Received today on
Solid Waste, Developer Favors, Dollar General, Library, and Alcohol: Agenda @ LCC 2012-12-10:
Veolia was acquired by Advanced Disposal, there is no conspiracy theory
here or a change of vendor than was previously voted for.
http://www.wasterecyclingnews.com/article/20121120/NEWS01/121129990/advanced-disposal-closes-veolia-deal,
Update 8 December 2012: Actually,
Houston County does have enforceable encroachment zones around RAFB.
Houston County hasn’t had a enforceable encroachment zone around
Warner Robins Air Force Base (RAFB) and is now fixing the problem
after the fact by using state money to buy up houses near the base.
Houston County Commission Chairman Tommy Stalnaker labelled encroachment
his number one priority, in stark contrast to Lowndes County Commission
Chairman Ashley Paulk, who has put
two items on the agenda for Monday and Tuesday
related to a proposed rezoning next to Moody Air Force Base,
and already at a previous Work Session
invited the developer to speak
without letting anyone else speak.
Gene Rector wrote for WRWR “10 months ago”,
Stalnaker ‘ecstatic’ over state action on Robins encroachment issue,
In a word, Houston County Commission Chairman Tommy Stalnaker was
“ecstatic” last week when he learned state officials
will allocate $7.5 million to help resolve the encroachment issue
affecting Robins Air Force Base.State Rep. Larry O’Neal called and gave him a heads-up before Gov.
Nathan Deal made the announcement on Friday.“I felt like jumping up and down and screaming and
hollering,” Stalnaker admitted. “But then I remembered
we hadn’t done our part yet.”Encroachment has dogged Robins for a number of years. Some 250
parcels — mostly private residences — spread over 1,600
acres in south Bibb and north Houston counties fall within the
base’s noise or potential mishap zone.That risk to homes in the designated region could restrict or limit
current operations or force the Air Force to look elsewhere for
future workload and mission growth.Stalnaker has labeled resolving encroachment his number one
priority.
Mike Stucka wrote for the Telegraph 31 May 2012,
Interactive map: Robins AFB encroachment and property purchases,
Received yesterday, referring to
TXT-2012-02, which is on the agenda for
Monday morning’s Work Session and Tuesday evening’s Regular Session
of the Lowndes County Commission.
-jsq
From: Richard Raines
To: Gretchen Quarterman
Subject: RE: Text AmendmentGretchen,
Based on a conversation with the Chairman yesterday, it is my
understanding that this issue will be tabled until sometime next
year (Chairman-elect Slaughter will decide when to put it back on
the agenda) because we are working with MAFB on a compromise as they
are well aware of our mandate to balance property rights with
protecting against base encroachment.Since I’ve been on the County Commission we have made it a priority
to constantly evaluate the ULDC and all zoning districts. MAZ 1-3
is no exception and must be evaluated to make sure that it is
balanced and consistent.We have discovered
Updates 9 Dec 2012: Marked with *.
Will the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday evening
finish railroading through their non-solution to solid waste disposal,
without shouldering its legal responsibility to protect
the environment and the public health, safety, and well-being from solid waste,
and what’s this about a vendor change?
Will the Chairman once again invite a developer to speak in Monday morning’s
Work Session without letting anyone else speak?
Will the Commission change the zoning code and rezone inside and against
the Moody Exclusion Zone for that same developer they already
provided $130,000 in road construction labor to back in 2007?
Does Naylor need the area’s nineteenth Dollar General, and who’s behind it, anyway?
How come the Five Points library is still on the agenda even though SPLOST VII failed?
And what are they doing to the Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance this time?
Come Monday morning at 8:30 AM and Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM and see!
Better yet, also call or write your Commissioner before then.
6.b. Solid Waste Ordinance
Will the Commissioners finish
railroading through their
already-failing non-solution to solid waste disposal
in the last session of this Chairman?
The plan for which they held
zero public hearings while any of
the Commissioners who voted on it this October were on the Commission,
yet someone down there feels free to
anonymously ridicule concerns about that plan failing?
Two citizens
spoke up anyway,
even though
Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
was after the scheduled vote last time,
and
another on this blog,
all willing to state their names, unlike the anonymous pro-trash-railroad
ridiculer.
What was that
unspecified new information
that caused them to table it last time, anyway?
8.b. Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Residential Solid Waste Collection Services with Advanced Disposal Services of Central Alabama, Inc.
What happened to Veolia;
Executive Director Andrea Schruijer explained the Industrial Authority’s
theory behind all those industrial parks.
And she mentioned market analysis for a sustainable local economy.
Nothing about market analysis about whether industrial parks actually
bring in new businesses….
Valdosta CEO posted 28 NOvember 2012,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Invests in Land Development For Future Industries,
Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director of the Valdosta Lowndes County
Industrial Authority. A few years ago the community had the
foresight to approve a mill that they would set aside for the
Industrial Authority to provide for economic development. And
because the community did that, the industrial authority is able to
better plan for the future in growing our opportunities for economic
development. One of the things that we noticed a few years ago is
that we didn’t have enough land for development. And we didn’t have
the right sized tracks in case we had a large user coming in looking
at the community, where would we put them?
She says “the community did that”?
That’s funny,
Gary Minchew said he organized that.
Kari L. Sands wrote for VDT 20 June 2007,
Lowndes preps for vote on budget,
In most states, financing solar energy is largely a matter of learning
all the local ropes.
In Georgia, there’s a bigger problem.
Michael Mendelsohn
wrote for RMI 5 December 2012,
How Do We Lower Solar Installation Costs and Open the Market to Securitized Portfolios: Standardize and Harmonize,
Soft costs can be pretty tough. The cost of solar installations can
be generally separated into “hard” costs — representing
primary components such as modules, racking, inverters — and
soft costs including legal, permitting, and financing. While the
former group — particularly modules — have dropped
dramatically over the last several years, the latter have not.
According to a recent NREL analysis, these costs represent roughly
30% of both residential and utility installations (slightly less for
commercial-host systems). See Figure 1.
In fact, soft costs are so critical to the overall success of solar
adoption, their reduction is a primary focus of the Department of
Energy’s SunShot Initiative to make solar energy cost-competitive.
In order to reduce the cost of financing, NREL recently completed
and continues to work on various efforts to tap public capital
markets and enable other vehicles that securitize project
portfolios.
We’ll come back to tapping public capital markets and the like,
because that’s the key to what
Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) is trying to do.
But there’s a special problem in Georgia, buried in the next paragraph:
A major source of the water for the
sea level rise already affecting Savannah and Jacksonville
is melting Arctic Ocean sea ice.
WMO Press Release No. 966:
2012: Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Multiple Extremes and High Temperatures,
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such
as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on
a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying
long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a
result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel
Jarraud.“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The
alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching
changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change
is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a
result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
which have risen constantly and again reached new records,”
added Mr Jarraud.
15 September 1982 vs 16 September 2012The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start
of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square
kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18
September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly
3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the
1979—2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square
kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.
WMO noted other effects of climate change outside the arctic, including:
Savannah and Jacksonville are among the east coast cities most vulnerable
to rising sea levels due to climate change, a study finds.
Savannah, Georgia’s main seaport, with storm surges, hurricanes,
and waves on top:
what will that look like?
Suzanne Goldenberg wrote for the Guardian today,
US coastal cities in danger as sea levels rise faster than expected, study warns:
Satellite measurements show flooding from storms like Sandy will put low-lying population centres at risk sooner than projected,
A
study published last March by Climate Central found sea-level rise
due to global warming had already doubled the risk of extreme flood
events — so-called once in a century floods — for dozens
of locations up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.It singled out the California cities of Los Angeles and San Diego on
the Pacific coast and Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia,
on the Atlantic, as the most vulnerable to historic flooding due to
sea-level rise.Sandy, which produced a 9ft storm surge at Battery Park in New York
City, produced one example of the dangerous combination of storm
surges and rising sea level. In New York, each additional foot of
water puts up to 100,000 additional people at risk, according to a
map published with the study.
That study projected 6 inches rise at Fort Pulaski by 2030 (minimum 3 inches)
and 13 inches by 2050 (maximum 24 inches).
But projections have gotten worse since then:
The latest research,
published on Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters,
found global sea-levels rising at a rate of 3.2mm a year, compared to the best estimates by the IPCC of 2mm a year, or 60% faster.
So that would be more like 9 inches by 2030 and 20 inches by 2050.
Add to a higher base sea level bigger storms like Hurricane Sandy,
and Savannah and Jacksonville have a problem.
Sure, Savannah is
The Mexican president who put the Mexican Army onto the streets
to stop the drug war, resulting in 40,000+ deaths, many
collateral damage like
the son of writer Carlos Fuentes,
the Mexican president who
a year ago started hinting that that didn’t work and something else should be done,
is already following the path of his predecessors
Ernesto Zedillo and
Vicente Fox, in calling for the U.S.
to end the war on drugs.
Georgia can’t afford to continue spending a billion dollars a year to lock people up, especially while cutting education.
If we listen to the Mexican presidents, we can save much of that billion and spend much of the savings on education.
T.W. wrote for the Economist 23 November 2012,
“Impossible” to end drug trade, says Calderón,
In an interview recorded last month for this week’s special report
on Mexico, Mr Calderón said: “Are there still drugs in Juárez [a
violent northern border city]? Well of course, but it has never been
the objective…of the public-security strategy to end something
that it is impossible to end, namely the consumption of drugs or
their trafficking…“[E]ither the United States and its society, its government and its
congress decide to drastically reduce their consumption of drugs, or
if they are not going to reduce it they at least have the moral
responsibility to reduce the flow of money towards Mexico, which
goes into the hands of criminals. They have to explore even market
mechanisms to see if that can allow the flow of money to reduce.“If they want to take all the drugs they want, as far as I’m
concerned let them take them. I don’t agree with it but it’s their
decision, as consumers and as a society. What I do not accept is
that they continue passing their money to the hands of killers.”
The Economist article spelled out what Calderón still doesn’t quite say:
In response to a very downbeat
diatribe by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone on the occasion
of the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference being some sound and less fury accomplishing
not much about stopping climate change,
[Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2012, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”]
Harvard student Chloe Maxmin
followed up McKibben’s problem statement with a plan for what to do:
divest from fossil fuel companies. [“In Honor of Kalamazoo: An Open Letter to Bill McKibben,” NextGenJournal, 25 July 2012, no longer online, referred to in a post the same day by Chloe Maxmin on First Here, Then Everywhere.]
Maxmin didn’t just wish, either,
she joined up with McKibben’s 350.org and helped organize
Harvard students to do something about it:
persuade Harvard to divest its shares of fossil fuel companies.
Students at the University of Georgia, or at Valdosta State University,
for that matter, could do the same.
Alli Welton wrote for 350.org 18 November 2012,
72% of Harvard Students Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels,
Last Friday night, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council
announced that the student body had voted 72% in favor of Harvard
University divesting its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.Members of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable
Future have been campaigning since September to divest Harvard’s
endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel corporations
that own the majority of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves.
Harvard actually already has divested its shares of one fossil fuel company
due to public pressure.
