Tag Archives: jobs

Authority should listen to other sources –John S. Quarterman

This op-ed by me appeared in the VDT today, 24 Feb 2011.
On 15 Feb 2011 I spoke directly to the VLCIA board about the main points
and the next day I sent them the longer version,

Why “jobs, jobs, jobs” isn’t good enough for the public good and the general welfare,
which includes links to videos of the relevant speeches and to

VLCIA’s charter. -jsq



Everyone wants jobs for those who need them and jobs for
young people so they don’t have to go somewhere else to find one.
But what good is that if those jobs suck up all the water those people
need to drink?

At the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner Brad Lofton gave
a speech which I liked, and I told him so afterwards, because it
was mostly about real industry with real jobs that that the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) has brought
into the area.

But it had a problem:

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How much has VLCIA paid for Sterling Energy travel?



VLCIA says

it paid for hotel rooms in December for
Bob McCann and Gil Waldman of Sterling Energy. Why?
How much more has VLCIA spent on travel for Sterling?
And how can this public-private keep Sterling documents related
to the biomass plant confidential?

According to the VDT,

“Biomass plant said good for Valdosta and Georgia,”
by Johnna Pinholster, 4 Nov 2010,
“Gilbert Waldman is vice president and general manager of Sterling Energy Assets”
and
“Sterling Energy brought in Robert McCann, Jr. from Golder Associates Inc.”
It’s curious that VLCIA paid for a room for the general manager of Sterling
Energy, which I thought VLCIA said was the principle investor in the project.
Seems like more

we, we, we to me.
This is yet more evidence that VLCIA and Sterling Energy do indeed
have a public-private partnership.
In which case, why can Sterling and VLCIA

claim Sterling’s wood fuel
sourcing study is proprietary?

The VDT also said:

On Tuesday, Waldman, an environmental consultant, members of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority board, and Brad Lofton, executive director of the authority, sat down to discuss the plant, how it works and how clean it will be.

Did VLCIA also pay for rooms for Waldman and McCann for that
Tuesday 2 Nov 2010 meeting?
How much money has VLCIA spent bringing them down here?

-jsq

VLCIA Payments for 6 Dec 2010 biomass “Forum”



VLCIA spent

more than
$17,000 on speakers and catering for their 6 Dec 2010 “Forum”, according
to VLCIA’s response to an open records request.
Yet local speakers against the biomass plant
who would have charged nothing were not
invited to be on the panel.
VLCIA insists on referring to it as an “information exchange”,
even though their hand-picked moderator said

“we’re not going to get into debate.”

Here is a summary of the expenses:

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Where is the Wiregrass Solar plant?



Update 21 Feb 2011: Col. Ricketts confirms the groundbreaking is at 11:30 AM today on Water Plant Road; follow the signs from there to the construction site.

The groundbreaking for the Wiregrass Solar plant is

Monday 21 February, rumor has it at 11:30AM, but where?
My understanding is that the site
is at the back of the City of Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment property,
which is


View Larger Map


on Water Plant Road off of GA 94 (New Statenville Highway)
east of Inner Perimeter Road.

However, VLCIA’s land proposed for the Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant
is around the corner off of Inner Perimeter Road east of Deloach Road:
It’s conceivable that VLCIA might hold the ceremony on its own property.
See their map below:

Continue reading →

Uncontrolled growth and water problems




Daniel Mayer, November 2006

Maybe growth, growth, growth alone
isn’t any better than jobs, jobs jobs alone,
and water remains one of the main issues.
Kay Harris wrote in the VDT 17 Feb 2011 that

Aging infrastructure, growth, and other issues contribute to city’s sewer woes:

Valdosta Utilities Director Henry …
Hicks addressed the sewage spills, saying they are caused by excess rain
which overloads the Withlacoochee River Water Pollution Control Plant. He
said growth along the river and throughout the regional watershed area
has contributed to the amount of excess water running into the river.

“When you have all this growth and you create more impervious surface
area (through paving and development), more and more water is running into
the Withlacoochee. On average, the plant handles six million gallons a
day and is equipped to accommodate twice that, but in recent rain events,
we’ve gotten upwards of 15 million gallons extra in stormwater runoff
and the system can’t handle that,” Hicks said.

Some of the comments on the VDT page are also interesting.
Guest remarked:

Continue reading →

VLCIA board meeting today

The

Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority board meets tonight:

All Meetings will be held at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority
Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street, unless otherwise notified.

I would post a link to their agenda, if they had it online, but they don’t.

Meanwhile, here they are.

-jsq


Roy Copeland

Roy Copeland
Tom Call

Tom Call
Mary B. Gooding

Mary Gooding
Norman Bennett

Norman Bennett
Jerry Jennett

Jerry Jennett,

Chairman

Why “jobs, jobs, jobs” isn’t good enough for the public good and the general welfare –John S. Quarterman



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 →

Contracts between VLCIA and Wiregrass Power LLC



Shortly after GA EPD approved the

final air quality construction permit for the proposed
biomass plant, new contracts were signed between Wiregrass Power LLC
and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).

Update 10 Feb 2011:
JPEG images of each page are also available now.

Here they are, as PDFs generated from scans of paper copies.

Both contracts were signed
for Wiregrass Power, LLC by Therrell Murphy, Jr., President,
on 26 July 2010,
and for VLCIA by
Jerry J. Jennett, Chairman and Mary B. Gooding, Secretary, on 17 August 2010.

These documents were obtained by an open records request by a citizen who
then gave copies to LAKE.

-jsq

Ben Copeland on water and growth in south Georgia



Ben Copeland asked the big question: “How much growth do we want?”
He related it to regional water in the aquifer, rivers, growth, and planning,
speaking at the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, 28 January 2011.

Copeland is Past Chairman of the Board, Wiregrass Technical College.
He serves on the regional water planning council.
He said

those councils were started due to worries
about Atlanta not having a reliable water supply.
He said the councils were

planning for water and wastewater to 2050.
The local regional council is the

Suwannee-Satilla regional water council.


He described the

extent of the water planning region (see map).
He
expects finalization of the water plan by May.
He talked about the Floridian aquifer, and how he’s worried not so much about Atlanta taking our water as about Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee.
“Because they all have their straws in that same aquifer.”

Finally, Ben Copeland asked the big question:

“How much growth do we want?”

“Do we want to be Jacksonville?
Do we want to be Tallahassee?
Do we want to be a large metropolitan region?

Folks are going to move to south Georgia, I can tell you that,
because of all the resources that we have.
I’m a great believer in the free enterprise system.
How much do we try to limit that?

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VLCIA biomass website



VLCIA catches up with LAKE in posting videos of 6 Dec 2010 biomass event.
But where’s the VLCIA FAQ website?

Update 24 Jan 2011 7:13 PM: Bruce J. Bendl found the FAQ.

In this video,

Brad Lofton tells the VLCIA board that staff have put a lot
of time and effort into building a website to answer
frequently asked questions about biomass, including
videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event.
When I congratulated Lofton on this
and asked the board for an answer to one of those qeustions,
I didn’t think to ask for a URL for this new website,
figuring it would be announced on
the main VLCIA website.
If it’s there, I don’t see it.


However, VLCIA has sprouted

a YouTube channel
in which the long-awaited professional videos from the 6 Dec 2010 event
have appeared, six weeks after the event.





Video of VLCIA 18 Jan 2010 board meeting
by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

More on that below. Meanwhile,


LAKE’s videos of the entire event have been on YouTube

since a few days after the event.

Continue reading →