Ron Jackson of South GA Solar Power of Valdosta installed these solar panels for
Alton Burns of Coolidge, in Thomas County, GA.
Last I heard, Grady Electric Membership Corporation had still not done the grid connect, 8 weeks later. Something about wanting insurance. Colquitt EMC never asked for that when they connected my panels. Continue reading
Today at 2:30 PM, the owner of the
baseball diamond west of Hahira is not expected to appear, because he’s working.
If you want to see him, try
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York, tomorrow evening.
There’s a water connection variance on
Jumping Gully Road,
and the electric company parking variance on
Norman Drive in Valdosta tabled
last month
has been withdrawn.
Here’s the agenda, which oddly is not yet on the City of Valdosta website. Continue reading
Videos of ZBOA decisions on
one
single-family residence and a
car dealership sign in the county,
and
an electric company sign parking variance in the city.
They meet again this afternoon.
Here’s the agenda, with decisions, followed by the videos. Continue reading
25th Semi-Annual Alapahoochee Historic Farm/Heritage Days will take
place April 10-11 from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Located at
202 Bethel Church Road in Echols County.
Here’s their flyer on their facebook page. Continue reading
Another entrant in the battery race to clean energy storage.
Mark Shwartz, Stanford PR, 6 April 2015, Aluminum battery from Stanford offers safe alternative to conventional batteries: The new aluminum-ion battery could replace many of the lithium-ion and alkaline batteries in wide use today.
Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that’s fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive. Researchers say the new technology offers a safe alternative to many commercial batteries in wide use today.
“We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. “Our new battery won’t catch fire, even if you drill through it.”
Although drilling would produce aluminum dust, which isn’t exactly benign. However, point taken.
Personally, I still prefer Continue reading
Now that Atlanta has finally taken notice there’s even more reason
to repel these pipeline invaders.
There’s still time to submit an amicus brief for the
court case in Leesburg, Georgia.
And time to file an ecomment or an out-of-time motion to intervene against Sabal Trail.
Or against
Elba Island LNG
or against
Transco and Atlanta Gas Light’s Dalton Expansion Project.
Or to oppose
Kinder Morgan’s southeast Georgia Palmetto oil pipeline
at the Georgia Department of Transportation or GA-EDP.
Both those state agencies have to provide permits for Sabal Trail
to get the Georgia emininent domain it demands in Leesburg,
so they are relevant to Sabal Trail, as well, as is your opinion
and those of all local elected governments in Georgia.
Dan Chapman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3 April 2015, Pipeline project fuels fight on state’s future,
Regardless of route, Sabal Trail opponents fear pipeline construction could create sinkholes Continue reading
Friday’s vote started at least a year and a half ago. Organized years-long activism is paying off for everyone.
Summer before last, after statewide requests by Georgia Sierra Club, Greenlaw, and many others: Georgia PSC required Georgia Power to buy twice
as much solar power.
About a year later, Mary Landers, Savannahnow, 18 November 2014, Georgia is fastest growing solar market,
Last year the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a motion for Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add 525 MW of solar power generation to its portfolio by 2016.
“That pushed out the growth of solar, especially projecting forward,” Continue reading
While
Vallotton Farms wants to revert to Estate Agricultural,
Vickers
and
Edward Jennings LLC want denser zoning.
It’s not clear what the
Valdosta historic preservation case
or the
Lake Park personal services case
are about, since the county still doesn’t publish board packets.
Note that Vallotton Farms (both the part outlined in red
that appears to be the subject of the rezoning and the bigger part west of Bemiss Road) is on Cherry Creek, upstream from the dam,
and upstream from Cherry Creek Sink on the
Withlacoochee River, which leaks into our drinking water in the Floridan Aquifer.
Better agriculture upstream from that than other possibilities.
Here’s the agenda. Continue reading
See the
LAKE video below,
the WALB story by Colter Anstaett
including interviews with Cary Scarborough of Deep South Sanitation
and Steve Edwards of Advanced Disposal Services.
The county
actually posted
the resulting
Solid Waste Ordinance on their
County Ordinances web page (although I don’t see the updated franchise agreement anywhere),
and they even posted the results of that meeting.
Neither the county’s results summary nor WALB mentioned Commissioner Marshall’s
question about recycling glass nor Chairman Slaughter’s response that glass
can be disposed of as ordinary trash, which means they’re not going to recycle it.
Here’s the paper agenda from the meeting and the county’s results summary: Continue reading
Some of this is happening locally: Valdosta is planting trees along Hill Avenue, Lowndes County is building Naylor Park with a boat ramp that will be part of the Alapaha River Water Trail and VLPRA has long been thinking about a blueway on the Withlacoochee River, where it already has a string of parks and ramps. Valdosta has the Azalea City Trail across several parks and VSU. Imagine if that Trail extended a little farther on each end, connecting the Withlacoochee River and the Alapaha River: a greenway between two blueways. Imagine if Lowndes County planted trees in that concrete median in Bemiss Road. Imagine a bus running down that parkway….
Janice Astbury, the nature of cities, 29 March 2015, Green Transport Routes Are Social-Cultural-Ecological Corridors,
…natural corridors do not appear on the standard online GPS systems that people increasingly use to plan their routes. In other cases, the path is suddenly interrupted by infrastructure hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. It is clear that green and active transport routes are an afterthought, an add-on, rather than a core part of the city’s transport strategy.
Local government should invest in developing and maintaining the natural connective tissue of the city. In the same way that significant investment is made in arterial roads because they are believed to serve everyone and to connect up vital places, so inviting connective green infrastructure should be supported. The canals, footpaths, and cycleways that provide routes for active transport should appear prominently on maps and signage. Whole systems should be indicated when possible, even when portions of them are currently inaccessible, in order to enhance system understanding, and to encourage thinking about connecting up fragmented corridors.
Few people complain when a county or city spends millions of dollars on Continue reading