Tag Archives: Economy

I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night –Mindy Bland on WCTV @ LCC 2013-12-10



The Commission didn’t let citizens speak after

Spectra’s sales pitch for the Sabal Trail Pipeline Monday
,
but some citizens spoke up in Citizens to Be Heard Tuesday
and WCTV covered that.

Winnie Anne Wright wrote for WCTV yesterday,

Citizens Address Lowndes County Commission About Sabal Trail Pipeline
,

Residents covered topics such as the lack of economic impact on
Lowndes County, the legality of the pipeline, and also the safety.

“As a mother of three, I don’t want to have to fear for my children
as they sleep at night. And you hear a lot of people say that
natural gas line explosions don’t happen, and for those that feel
that they don’t, I really encourage them to go on the internet and
google gas line explosions and then tell me that they don’t happen.
As a mother, I feel like I have to step up and do what I can to
protect my children”, says Mindy Bland, an impacted homeowner.

Continue reading

90 percent approval? Larry Rodgers doubts that @ LCC 2013-12-09


WCTV isn’t just publishing Spectra press releases or sales pitches,
unlike the Lowndes County Commission.

Winnie Anne Wright for WCTV today,

Sabal Trail Addresses Lowndes County Commission
,


“Gas needed to come from one point and end up at another. We looked
for those existing corridors that are already in place, to be able
to run adjacent and parallel to those so we are lessening the impact
on stake holders and the environment and this path that we are
currently on, is over 80% adjacent or parallel to those types of
things”, says Andrea Grover, Director of Stakeholder Outreach for
Sabal Trail.

Well, no it doesn’t need to.
Some fat cats in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida want to pump
methane through here for their profit and our hazard,
but that’s not the same as “needed to”.

But not everyone believes Sabal Trail has Lowndes County’s best
interest at heart.


The proposed pipeline would run through Larry Rodgers’ property. He
says he gave Sabal Trail access Continue reading

Frack Off Spectra, We Want Solar @ LCC 2013-12-09

Some citizens spoke up before the

Lowndes County Commission meeting
, even if the Commission didn’t want to hear from them during.


Continue reading

A huge impact on land values, not to mention the safety factor –Larry Rodgers on WALB @ LCC 2013-12-09

WALB did what the Lowndes County Commission did not after Spectra’s
sales talk this morning: let local citizens speak.



Robert Hydrick on WALB today,

Sabal Trail gives information on pipeline project
,
quoted Spectra rep. Brian Fahrenthold (one of five Spectra sent)
about Spectra’s feint of a former route through Valdosta,
now aimed through rural Lowndes and Brooks Counties instead:



This updated route, Fahrenthold pointed out, reduces the amount of
the city of Valdosta that would be affected as well as reduces the
overall area of Lowndes County that would be affected.

“The first route was 31.3 miles and the [new route] is 15.6. That’s
a fifty percent reduction in our proposed route,” said Fahrenthold.

Well, no, it’s a shift in Spectra’s proposed route for their
Sabal Trail Pipeline to go farther west, past Clyattville
and through Brooks, Colquitt, Mitchell, and Dougherty Counties.
How does it feel to be expendable, rural landowners?



Fahrenthold also emphasized Continue reading

ALEC solar tax

Arizona, Virginia, and

now they’re trying in Georgia
:
ALEC wants to tax your solar panels.
ALEC is trying to legislate buggy whip requirements in an age of
affordable electric cars.

Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington wrote for the Guardian 4 December 2013,

ALEC calls for penalties on ‘freerider’ homeowners in assault on clean energy
,




Documents obtained by the Guardian
show the core elements of its
strategy began to take shape at the previous board meeting in
Chicago in August, with meetings of its energy, environment and
agriculture subcommittees.

Further details of Alec’s strategy were provided by John Eick, the
legislative analyst for Alec’s energy, environment and agriculture
program.

Eick told the Guardian the group would be Continue reading

Inexpensive electric cars



Plug one into solar panels on your roof, and you’ve got a solar powered car.

Zachary Shahan wrote for evcentral.org today,

11 Electric Cars Priced Lower than the Average New Car
,
including a list of November prices starting less than $16,000 and
no more than $30,000:

  1. Nissan Leaf$21,300
  2. Chevy Volt$26,685
  3. Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid$27,490
  4. Ford C-Max Energi$28,943
  5. smart electric drive$12,490
  6. Ford Focus Electric$27,700
  7. Chevy Spark EV$19,995
  8. Mitsubishi i$15,495
  9. Fiat 500e$24,300
  10. Wheego Whip — $18,995
  11. Wheego LiFe — $25,495

-jsq

80 years ago alcohol prohibition ended: time to end drug prohibition



The twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitution

was ratified eighty years ago today
, repealing the eighteenth amendment,
ending alcohol prohibition, and along with it the alcohol mobs
it had bred.
It’s time to do the same with drug prohibition,
and along with it not only drug gangs
but also

the epidemic of incarceration in this country
.


Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column My Day, 14 July 1939,

Prohibition
, Continue reading

Buried under nine feet of manure: 19th century horse predictions



There is a big difference between the 19th century horse excrement
crisis and the current 21st century energy crisis,
similar as they may sound.
One was real.
The other is manufactured by the modern equivalent of stagecoach vendors.

Stephen Davies wrote for The Freeman 1 September 2004,

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894
,

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened
in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the
scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution
to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.



The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that
cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more
horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one
writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be
buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to
be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable
land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be
devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food
for people), and this had to be brought into cities and
distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban
civilization was doomed.

Continue reading

Solar Oakland Schools expect 45% savings


Maybe local school districts would like to do this.

Dublin, GA High School did
.

Lowndes County School District has the bond rating
to do it.

SunPower PR in WSJ today,

Oakland Unified School District Plans to Reduce Electricity Costs by Nearly Half with SunPower Solar Systems at 16 Schools
,

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — SunPower Corp.
(NASDAQ: SPWR) today announced that it is designing and building
high efficiency SunPower solar power systems for 16 schools in the
Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in Oakland, Calif. Once
completed in 2014, the district estimates it will reduce electricity
costs at those facilities by 46 percent.



“Our contract with SunPower will enable Oakland Unified School
District to Continue reading

Two more nukes cancelled: Darlington in Ontario

Two cancelled, excuse me, “defer construction”, two others
may not be refurbished, and six more may get shut down soon.
Yay Ontario!

Jim Ostroff wrote for Platts today,

Ontario to indefinitely defer new Darlington nuclear reactors: energy plan
,



Ontario will indefinitely defer construction of two new nuclear
power reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site; back
away from firm plans to refurbish operating units at Darlington and
Bruce Power’s Bruce A site; and may order the shutdown of OPG’s
six-unit Pickering plant prior to the units’ scheduled 2020 closing
date, the provincial government said in a long-term energy plan
issued late Monday.

The province, which owns OPG, said that advances in energy
conservation, enhanced efficiency and a slowdown in electricity
demand growth have prompted it to revise a 2010 long-term energy
plan that called for building two new reactors at Darlington, as
well as refurbishment of 10 units combined at that station and at
Bruce A.

Hm, conservation and efficiency.
Not even shale gas.

We already know

Georgia could get on with efficiency and conservation if Southern Company
and Georgia Power would get out of the way
.
Which they will once they admit

Plant Vogtle (new and old) has always been a boondoggle
.

-jsq