“THUMBS DOWN: To area officials who continue to refer
to the opponents of the biomass plant as a “fringe” group.
Far more citizens are concerned about the plant
than officials would like for the
public to believe. Thankfully, the city council allowed them to speak
at Thursday’s meeting, but the issue is not going away until their
health concerns are addressed.”
A year ago the VDT was solidly in the pro biomass camp.
Guess they didn’t like being fed misinformation,
any more than the rest of us did.
And that was before the VDT said
VLCIA illegally made up a document.
The reporter who conducted the interview with Industrial Authority Project
Manager Allen Ricketts has been subsequently repeatedly contacted by
Ricketts for what he deems “false reporting.” According to Ricketts,
the timeline was never official and was only something the Industrial
Authority threw together to appease the Times when given an official Open
Records Request. Ricketts is apparently unaware that legally he cannot
produce a document that does not exist to comply with said request. If
he knowingly did so, as he now claims, that is a clear violation of the
Open Records Act.
Presumably that would be the “Project Critical Path time-line is attached”
that wasn’t actually attached to
documents returned for an open records request of 17 February 2011.
Hm, since VLCIA did supply such a document to the VDT,
presumably it is now a VLCIA document subject to open records request,
even though it was not what VLCIA told VDT it was.
Protestors wearing respirator masks held signs reading “Biomass? No!”
in front of the Valdosta City Hall building on Thursday. Members of
the Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, the VSU student organization
Students Against Violating the Environment, and other concerned Valdosta
citizens showed up to protest the construction of the Wiregrass Power:
Biomass Electric Generating Plant.
“We already have solar power resources in place that we could be using
and I feel like money should be directed towards that,” Ivey Roubique,
vice-president of the Student Geological Society, said. “It wouldn’t
be good for the community and even though I’m in college here it
still matters.”
The Spectator article quotes from two speakers for whom LAKE
happens to have video, linked below.
Continue reading →
When public officials ignore objections for long enough, eventually
people start speculating as to their motives, in this case about the proposed biomass plant.
Here’s
the video:
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 February 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Erin Hurley provided the very model of how to give a speech:
I’m the president of
Students Against Violating the Environment at VSU.
I’m here representing
200+ members of SAVE, that consists of students, faculty, community members.
We are deeply concerned with environmental issues and
we are networking together to make this city a more humane and
sustainable community
for future generations.
As a student, I feel I have the right to be able to breathe clean air
at the college I attend.
With this biomass plant possibly being built here,
the future for generations to come are in jeopardy, and we want to protect our fellow and future students’ health.
Please take into consideration the future health of this university
and its community,
and don’t sell grey water to the proposed biomass plant.
Erin Hurley, President of
SAVE, Students Against Violating the Environment, speaking at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
She said who she was, who she represented, how many, what they were for, what they wanted, quickly enough that attention didn’t waver, slowly and loudly enough to be heard, and briefly enough to transcribe, with pathos, logic, and politic. Even the mayor looked up at “As a student….”
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
U.S. sales of organic foods and beverages grew from $1 billion in 1990
to $24.8 billion in 2009,
according to the Organic Trade Association.
The sector saw double-digit growth — often more than 20 percent —
every year over the past decade except 2009, at the tail-end of the
recession. Even then, organic sales rose 5.9 percent from the previous
year while total food sales increased only 1.6 percent.
Sure, everyone wants jobs for the people right now and jobs
so the children don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water
those children need to drink?
This is the problem:
“What I believe the three most important things are,
not only for our community, and our state, and our country,
but for our country,
thats jobs number 1, jobs number 2, and jobs.”
Brad Lofton, Executive Director,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
speaking at the
Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner,
Lake Park, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
I shook Brad Lofton’s hand after that speech and told him I liked it,
because I did: in general it was a positive speech about real accomplishments.
I’ve also pointed out I had a few nits with that speech.
This one is more than a nit.
This one is basic philosophy and policy.
Now one would expect an executive director of an industrial authority
to be all about jobs.
And that would be OK, if
Continue reading →
I’m just an older, working man that lives in our fair city of
Valdosta. I have children and grandchildren that live, work and go to
school in Lowndes County. After looking at the information available, and
doing some research in my limited spare time, I’ve come to the
conclusion that this proposed biomass facility that the Industrial
Authority is trying to push through is a really bad idea. The pollution
that will continuously pour from the plant will create cancers, heart and
respiratory disease, as well as seriously aggravating chronic conditions
such as asthma. Children are especially at risk, and there are two schools
within a mile of the plant site, not to mention all the homes.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Officials here decided seven years ago to borrow $125
million to rebuild and expand the city’s enormous trash incinerator,
which the federal government had shut down because of toxic air pollution.
But the incinerator burned through the money faster than the trash,
leaving Harrisburg residents feeling like they were living through a
sequel to the 1986 movie “The Money Pit.”
There were contractor troubles, delays, cost overruns and squabbles. The
city borrowed tens of millions more, shoveling good money after bad into
the job.
Over nearly a decade, officials at the Harrisburg Authority and City
Hall made a series of decisions that sought to get the trash incinerator
working and profitable, but which instead brought Pennsylvania’s
capital to the brink of bankruptcy.
The 2003 deal that took on $125 million in debt to repair the incinerator
neglected to include a performance bond.
Inexperienced firms were hired. Fees were paid for work poorly done. Loans
were taken on disastrous terms.
Officials were aided, or rather misled, by the advice of numerous
attorneys, bankers and engineers apparently far more interested in
collecting handsome fees than they were in protecting the interests
of taxpayers.
As a result, there is a deep distrust of the fundamental institutions
that created this fiasco.
Something else sounds familiar about this situation:
While some of the seats have changed, many of the same people in
government today had their fingerprints on these decisions.
It’s the same old boy network locally as approved Sterling Chemical,
and the chair of the county commission at that time is now on the
Industrial Authority.
And the VLCIA has taken on what is reputed to be a $15 million bond issue.
How big is Harrisburg?
50,000 people,
same as Valdosta.
What is Harrisburg considering?
Bankruptcy.
Who profited anyway?
Local developers.
What’s the moral?
All of the guarantees proved worthless.
All of the fail-safes failed.
What say we have the investigation now, before the fail-safes fail?
“THUMBS DOWN: To area officials who continue to refer to the opponents of the biomass plant as a “fringe” group. Far more citizens are concerned about the plant than officials would like for the public to believe. Thankfully, the city council allowed them to speak at Thursday’s meeting, but the issue is not going away until their health concerns are addressed.”
And that was before the VDT said
VLCIA illegally made up a document.
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
