Tag Archives: Ethics

Water issues under Moody Family Housing –Dr. Michael Noll @ LCC 2014-03-11

Water issues still need to be investigated and resolved under the proposed Moody Family Housing, said Dr. Michael Noll, presenting a public comment by him and two other VSU professors about the recent evironmental assessment to the 11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Here’s the video:


Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC)
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

Appended is the text of the VSU professors’ letter, and here it is in PDF.

Continue reading →

Corporate power comes home –Jim Parker

Letter to the Editor in the Valdosta Daily Times yesterday. -jsq

How is it that one foreign corporation, that has just come into existence to do this project, can have greater power than all of the thousands of citizens affected, and their elected governments?

No, I’m not talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, but he issues are the same. This one wants to run a 36-inch gas pipeline through a number of states and counties, including Lowndes, affecting thousands of landowners. It’s known as Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and is the unholy offspring of Spectra Energy Corp. and NextEra Energy.

How can one foreign corporation (they’re from out of state), have so much power vis-avis the thousands of landowners and citizens of Lowndes County, that the citizens must give up a hundred-foot-wide swath of their land, along with the depreciation of their property values, not to mention their personal safety, and allow this pipeline to come through? The gas is not even for use in Lowndes County, or even the State of Georgia. However, the general feeling is we have to give in to the corporation’s demands. County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter is quoted as saying, “There’s nothing we can do.”

Does anyone else see the problem here? Continue reading →

Videos @ LCC 2014-03-10

An unexpected concern about limiting someone’s ability to expand his business was expressed by Lame Duck Commissioner Richard Raines, the same who made the motion for the exclusive franchise for trash collection by ADS, and who apparently (in executive session so we don’t know for sure) voted twice to sue local business Deep South Sanitation. They spent five or six minutes on an annexation request by Lake Park that was not on the agenda, even though they received it last week. They vote tonight at 5:30 PM, and don’t forget the budget hearings continue all day today.

One road in the Nelson Hill subdivision wasn’t up to snuff and will be omitted from the adoption of infrastructure; that’s better than the county’s previous practice for that development of staff waivers with no public hearings. Plus four rezonings, one for a former County Commissioner and another for a community well for a development. And the annual contract renewal for the MIDS on-call bus system, plus a master software service contract.

See Musical chairs in local qualifying for why John Page is no longer a Commissioner and they already removed his picture from the entryway. There’s more about that in the previous post with the agenda. And here’s the agenda again with links to the videos and a few notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 10, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Only four voting Commissioners Monday @ LCC 2014-03-10

With only four voting Commissioners left, and two of those lame ducks, it should be an interesting set of Lowndes County Commission meetings this week. On the agenda is adoption of infrastructure for the Nelson Hill subdivision; the one with all the waivers by staff with no public hearings. Plus four rezonings, one for a former County Commissioner and another for a community well for a development. And the annual contract renewal for the MIDS on-call bus system.

While the VDT headline yesterday said Political shuffle continues: County commissioner resigns to run for state Senate seat, actually former Commissioner John Page didn’t resign: he vacated his seat the moment he signed the qualifying papers to run for state Senator. That’s why the Board of Elections has already called a special election that Continue reading →

FBI investigating CCA about Gladiator School again

Indefatigable reporter gets FBI to investigate profiteering private prison company: again. CCA already lost the contract for Idaho State Prison and two other CCA prisons have closed. Maybe this time the FBI will shut CCA down.

Rebecca Boone wrote for AP yesterday, APNewsBreak: FBI investigates prison company,

The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the company’s running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it “Gladiator School.”

The Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA has operated Idaho’s largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies. The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements.

The Idaho State Police was asked to investigate the company last year but didn’t, until Continue reading →

Videos: Moultrie FERC Scoping Meeting @ FERC 2014-03-05

Here are videos of the whole thing.

Updated 31 March 2014: Who stood up.
Updated 4 June 2014: Fixed video links.

Not only did Colquitt County pass a resolution about pipeline depth; a County Commissioner the county attorney stood up and reminded FERC about it, which got John Peconom to admit that FERC has required a deeper minimum pipeline depth in some other states.

So far that’s speaking against the pipeline:

Only one of those county commissions claims there’s nothing you can do; the rest are all doing something.

See also:

Videos: Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting @ FERC 2014-03-04

Here are videos of the whole thing.

Update 2014-03-08: Fixed date.

See also:

  • FERC holds meeting to discuss Sabal Trail pipeline by Colter Anstaett, WALB

    “I just lost a contract on the sale of part of my property because of this pipeline,” said Larry Rodgers, a Lowndes County landowner.

    “Why is it set in stone that you pay one price forever for the value of the property they use when they’re gonna be makin’ profits on it forever…the landowner has to continue to pay property taxes. So, I don’t understand why they can’t share the profits,” continued Rodgers….

    One concerned landowner, Rick Hastings, questioned whether any information that the third party collected and presented Continue reading →

All against, except County Commissioners @ FERC 2014-03-04

At FERC’s Scoping Meeting for Spectra’s proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline, about 100 people, not counting FERC or Spectra. Lots of good questions. Not many answers. John Peconom of FERC said afterwards the comments were mostly about the big picture. Except questions from local government officials: there were none. Video to come.

WALB was there for a long time, so they’ll probably cover it (they did). Matthew Woody of the VDT had heaps of material and went off to file by 10PM (here’s his story).

Three Lowndes County Commissioners were there: Chairman Bill Slaughter, Joyce Evans, and Crawford Powell, and County Engineer Mike Fletcher and Utilities Director Mike Allen. Not one of them spoke.

In Gilchrist County, Florida, all five County Commissioners, plus Continue reading →

Recent clear cutting in north of Lowndes County

Multiple people reported clearing work at the site of the Moody Family Housing project on Val Del Road, with its sinkhole next to an aquifer recharge zone, that not even Moody Air Force Base can get in to inspect. So we went out to look. There is clear cutting happening on Val Del Road (both sides) but it does not appear to be happening on the property slated for Moody Family Housing.

There has been clear cutting going on in the north of Lowndes County for some time on large tracts near Skipper Bridge Road, Staten Road (near the new river bridge) and on Val Del Road immediately south of the Moody Family Housing tract.

It appears that most of those properties are owned by Natco LLC: Continue reading →

The trash problem could be worse: north of Naples

They call it the Triangle of Death because of the cancer clusters. No, not Waycross: near Naples, Italy,

Jim Yardleyjan wrote for NYTimes 29 January 2014, A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy,

“The environment here is poisoned,” said Dr. Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who documented an alarming rise in local cancer cases in a 2004 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet. “It’s impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast.”

He added, “We’re living on top of a bomb.”

Maybe it’s not that bad Continue reading →