Tag Archives: coal ash

Southern Company sells off gas assets second time this year 2018-11-07

For the second time this year, Southern Company sells off gas-fired assets.
Could it be to service debt for those way-late and over-budget Plant Vogtle nukes?

Southern Company, PR, 7 November 2018,

Southern Power Reaches Agreement to Sell the Mankato Energy Center,


Southern Power, a leading U.S. wholesale energy provider and
subsidiary of Southern Company, today announced that it has entered
an agreement to sell the Mankato Energy Center to Xcel Energy for
$650 million.

Mankato, a natural gas combined-cycle generation facility, will have
a maximum capacity of approximately 760 megawatts upon completion of
an ongoing expansion project. The completion of the sale, subject to
regulatory approval and other closing conditions, is expected to be
mid-2019.

“The Mankato Energy Center is a valuable part of the local community
and the regional energy infrastructure,” said Southern Power
President and CEO Mark Lantrip. “This transaction is a great
opportunity to deliver value for the benefit of Southern Company
shareholders.”

Proceeds from this transaction will be used to strengthen the
balance sheet of Southern Company and position Southern Power to
continue providing clean, safe, reliable and affordable wholesale
energy to its customers across the U.S, including the expansion of
one of the nation’s largest carbon-free renewable energy portfolios.

What does “strengthen the balance sheet” mean? Continue reading →

Video: Solar panels, heck yeah! –Tom Fanning, CEO, at SO stockholder meeting 2017-05-24

Tom Fanning, our genial CEO host,
said some things I’ve never heard him say before like
Southern Company is
“pivoting towards wind”
and SO’s board soon has to decide whether to go forward with Plant Vogtle
“or not” probably by August.
Fanning gets the

first and

last word in this blog post,
plus a complete transcript of what
I asked and
Tom Fanning’s response,
along with summaries of the other questions and answers.


Well see how it develops --Tom Fanning


Please hear me!
I think renewables are exceedingly important in the future.

— Tom Fanning, CEO, Southern Company

In SO’s own

meeting video
of the

25 May 2017 Stockholder Meeting,
you can see
much praise about solar power and wind and R&D and a smart grid,
along with stockholders wondering: Continue reading →

Videos: Coal ash, Calles, Val North PD Water Sewer, Habitat CDBG, Sewage Valves, Stone Creek Antenna, Sheriff, Alcohol @ LCC 2017-03-14



Not on the agenda:
Coal Ash
and

Y-Lead from Hahira Middle School and Teen Explosion.
Also

Stone Creek train quiet hours.

In a fifteen minute item, the Commission approved a split rezoning for
REZ-2017-02 Calles,
and they approved the removal of conditions from
REZ-2017-03 Val North Dr, Stewart Circle.
They approved the
CDBG Grant preparation,
but they didn’t mention they can’t actually apply until the resolve
their feud with the local cities about tax allocation.

Below are links to each LAKE video of the 14 March 2017 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission, with a few notes, followed by a video playlist.
See also Continue reading →

Videos: Sewage, Coal Ash, Historic Preservation, a dead cat, and turkeys @ VCC 2016-03-09

The Valdosta City Council heard from citizens about

coal ash,

wastewater,
and

toxic waste in the landfill.
Mayor John Gayle

offered to answer later in his office Eric Howard’s
question about wastewater in his yard.
The Mayor expressed his opinion that he and the council

couldn’t do anything about the landfill,
and read for yourself what he said about

the Florida county resolutions about Valdosta wastewater.
George Boston Rhynes

told a droll tale about a dead cat and turkeys.

The

Historic Preservation appeal was long and contentious,
with the Mayor twice breaking a tie because only four City Council members
were there: the appeal was approved.
A citizen

spoke about that afterwards, as did

Council Tim Carroll.

Council Robert Yost recommended

all the Hospital Authority Board should resign.

They unanimously approved

both
of the

rezoning items; ditto the

right of way maintenance bids.

And

Firefighter Michael Penland is employee of the month.

Below are links to the LAKE video of each item, with a few notes (some drawn from Valdosta’s own
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS),
followed by a LAKE video playlist.
See also the agenda.

Brief agenda plus Water @ VCC 2016-03-09

No water on

the agenda,
but there’s a WWALS event
for those who want to speak about water issues.

AGENDA

REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL

5:30 PM Thursday, March 9, 2017

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL


Valdosta City Council

  1. Opening Ceremonies Continue reading →

Two arrest warrants issued for $1 mllion landfill scam

Interesting things sometimes turn up when a landfill is investigated.

Taylor West wrote for the AJC 5 June 2014,

Police: Arrest warrants issued in connection with $1 million scam,


Robert Stevens (Fulton County Sheriff’s Office)
Multiple arrest warrants have been issued in relation to a trail of
criminal activity resulting in the theft of more than $1 million
from a Fulton County business, authorities said.

Police began an investigation in mid-April when Waste Management
Inc. made a complaint regarding Willow Oak Landfill, which it owns,
following an anonymous tip and a private investigation, according to
the Palmetto Police Department today.

In this case it was the landfill operator that filed a complaint.
Waste Management is one of the two largest solid waste companies
in the U.S.; the other is ADS.

The complaint alleged Continue reading →

Defibrilators from Homeland Security @ LCC 2014-04-07



The

KLVB presentation told us up to three states dump in
the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County,
for which the county gets some unspecified amount of tipping fees,
which go to fund KLVB.
An appointment to
KLVB was added to the agenda,
although nobody deigned to reveal who was “that individual that has
requested to serve on that board”.
The

Homeland Security grant application turned out to be for defibrillators.

Here’s
the agenda, with a few annotations and links to the videos.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

AMENDED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2014, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

How to invite toxic industries to your county



Maybe we should stop inviting toxic industries to Lowndes County.
We’ve been doing that with coal ash, PCBs, superfund wastewater,
used diapers in recycling, and suing local businesses while not terminating
an exclusive franchise with a company that is involved in all of that.
Not to mention Sterling Chemical.



Here in Lowndes County we have

TVA coal ash and Florida coal ash
in our landfill,
and the landfill operator spreads the coal ash on roads on the site,
which is just uphill from the Withlacoochee River.

GA EPD
fined that landfill operator $27,500 in January 2013

for accepting PCBs into that same Pecan Row Landfill.
The same landfill that accepted

196,500 gallons of wastewater from the
Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross, GA.

A landfill that is

in an aquifer recharge zone. Continue reading →

Fossil fuels are a disaster: literally in WV

300,000 people have their drinking water poisoned by
a coal chemical in a disaster declared by a state and the federal government.
Do we know what’s in that coal ash

coal ash
in the Lowndes County landfill?
Do we trust a pipeline company
with

a long list of safety violations
to dig into our aquifer?

David Jackson wrote for USA Today yesterday,

Obama sends disaster aid to West Virginia,



President Obama is sending federal assistance to West Virginia,
where schools and businesses are closed after a chemical spill
Thursday into a Charleston river.

“The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of
West Virginia and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local
response efforts,” said an administration statement on Friday
morning.

Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security and Federal
Emergency Management Agency will coordinate efforts with local
officials.

Kiley Kroh
wrote for Thinkprogress yesterday,

West Virginia Declares State Of Emergency After Coal Chemical Contaminates Drinking Water, Continue reading →

U.S. EPA, GA DNR, GA Health Dept., and landfill in Lowndes County @ EPA 2013-11-14



At the

EPA meeting in Waycross about the Seven Out Superfund site,
EPA, GA EPD, and state health officials also had information about
crossover contamination in Lowndes County.




Matthew J. Huyser, On-Scene Coordinator for U.S. EPA,
told me that before

EPA shipped those 196,500 gallons of wastewater from Seven Out to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County
they had applied procedures that were supposed to ensure those liquids
were no longer toxic and had tested them to be sure.
He said he would send me the specifics on that.
I didn’t ask him whether

CSX toxic wastes were shipped to Lowndes County.



Huyser also said EPA had checked the record of that receiving landfill
before sending anything there, and it had a good record.
He seemed surprised to learn Continue reading →