Tag Archives: Augusta

Don’t Frack Georgia –sing along



Alton Paul Burns
commented yesterday on

Fracking south Georgia and north Florida?

Mr Emmet Carlisle wrote a song about fracking Florida

“Don’t Frack Florida”.
So in support of that movement I wrote another verse:

The battle is on in Bama & Georgia too

Spectra wants to run a pipeline through,

They could care less ’bout me or you,

And they lie to FERC more than they have too,

More Solar energy, Yeah that’s the thing

To everyone this message we bring,

We don’t need Spectra’s pipeline, That’s a fact!

And we don’t have to Frack!

-apb

So this would be the chorus for that verse: Continue reading →

Fracking south Georgia and north Florida?

Potential fracking in north Georgia was too close,
but what about right here in south Georgia?
Florida has a snowballing anti-fracking movement.
Looks like Georgia needs one, too.


300x149 South Georgia and North Florida Basins Map, in Shale gas basins in South Georgia and north Florida, by USGS, 4 June 2012
Dan Chapman, AJC Online Athens, 10 March 2013,

Gas drillers turn to Georgia,

Jim Kennedy, the state’s geologist, says another company is
considering the shale gas fields of the Mesozoic Basin that covers
60 percent of the Coastal Plain in South Georgia.

Most of the story is about proposed fracking in north Georgia
that

we noted back in 2013,
plus fossil fuel industry propaganda about how great they say
that would be for the local economy, with very little
about the immense destruction, environmental hazards,
and invasions of private property that would ensue.
The AJC version of that Dan Chapman story didn’t seem to have Continue reading →

Kinder Morgan’s Palmetto Pipe Line to Savannah and Jacksonville

If you thought Sabal Trail was a one-off pipeline, think again.


Kinder Morgan wants to build another pipeline conveniently past Elba Island LNG
through Savannah and Jacksonville.
Apparently it’s not actually for methane, but it’s still another
fossil fuel boondoggle among many that local and state governments
and NGOs need to proactively deal with instead of each type one by one.

Chip Harp, Valdosta Today, 9 February 2015,
New Nat Gas Pipeline to Fuel Coast, Continue reading →

Earthquake busts Augusta water tower: what about Plant Vogtle?

Less than two years after

Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning assured us




It is not in a seismic-sensitive area.

Fanning also claimed the technology was safe, before
SO failed to get a reactor vessel from Savannah to the site,
and before a renewed scandal revealed
Korea’s document-forging Doosan supplies that “safe” nuclear technology.
How safe will Plant Vogtle be in a bigger earthquake?
How safe is it even without an earthquake?
Not safe for the ratepayers or the taxpayers of Georgia or the U.S.

Mark Sandritter wrote for SBNation yesterday,

Augusta National water tower leaking after Georgia earthquake, per report, Continue reading →

the expense of agendas @ GLPC 2014-01-27



The Greater Lowndes Planning Commission meets tonight at 5:30PM,
but there’s no agenda posted anywhere online.
At
the same meeting at which he asserted

“we have broadband”,
and

“transparency is not a problem”
County Chairman Bill Slaughter said the county doesn’t publish
agendas or minutes for the Planning Commission because of
“the expense”.

“the expense”

v.

“When officials act like

they have something to hide,

they often do”

I suppose I don’t know much about this Internet stuff,
so maybe somebody can explain it to me:
what’s the big expense in publishing the GLPC agendas and minutes
the same way the county publishes its own

agendas and

minutes?
Yet if you search for the Planning Commission on the county’s website,
all you find is its name in a list of

Boards, Agencies & Commissions;
tonight’s meeting is not even listed in

the county’s online calendar.

For that matter, what would be the big expense in posting
the entire agenda packets, like for example Continue reading →

Valdosta Vimeo

I've been nagging Valdosta for years about putting some of their
cable TV station content on the web.
Turns out they are already doing some of that,
which is a step towards acting like a modern metropolitan area.
Received Wednesday via Tim Carroll;
I added the links and the [clarification].



From: Sementha Mathews

Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:48 AM

To: Tim Carroll

Subject: RE: "The rest of the story"

Councilman Carroll,

Thank you for the recent phone call. As a result, I will research
the Austin, Tx media practices to see if they can be implemented in
any way here at Metro 17. We used to include a council wrap segment
in each show, and I'll ask

Shemeeka [Johnson, Valdosta Channel 17 Media Coordinator]
why we took that out. But we
can easily add that back in.

City of Austin posts

Continue reading →

Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?

So why does

Augusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country?
I can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor.
If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,
would you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments
were up to, or one where you could easily find out?
Augusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings
(it's a consolidated government)

are on video, online.
Their agendas are available in either HTML or PDF,

with attachments.

Here's an example, their



5 December 2012 Commission Meeting.
It includes

a proposed amendment to their land subdivision code.
The actual proposed ordinance

is linked right into the agenda so everybody can see it.

And yes, they link attachments into their agendas before
their meetings;
here's

Augusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012,
already with attachments, such as this one

about a zoning exception,
which was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form,
and approved by the Clerk of Commission.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman



complained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed
zoning code change
even though

that change is not linked into the agenda (nor is anything else)
and
last year

the same Chairman said no drafts would be published.
Tuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the
solid waste ordinance
and to the

alcohol ordinance
that voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see
before the Commission voted on them.
Those ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's
too late to provide input on them: alcohol and waste.
Both ordinances were revised with no public hearings.
And the Chairman even

forgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts.
Oh, and they

apparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million
in bonds for a county palace
that only two years ago they said was already completely paid off
out of sales taxes.

If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,

Continue reading →

Augusta high tech job growth: second in the country

What is Augusta doing that attracts so many high tech jobs?

Orlando Montoya wrote for GPB News 7 December 2012,

Augusta High Tech Ranks Nationally,


A national group working to promote entrepreneurship says Augusta
has the second highest growth rate of high tech jobs in the past
five years.

Only Boise, Idaho grew tech jobs faster.

San Francisco based Engine Advocacy says between 2006 and 2011,
Augusta increased its technology sector jobs by 81%.

City officials credit the area’s low cost of living.

If that was the only key,
Lowndes County and Valdosta MSA would lead the country….
What else?

Continue reading →

Nuclear reactor Vogtle 1 at August shut down

Nuclear really more reliable than wind or solar?
What’s with the unscheduled shutdowns?

Colin McClelland reported for Bloomberg 21 April 2011,

U.S. Nuclear Output Falls as Vogtle Reactor in Georgia Shuts



U.S. nuclear-power output remained near a 4½-year low for a fourth day
as the Vogtle 1 reactor in Georgia shut down unexpectedly, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said.

Power generation nationwide decreased 538 megawatts to 71,781 megawatts
from yesterday, or 71 percent of capacity, the smallest amount since
Oct. 22, 2006, according to an NRC report today and data compiled by
Bloomberg. Twenty-nine of the nation’s 104 reactors were offline.

Southern Co. (SO)’s 1,109-megawatt Vogtle 1 reactor automatically
tripped offline yesterday at 5:34 p.m. when it was at full power. The
cause is under investigation, the NRC said.

The shutdown was ironically two days after

an NRC public meeting “to discuss Plant Vogtle’s annual safety evaluation and assessment.”

That would be the same location where,
according to

Tice Brashear back in 18 March 2009:

Continue reading →