Tag Archives: Gretna

The Council of Hamlets meets tonight in Valdosta!



The Valdosta City Council regular meeting is tonight.
You remember them, the council

that may or may not be able to say whether or not they can or cannot
speak during, at the end of, or after their council meetings.
Tonight they appoint people to boards that decide who can put up how big a sign, and that spend millions in your tax money.



I want to see if Mayor Fretti will keep to his word to
expand the Wiregrass Solar plant.

Also, maybe now this city council can do what Gretna, Florida, did:

put out a proclamation saying there will be no biomass plant.
Or they could sit on their hands some more and wait until
some Sonny finds a way to do it anyway.



They have lots of other stuff on their
agenda
for tonight, including an appointment to the

Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
and an appointment to the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks & Recreation Authority.


ZBOA decides on variances to Valdosta’s LDR and Lowndes County’s ULDC,
including sign variances, much to the annoyance of
some local entitled rich people and of
McDonald’s.




Parks & Rec receives 1.5 mil of tax money, about $4.5 million dollars a year,
more than the

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).
Parks and Rec board members get to spend that tax money that you pay.




AGENDA

REGULAR MEETING OF THE VALDOSTA CITY COUNCIL

5:30 PM Thursday, June 9, 2011

COUNCIL CHAMBERS, CITY HALL

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Biomass or carbon trading or something else?



To get an idea of why big timber growers might find biomass attractive,
here’s an article by Terry Dickson in the Florida Times-Union from 20 June 2005,

State’s forestry industry in an ‘alarming decline’

People have long debated whether there is a sound if a tree falls in a
forest but nobody is there to hear it.

The fall of revenue from Georgia’s forestry industry, however, has
attracted a lot of attention — but $10 billion is hard to ignore.

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What does Adage giving up on Florida mean to south Georgia?





Wesley Langdale, left, President of The Langdale Company, and Reed Wills, right, President of ADAGE, pose at the ADAGE press announcement.

Is Adage giving up on building biomass plants in
Gretna, Florida a year ago
and in
Hamilton County, Florida this year
good news for Lowndes County, Georgia, just north of the Florida border?

When Adage

announced their proposed Hamilton County, Florida biomass site in May 2009,
they already had something Wiregrass Power LLC has never achieved:

“…and The Langdale Company for the supply of waste wood to the project.

“Renewable energy is the next frontier for the working forest, which
has been creating jobs and cleaning our air and water for generations,”
said Wesley Langdale, President of The Langdale Company. “Working with
partners such as AREVA and Duke Energy gives our 115-year-old company
confidence in the viability and sustainability of the project.” Langdale
and ADAGE made this announcement during the Forest Landowners Association
annual conference in Amelia Island.

Hamilton County, Florida is of course just across the state line from
Lowndes County, Georgia, home of The Langdale Company.
What will removing the nearby competition do for Wiregrass Power LLC’s
proposed biomass plant in Lowndes County, Georgia, which

still has no suppliers of wood?
Will Adage’s failure to build any biomass plants ever serve as a model?
Or will something else happen?

-jsq

Shell companies: Adage and Wiregrass Power LLC



Look through the shell companies like Adage to the real backers.
Why is the source of

the recent news about Adage biomass
plants

being cancelled
the Charlotte Business Journal?
Adage is “An Areva/Duke Energy advanced biopower company.”
And Charlotte is where Duke Energy is based.

John Downey concludes

his article in the Charlotte Business Journal of 16 March 2011:

The joint venture has yet to build a biomass plant anywhere. DePonty
says it is clear that Adage will not achieve the goal announced when
Duke and Areva formed it to build 10 to 12 biomass plants around the
country by 2013.

Seems like the biomass gold rush is fizzling.



Meanwhile, back in Valdosta, Wiregrass Power LLC,
the shell company for the biomass plant, is owned by
Sterling Planet, whose founder and chairman

Sonny Murphy
spoke at the groundbreaking for

the Wiregrass Solar LLC plant, another Sterling Planet subsidiary.
I’m sure Chairman Murphy is aware that

his solar plant is already completed
while his biomass plant

still has no suppliers of raw materials, goods, or services nor buyers for its electricity.
Also, the biomass plant site preparation start date is now 1 June 2011,
when, if I’m not mistaken, it used to be January 2011.
And at the most recent VLCIA board meeting, the only mention I heard
of biomass was by a citizen
who spoke against it
while the VLCIA’s project manager
spoke at some length about the completion of the solar plant.
Seems to me building out the solar plant in two directions,
like VLCIA discussed at a previous board meeting, would make the
most sense at this point.
I guess we’ll see what Chairman Murphy does.

-jsq

VDT Civics Lesson on How to Stop a Biomass Plant



The VDT explains how to effect change, if anyone is listening.
Editorial, 13 Jan 2010,

Powerless to stop the power plant:

This week as the rhetoric around the proposed biomass facility has
continued heating up, leading up to

last night’s forum,
one of the main themes has been that “government should do something.”



While the Times does not condone or condemn

Chairman Paulk’s actions in the commission meeting Tuesday night,
understanding the situation may
help shed light on the issue. The county is powerless to do anything to
stop this power plant. The only governmental entity with any power over
the project is the city, and that’s only in the form of the services
being extended and the water being sold to the company, as well as the
sewage sludge that’s being burned. They too are powerless at this
point to stop it.



The editorial continues with the tired old excuse “they can be sued”.
Don’t they have insurance for that?
If the whole thing goes as bad as some opponents predict,
they could be sued for the kind of financial disaster

that faces Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There is one governmental entity that does have the power.
Ah, here it is:

Continue reading →

Banned or Blocked Biomass Incinerators

Leigh Touchton responds to Brad Lofton’s letter of 22 September 2010.
WACE is Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy; more on that new organization later.

-jsq



From: Leigh Touchton

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:04:48 -0400

Subject: Mr. Lofton once again misrepresents the facts

To: wace-georgia@googlegroups.com

Cc: blofton@industrialauthority.com, [and the VDT and some elected officials and other interested parties]

Dear WACE:

1. Mr. Lofton stated: “Despite what Mrs. Touchton stated, we’ve been in
touch with the Massachusetts and Florida EPD, and in no way, shape, or form
is either state banning biomass facilities. In fact, there are 15 scheduled
now for New England, many in Mass, and a number in Florida. There have been
discussions regarding the level of incentives (tax credits) allowed, but no
moratorium. We’ll be happy to share our contacts with you.”

I would like for Mr. Lofton to share his contacts with WACE. Because
previously his contacts at the Sierra Club were misrepresented by him.
Sierra Club does NOT endorse Biomass Incineration, neither does any other
major environmental organization in America.

I would also like Mr. Lofton to share his private email list of stakeholders
with WACE, in particular the investors, because I would like to share some
information with them. I expect transparency in our public officials and
his refusal to address my letter to the editor of the Valdosta Daily Times
in the same newspaper in which it was published does not lead me to believe
that he is operating in good faith. I am very disturbed that any public
official would state that they did not want to “energize a forum for
misinformation” regarding published concerns in the local newspaper. Mr.
Lofton has a duty to respond to all citizens’ concerns publicly. I am very
disturbed that he thought he could privately email a group about my
published letter to the editor and that the first I learned of it was nearly
a month after he did so. And no, I still don’t wish to have a private
telephone conversation with him or a private meeting with him, I’ve been
reading all the public documents that have resulted from his supposed
lengthy due diligence period. As I stated, the first I learned of this
proposed biomass incinerator was when the EPD called for public comments.
Mr. Lofton and Councilman James Wright were both invited to the June Women
in the NAACP meeting and neither man showed up so I don’t really care to
engage in who didn’t return whose phone calls. Additionally he could have
made contact with the schools and churches in the area, or attended an SCLC
or NAACP meeting but he did not. All our our meetings are open to the
public, unlike his private list of stakeholders.

Here’s one internet article on the moratorium in Massachusetts.

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Biomass plant air quality permit approved, but is that final?



Georgia EPD approved the air quality permit for the Wiregrass Power LLC
biomass plant on Perimeter Road just outside Valdosta in Lowndes County,
with an effective date of July 19, 2010 (PDF, Word).
Somebody may want to do the exercise of comparing the approved permit
with the application to see if the process was entirely
rubberstamp or whether any changes at all were made after

the many questions
people asked at the

public hearing.

Meanwhile, is that it?
Will the plant be built?
Not necessarily:

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Dr. William Sammons on Biomass Sustainability and Economics



Here’s an interesting
video interview
with Dr. William Sammons,

the doctor who spoke in Traverse City just before that biomass plant was nixed.

Is it more important to reach the target … or to say we have new information
and we need to revise the targets and what qualifies?

He’s talking
about potential billions of dollars of health costs from particulates,
about

“waste” wood (what they say they will burn) vs. whole trees (what they end up burning),
and most importantly about sustainability.

Biomass plants don’t have to report their CO2 emissions,
so if all the proposed biomass plants get built
we’re talking about as much as 800 million tons of CO2 from
biomass plants by 2020, 12 to 14% of total CO2
emissions for the U.S. (not just power emissions: total national emissions).

Trees don’t grow fast enough to suck all that back out of the air in ten years.

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WCTV on Biomass

A couple of biomass plant stories from WCTV.

On April 28 Deneige Broom wrote,
Proposed Plant Raises Air Quality Questions:

A Biomass plant could bring business and money to the area. But some want to be assured their health won’t suffer in the name of progress.

Some good quotes in there:

Dr. Brad Bergstrom attended the hearing wants concrete answers.

“There’s not going to be anything in the permit that will say, you can only burn this much sewage sludge,” said Bergstrom. “The company plans to only burn a small percentage but once they get their permit, that could change.”

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