living community, Sands Horizon, is located in the affected area and serves over 60 families. Scott Park, where the Sands Horizon residents enjoy outings and the local children enjoy baseball games, is located nearby. Huge apartment complexes with several buildings, Park Chase and Brittany Woods, whose residents are primarily people of color, are located near the proposed site.
Continue reading →

Valdosta in bottom 10 metro areas for wages

Richard Florida writes about The Geography of High-Paying Jobs, including this map based on Bureau of Labor Staistics (BLS) data:

The Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comes in the bottom 10 nationwide. That’s for overall average wages.

It doesn’t look quite as bad for specific classes of jobs (creative, service, and working class), but that’s mostly because there are almost no MSAs in the lowest pay tier. However, for service jobs, Valdosta is not as good as Tallahassee, and makes it into the bottom 10: Continue reading →

Center of Innovation – Energy

Where’s Waldo? And where’s the state renewable energy strategy for Georgia, or for the southeast, or for just south Georgia? Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) Project Manager Allan Ricketts found another candidate.
“Forests Dominate Georgia’s Land Use”
That’s the title of slide 10 of 21 in Center of Innovation – Energy (CIE) by Jill Stuckey, Director. Actually, massively pesticided planted pines dominate south Georgia’s land use; not the same as actual forests with species diversity and diverse ages of trees. The same CIE slide equates
Georgia Forestry = Biomass Energy
That is what the state government seems to want it to be.

Back on slide 9, solar is defined as a southwestern regional energy source; nevermind that the solar map on that page shows Georgia with the same insolation as most of Texas (more on that later). And wind is defined as a central U.S. regional strength, nevermind that even Georgia Power has started exploring the possibility of wind off the Georgia coast.

I get it that Georgia has trees and forestry is a big industry in Georgia. I’m a tree farmer myself. I’d love to be convinced that biomass from trees is one good way to go. But at what costs? And compared to what? Continue reading →