Tag Archives: Georgia

So popular it’s every Saturday and a street is closed: Valdosta Farm Days

Demand has ramped up in only a few years so that already Valdosta Farm Days has expanded its days and pedestrianized a street.

City of Valdosta PR 15 May 2013, City Announces Road Closure for Downtown Valdosta Farm Days,

Valley Street In anticipation of the large number of vendors expected for the Downtown Valdosta Farm Days this Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., the City of Valdosta is announcing an expected road closure to help citizens plan their travel downtown.

Valley Street will be closed between N. Ashley and N. Patterson Streets, from 7 a.m. until approximately 2 p.m. Adequate traffic safety measures will be in place to alert the traveling public, as the closure will prohibit traffic traveling east and west on Valley Street during this time.

Farm Days takes place on the sidewalks around the historic courthouse in downtown Valdosta, on the first and third Saturday of every month, rain or shine, through the end of October. By popular demand, the market will take place every Saturday during the month of June.

Citizens are invited to enjoy the activities associated with the Downtown Valdosta Farm Days. For more information about Main Street events, contact the Main Street office at (229) 259-3577. For information about street closures, call the Engineering Department at (229) 259-3530.

There’s no mention of any of this on the Lowndes County Commission website.

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Georgia missing out on solar jobs behind New Jersey and Michigan

Other states, even New Jersey and far-north Michigan, are beating Georgia to solar jobs. Why isn’t sunny Georgia leading in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country that is deploying rural jobs everywhere else? Hint: who’s holding a shareholder meeting this month?

Carin Hall wrote for energydigital 13 May 2013, Solar Jobs Outnumber Texas Ranchers and US Coal Miners: New statistics show that solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US, creating thousands of jobs across the country

There are now more solar energy workers in the state of Texas than there are ranchers, according to solar research group The Solar Foundation.

The group’s data mapping out solar jobs across the nation also showed that there are more solar jobs in California than actors, and more solar workers than coal miners nationwide. Sunny states like California and Arizona topped the list. Wyoming came in last, with just 50 workers, while Utah showed a mere 290 solar workers despite being one of the country’s sunniest states.

Even the states with less sunshine like New Jersey and Michigan showed a high number of solar jobs—thanks to favorable tax and regulatory policies that help attract developers to cope with high electricity prices.

New Jersey is #9 and Michigan is #15 according to The Solar Foundation’s map of State Solar Jobs. Where’s Georgia? Number 41 in solar jobs per capita. Yet Michigan is #47 by maximum solar resource and New Jersey is #36, while Georgia is #18: much sunnier than those northern states. Why is Georgia so far behind?

LEGAL STATUS OF THIRD-PARTY OWNERSHIP: NOT ALLOWED

Because of Continue reading →

Fast fiber to rural Georgia: Georgia Public Web

What connects Tifton, Omega, Lenox, Adel, Valdosta, Moultrie, and Thomasville? Georgia Public Web’s 3,000 miles of fiber optic cable, plus wireless last mile.

Who is Georgia Public Web?

Georgia Public Web is a member owned non-profit corporation formed in 1998 to help “Bridge Georgia’s Digital Divide” by delivering high-end technology services to metro Atlanta and communities throughout the State of Georgia.

That emphasis on metro Atlanta is unfortunate from a south Georgia point of view, yet their map extends right down here. “High-speed Internet access”; how fast is that?

Internet Connectivity for Business (DS-1, DS-3, OC-3, OC-12, GigE)

That means Continue reading →

Dear SO: Time to move beyond coal –Sierra Club

You can to talk to Southern Company even if you can’t come to SO’s annual stockholder meeting 22 May at Callaway Gardens. Sierra Club helps you to ask SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning questions; maybe about SO’s nuclear financial and safety performance, or why SO is already losing on its “clean coal” bet in Mississippi, or when SO might get serious about distributed solar power, or when SO will help Georgia join the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium, or…. So many possible questions, and you don’t even have to go to ask them!

Sierra Club message to Southern Company, Tell Southern Company to Move Beyond Coal,

On May 22, Southern Company will host its annual shareholder meeting in Georgia, giving us a great opportunity to push them forward on clean energy.

Southern Company has taken steps to grow clean energy in the Southeast — Alabama Power and Georgia Power both invested in wind energy and Georgia power increased solar energy investments — but they can do a lot more.

Southern Company still provides some of the dirtiest, most unreliable, dangerous, and expensive power in the country. And its subsidiaries continue to place “Big Bets” on dirty coal electricity that poisons the health of our communities’ water, air, and families. Georgia is even home to the biggest emitter of carbon pollution in the nation, Scherer Plant in Juliette.

Send a message to Southern Company’s CEO Tom Fanning to thanking him for clean energy investments, and demand that Southern Company clean up its act and invest in job creating clean energy.

Follow the link to send a message.

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110 MW solar financing: SolarCity and Goldman Sachs

When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar. They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health. Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this 110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act that Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up. Maybe we should do something about that. -jsq

PR today, SolarCity and Goldman Sachs Create Largest U.S. Rooftop Solar Lease Financing Platform: Collaboration Expected to Fund more than $500 Million in Solar Projects, 110 Megawatts of Solar Capacity

SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity (Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110 megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.

The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses, government and other non-profit organizations to install solar panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in 2012 and expanded per

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Give back what I’ve had for 37 years –Lamar Clements @ LCC 2013-05-14

A Lowndes County resident asked for school bus safety and his land back that the county took; this was in the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session Tuesday:

I was asked to do this for the benefit of our community. Lamar Clements is my name, and my wife Winona. We live at 5138 Coppage Road, out in Hahira. So you’d know, we’re not new residents out there. We’ve lived there 37 years. We’ve seen a lot of change.

Coppage and Griffin Roads My concern is the corner of Coppage Road and Griffin Road. I know Mike Fletcher has been recently, visited that location. I want to report that I have seen personally as a resident; I’ve seen two county school buses that could have been a fatal accident because of the structure around it. My concern, it needs to be eliminated; that will, bottom line save lives.

Secondly, I live on the corner, and the county has progressively moved the road over to the west, which is literally taking my some of my yard. All I ask is: give back what I’ve had for 37 years. And for goodness sake, when I saw those two school buses that makes a chill go down your spine when you’ve got that many children in danger.

So it’s in good hands. You guys know what to do. Go for it. Continue reading →

Why can’t we choose our trash pickup service? –Tom Hallman @ LCC 2013-05-14

Hahira life-long resident Tom Hallman asked a simple question in the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session Tuesday:

I just can’t for the life of me figure out why, myself as a resident, I don’t have a choice to choose who picks up my trash.

Chairman Bill Slaughter said he’d be glad to explain it to Hallman after the meeting. Chairman didn’t offer to explain it to the public. And the Executive Session lasted so long all the citizens left before it was over, so I don’t know if Tom Hallman ever got an explanation.

Here’s the video:


Why can’t we choose our trash pickup service? –Tom Hallman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 May 2013.

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No San Onofre nuke startup decision until June at least –NRC Chair

Two more victories for anti-nuke activists: San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June, and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.

Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday, Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,

The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not happen.

Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June.

“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on restarting San Onofre, but she did say this:

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Trash lawsuit on WALB

WALB found the Lowndes County government sticking to the letter of its own recently-passed ordinance and contract, and Deep South Sanitation concerned about the county trying to put it out of business.

Lydia Jennings wrote for WALB yesterday, Lowndes Co. files lawsuit against solid waste company,

Lowndes County leaders are going to court to try to stop a sanitation company from picking up trash for some county residents.

County leaders say Deep South Sanitation is in violation of a new ordinance that only allows Advanced Disposal to contract with county residents.

And if the cease-and-desist order is successful, the owner of Deep South Sanitation worries he’ll go out of business.

Cary Scarborough owns Deep South Sanitation, a family owned and operated business he started in 2011 when he saw trash pickup problems in unincorporated Lowndes County.

In two years, he has seen his business grow with 800 Lowndes County resident contracts. But his days of picking up trash could be coming to an end.

“It could shut me down,” said Scarborough.

So why did the county give him a business license? And why is it a good use of taxpayer funds to sue him? The county’s answer:

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Videos: Why do we need to pave those roads? @ LCC 2013-05-13

Half a million dollars for paving without any competitive bid: it’s the county way! Only one of three potential board appointees showed up. Commissioners asked a surprising number of questions, including about a water system trust indenture, but not enough. They vote this evening at 5:30 PM.

Here’s the agenda with links to the videos and a few notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MAY 13, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
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