Tag Archives: fuel

HB 170 to convert fuel sales tax to excise tax at local government expense @ LCC 2015-02-05



HB 170 is a stealth tax raise by the state that would force
county and city governments to vote for higher local taxes.
The Transportation Funding Act of 2015 is bad news
according to every city councillor and county commissioner I’ve heard from.

Harrison Tillman estimated about
$335,000 reduction in taxes to the county
and a $12.6 million overall loss in revenue
in his presentation

yesterday morning to the Lowndes County Commission Annual Planning Meeting.
Commissioner Demarcus Marshall and Chairman Bill Slaughter went to Atlanta to talk
to the proposers of this bill, with little effect.

Here’s
ACCG’s HB 170 writeup Tillman used,
and Continue reading →

Valdosta budget with goals and accomplishments for each department

It’s too bad nobody came to Valdosta’s two public budget hearings,
because the city prepared
183 slides with details for each
department, including goals and accomplishments.


On

the LAKE website is that presentation sent on request by City Clerk Teresa Bolden,
and
converted to HTML by LAKE.
Plus the actual budget.
No open records requests were required.
Oh, and Valdosta runs garbage collection on a balanced budget
without any exclusive franchises.

Valdosta News PR 20 June 2013,

City Delivers a Balanced Budget:
No property tax increase proposed for citizens,



The Valdosta City Council approved the fiscal year 2014 budget for
the City of Valdosta at the June 20 City Council meeting, after
having the opportunity to hear the proposed budget at the hearings
on June 11 and 12. City staff presented the council with a balanced
budget, as required by the City Charter, possibly one of the most
challenging and difficult budgets prepared in years.



City leaders decreased the overall city budget from $86.2 million to
$77.3 million, a result of Continue reading →

Kewaunee nuke is shutting down; why are we building more at Vogtle?

Dominion Power is shutting down a nuke because it can’t compete economically.
Why are we letting Georgia Power charge us up front and load us up with
debt to build a nuke we already know can’t compete economically?
After all, if it could, it wouldn’t need

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
that we the rate-payers and taxpayers are already paying on, instead of getting on with
solar and wind power.

According to

22 October 2012 PR from Dominion Power:



Dominion (NYSE: D) today said it plans to close and decommission its Kewaunee Power Station in Carlton, Wis., after the company was unable to find a buyer for the 556-megawatt nuclear facility.

According to Dominion:

Kewaunee, Dominion’s fourth nuclear station, generates 556 megawatts
of electricity from its single unit. That’s enough to meet the needs
of 140,000 homes.

The station began commercial operation in 1974…



1974?
That’s the same year as

Plant Hatch Unit 1, on the Altamaha River

100 miles from here. (Hatch Unit 2 came online
in 1978.)
But the Hatch reactors were relicensed in 2002

extending their lifetimes 20 years out to 2034 and 2038, so
they won’t be closing, right?

Well, maybe they could.
Howard A. Learner wrote for JSOnline 30 October 2012,

Market has spoken in Kewaunee shutdown,

Continue reading →

Energy as a National Security Challenge —Col. Dan Nolan @ Solar Summit

In his morning keynote at the sold-out

Southern Solar Summit,
Col. Dan Nolan (U.S. Army ret.) asked the musical question:

“When did our Marines become Birkenstock-wearing tree huggers?”

This was after some Marines asked for solar power so they wouldn’t
have to haul fuel in long convoys, which were among the most dangerous missions.
Most of that fuel was going into very inefficient generators to run
very inefficient air conditioners in tents in the desert.
Dealing with that got the military thinking about energy security:
assured access to mission-critical energy.

Looking up, he asked:



“What is it we as a nation need to understand about our own energy security?”

He identified America’s strategic center of gravity as its economy.
It’s very resilient but has vulnerabilities open to attack.
So how do we secure those vulnerabilities?

The main vulnerabilities are:

Continue reading →

Still no suppliers or buyers for Wiregrass Power LLC –VLCIA



According to an open records request of 17 February 2011,
the Industrial Authority says Wiregrass Power LLC still

“has not yet identified or completed a comprehensive list
of potential suppliers of raw materials,
goods and services required to construct and operate
the biomass electric generating plant.”

This is on a sheet entitled
“Owners/Investors/Suppliers/Contracts”, which also says:

“Site preparation and construction is not scheduled
to begin until June 1, 2011.”

Hm, what happened to breaking ground in January 2011?
The document also said a “Project Critical Path time-line is attached”
but it wasn’t.

Regarding buyers for the plant’s power:

Continue reading →

VDT Elevates Biomass and Renewable Energy as Political Issues

The Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) has apparently decided biomass and real clean energy instead are political issues.
As part of the VDT’s

sudden turn against the VLCIA and its biomass plant,
which was

provoked by citizen and student activism,
the VDT started a week of articles with the headline



“Proposed plant said to be ‘medical atrocity'”,
about Dr. William Sammons’ Monday
talk about health problems of biomass and how solar is better.

The VDT then featured biomass in

its reporting
on the

AAUW Candidate Forum:

Continue reading →

Why is the VDT suddenly anti-biomass and pro-solar?

What has caused the VDT to decide to look into the matter?
Johnna Pinholser acknowledges that it was Growing oposition of proposed biomass energy plant:



A growing organization of concerned citizens are opposing the building
of a biomass energy plant in Lowndes County.

Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy hope to promote clean and sustainable
energies while also educating the public on how a biomass plant could
be detrimental to community health.



The goal of the organization and the opposition to the plant is not to
inhibit economic development but to promote a conversation on sustainable
energy, Dr. Michael Noll, WACE president, said.

The new organization is not the only one in the community speaking out
against the biomass plant.

Continue reading →

VDT turns against VLCIA and its biomass plant

The newspaper of record in Valdosta and Lowndes County
has reversed course on biomass.
Top of the front page in a landmark issue:
Wednesday, October 27, 2010:


Biomass plant fuels questions

by Johnna Pinholster

The Valdosta Daily Times

VALDOSTA — As the state and nation look to renewable energy solutions, locally, a proposed green energy plant is causing controversy and raising questions that remain unanswered.



The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority and Wiregrass Power,
LLC are in the beginning phases of developing property for a future
biomass electric generating plant.

…


Issues with lack of information

Continue reading →

Solar Booming Nationwide (so why not here?)



While the Wall Street Journal says biomass is
a money-losing proposition,
Stacy Feldman notes in Solve Climate News that

U.S. Solar Market Booms, With Utility-Scale Projects Leading the Way:

America could add 10 gigawatts of solar power every year by 2015, enough
to power 2 million new homes annually, industry and market analysts have
claimed in a new report.

Continue reading →

Subsidize Solar, not Coal or Biomass



The
WSJ article about economic problems of biomass plants
goes on to suggest the government subsidize biomass more.
Clean Technica suggests

a better idea:
If solar got the
same subsidies as fossil fuels,
solar would be cheaper than current grid power everywhere in the U.S.
Each taxpayer has spent about $521 towards coal over the past five years
and only $7.24 towards solar.
How about we reverse that?

Solar needs no fuel, no truck deliveries, and no emissions.

-jsq