Lee County has
28,575 people; Lowndes has
111,885 (July 2011).
Yet tiny Lee does what mighty Lowndes doesn’t:
it puts its agenda packets online.
I’d bet it doesn’t even waste county resources putting them
into a fancy printed binder.
When will Lowndes County move into the 21st century?
-jsq
Someone reminded her County Commission they can do something about the pipeline, only a few counties from here. At least one county commissioner there gets it that “it’s clearly not just a local issue. It’s a Southeast issue.” And the pipeline company has now promised public hearings in that county.
Dougherty County Chairman Jeff Sinyard
followed up within a few days on his promise to do something.
Carlton Fletcher wrote for AlbanyHerald.com 9 September 2013,
County Commission hears concerns about pipeline,
Dinorah Hall told commissioners at their business session that the proposed $3 billion pipeline would pose danger to the environment and to residents in the path of the 465-mile project.
“It is within your authority to advocate citizens’ safety first by proposing an alternate site for the large, industrial compression station that will be used to push the gas through the pipeline and an alternate route away from more heavily populated areas,” Hall said. “Just imagine the catastrophic impact a pipeline disaster could have on our natural resources such as the Flint River and our underground aquifer.”
Commission Chairman Jeff Sinyard encouraged Hall and other impacted landowners to attend the commission’s work session Monday to discuss their concerns with project representatives.
“It is very, very important that they meet every legal and environmental requirement on this project,” Sinyard said of Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp., which is building the pipeline to supply gas to Florida Power & Light. “We expect them to use professional, non-bullying dialogue when talking with our citizens, and we’re going to do everything we can to see that this project negatively impacts the least number of citizens.”
Local residents are still just NIMBY, but District 4 Commissioner Ewell Lyle said, Continue reading
A child born in the bottom fifth by income around here has a better chance of reaching the top fifth than in Atlanta. But that’s not saying much. And we can change this.
David Leonhardt wrote for NY Times 22 July 2013, In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters: A study finds the odds of rising to another income level are notably low in certain cities, like Atlanta and Charlotte, and much higher in New York and Boston. 4.3% Valdosta MSA vs. 4.0% Atlanta MSA. But 5.9% Brunswick, 6.0% Vidalia, and 8.8% Elijay. That’s the highest in Georgia.
Pretty much anywhere in Florida is higher than 4.3%.
Then there’s 11.2% San Francisco, Continue reading
In Georgia we’re still below 1% electric power generation from solar,
and we can get to 20-30% with no new technology whatever.
Georgia Power’s nuke overruns are
already causing a reaction of still more distributed solar.
Yet even that good news gets the usual reaction:
“This is necessary but not sufficient: a breakthrough in energy storage technology is required.”
Which just ain’t so;
distributed rooftop solar alone is plenty to move Georgia way ahead.
That’s why
Edison Electric Institute calls distributed solar
a massively disruptive influence on the utilities’
century-old cozy baseload model.
What’s holding solar back is those same big utilities, who understandably
don’t want to change their long-time cash cow.
But they’re going to change, and pretty quickly.
People unfamiliar with the sunny south (which is most of the world south of, oh, Germany), still say things like this: Continue reading
Why should Georgia landowners have to cede property rights
to benefit nobody in Georgia, and at risk of our aquifer and
environment?
But Dougherty County residents are still playing NIMBY instead
of trying to stop it entirely.
Carlton Fletcher wrote for the Albany Herald 7 September 2013, Local opposition to natural gas pipeline growing,
Dougherty County landowners who’ve been contacted by representatives of a group planning the 465-mile Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline projected to run underneath their property say they’re not convinced by assurances that the $3 billion project is safe.
And they’re preparing to challenge the pipeline even as project surveyors seek access to their land.
“This is not just a threat to my land, to our region’s water, Continue reading
People are tired of irresponsible trash government at the state level colluding with monopoly utilities to hold Georgia back in distributed solar power, and some of us are doing something about it; you can, too.
Jigar Shah wrote for SaportReport 15 September 2013 Solar more viable as Georgia’s new nuclear power plants face overruns,
I am seeing Georgia’s nuclear financial woes starting to prompt a boon for distributed energy including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, low-impact hydro, high efficiency cogeneration, and other sources of electricity.
Biomass? Let’s not go back to that carbon-polluting forest-destroying factory-exploding waste of time and resources. Solar, wind, efficiency, and conservation are the main events, with solar increasingly leading the pack. And those nuke cost overruns are already driving solar up even faster: Continue reading
How is our local landfill like Fukushima? No, not radiation: nobody seems to be responsible.
Colin P. A. Jones wrote for The Japan Times 16 September 2013, Fukushima and the right to responsible government,
Rather, the means of holding a member responsible for bad judgments are internalized as part of the rules and discipline governing the hierarchy to which they belong, with mechanisms for outsiders to assert responsibility — to assert rights — being minimized and neutralized whenever possible.
Sure, it’s not exactly the same. Our local governments live in fear they’ll get sued (or so they claim), and even sheriffs and judges occasionally get convicted around here. But it’s quite difficult to get local elected officials to take their responsibility to the people as seriously as “we’ve invested too much in that to stop now” where “we” means the local government or more frequently a developer.
And privatizing the landfills and now trash collection is not that dissimilar to the Japanese government keeping TEPCO afloat so they have an unaccountable scapegoat for Fukushima. Locally, nobody seems to even know, much less care, that the landfill is Continue reading
CCA wouldn’t even turn in a correct count of its guards at its most notorious prison.
Rebecca Boone wrote for AP today,
Judge: CCA in contempt for prison understaffing,
“For CCA staff to lie on so basic a point — whether an officer is actually at a post — leaves the Court with serious concerns about compliance in other respects, such as whether every violent incident is reported.”
More here from George Prentice in Boise Weekly, including the actual court decision and order.
Remember, this is the company our Industrial Authority wanted to build a prison in Lowndes County. Let’s insist on real due diligence.
-jsq
According to
In the City this Week, Sept. 16-21
The Valdosta City Council meeting = scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19 has been canceled. The next City Council meeting is scheduled for Oct. 10. The Mayor and Council look forward to seeing you there. Click here for information about Mayor and Council meetings.
I guess you’ll have to get your entertainment elsewhere downtown this week.
From that same newsletter: Continue reading
What was in that waste water that went into landfill in an aquifer recharge zone, with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River? The 44 shipments from the toxic waste site in Waycross to the Pecan Row landfill in Lowndes County were “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, but “PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes” and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, “To be a hazardous waste, a material must first be a solid waste.” So “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids” apparently says nothing about hazard or toxicity.
44 shipments went from the
“7 Out Site”
to “Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA” for $59,495.00 total
of your federal tax dollars paid to Veolia,
according to
pages 12 and 13
of
Final Report, Task Order # F-0032, Seven Out LLC Tank Site, Waycross, Georgia,
Contract No. 68S4-02-06
for
Emergency and Rapid Response Services, EPA Region 4,
Prepared By WRS Infrastructure & Environment, Inc.,
5555 Oakbrook Pkwy, Suite 175, Norcross, Georgia 30093,
May 2, 2006.
Is this where those PCBs in the landfill came from? EPA itself says, Are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) regulated under RCRA as a hazardous waste?
PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes (Memo, Weddle to Verde; May 18, 1984 (RCRA Online #12235)). However, it is possible that PCBs may be incidental contaminants in listed hazardous waste (e.g., solvent used to remove PCBs from transformers) or may be present in wastes that are characteristically hazardous. In these cases, wastes that otherwise meet a listing criteria or are characteristically hazardous are still subject to RCRA regulation regardless of PCB content.
However, to avoid duplicative regulation with Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), certain PCB containing wastes that exhibit the toxicity characteristic are exempt from regulation under RCRA (Monthly Call Center Report Question; September 1996 (RCRA Online #14014)). Section 261.8 exempts from RCRA Subtitle C regulation PCB-containing dielectric fluid and the electric equipment which holds such fluid if they satisfy two criteria. First, these PCB wastes must be regulated under the TSCA standards of Part 761. Second, only the PCB wastes which exhibit the toxicity characteristic for an organic constituent (waste codes D018-43) may qualify for the exemption (§261.8).
Apparently any liquid wastes from a Superfund site would be “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, according to U.S. DoE EH-231-034/0593 (May 1993), Exclusions and Exemptions from RCRA Hazardous Waste Regulation,
- any solid or dissolved material introduced by a source into a federally owned treatment work (FOTW) if certain conditions, described in Sect. 108 of the FFCA of 1992, are met;
- industrial wastewater discharges that are point source discharges regulated under section 402 of the Clean Water Act [§261.4(a)(2)]
If a Superfund site is not a federally owned treatment work, what is? And if the Seven Out site was not an industrial wastewater point source, what is?
The Onyx Waste Manifests on pages 75-120
say the materials were “Non-Hazardous Non-Regulated Waste water”.
(Onyx became Veolia Environmental Services in 2005,
according to Veolia.)
As we’ve seen, “Non-Regulated” apparently means little.
We don’t know what was in that waste water
that went into a landfill
in a recharge zone for
the Floridan Aquifer, the source of our drinking water,
and
with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River.
-jsq