Tag Archives: parking lot

Who’s inaccurate: VDT, Valdosta, GEFA, Chamber, County?

Both Chamber of Commerce Chair Myrna Ballard and Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard say the VDT is inaccurate. The VDT took offense at Ballard’s assertion. Which do you believe? I believe I’d like to see the evidence, not just the VDT’s assertions. And this junior high school cat fight the VDT insists on is not helping fix the real problem with water and wastewater in Valdosta and Lowndes County: the widespread and longterm damage to our watersheds that turned a normal rain in 2009 into a 700 year flood, and caused another flooding of the Withlacoochee Wasterwater Treatment Plant this year. I’m all for investigative reporting, but I have not yet once seen the VDT investigate the real underlying issues of longtime clearcutting and building of roads subdivisions, and parking lots without adequate consideration of water flows.

The VDT front page today has yet another story attacking the City of Valdosta, Loan info from GEFA contradicts City: $11 million awaits disbursement, loan amounts don’t match. I can’t make much sense out of it, because while Jason Shaefer has dug up a lot of interesting information, he doesn’t include dates for much of the financial detail he attributes to GEFA. Let’s see the VDT publish the documents they are referring to. The city does publish its Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports. The VDT has a website, and could publish whatever records it got from GEFA, which after all were produced using our tax dollars, and are therefore public records. Or if the documents are somewhere on GEFA’s website, the VDT could publish links to the specific documents. The VDT did publish a timeline of correspondence with the City about loans, so it could just as easily publish the GEFA documents and its own page-by-page and chart-by-chart comparison so we could all see for ourselves.

The VDT prepended this blurb to its timeline:

It has come to the attention of the Times that the Chamber of Commerce has called a special meeting on Tuesday to address what COC Pres. Myrna Ballard terms as “damage to our community’s reputation” due to the stories that have appeared in the newspaper. The invitation for the 9 a.m. meeting at the Chamber office was extended to only a select group of Chamber members, no media, and states that Mayor John Gayle and City Manager Larry Hanson will explain the city’s financial status. The Times takes very seriously the implication that the newspaper has written anything that is “inaccurate,” as stated by the Chamber. As such, the Times has chosen to show the public the information provided to the newspaper in response to questions posed to the City, with no editing, to allow citizens the opportunity to see for themselves if what the Times has written is an “inaccurate” portrayal of the city’s financial status.

What was that again?

The Times takes very seriously the implication that the newspaper has written anything that is “inaccurate,” as stated by the Chamber.

How about as stated by Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard? In a letter from him to me of 29 January 2013 Pritchard stated:

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Solar college campuses far to the north: why not at VSU?

This spring, the University at Buffalo did it, and now Rutgers is doing it: installing solar arrays for power and profit. Rutgers is in New Jersey, the #2 state in solar power. We have a lot more sun down here. How about we catch up and get ahead in solar power, starting with VSU?

Brita Belli wrote for ecoemagination 25 September 2012, Renewable U: College Campuses Invest in Renewable Energy

Over the summer, crews at Rutgers University's Livingston Campus began transforming a 32-acre, 3,500-spot parking lot into one of the largest solar canopy arrays in the nation. The array will have a capacity of 8 megawatts, enough to power 1,000 homes.

The canopy is more than just eco window dressing — Antonio Calcado, Rutgers vice president for facilities and capital planning, expects that with the financing structure, grants and energy credits, the investment will return about $28 million to the university over the next 20 years. A previous solar project had a similarly rapid payback.

“Combined with the electricity we produce, it's a winner all around,” says Calcado. “We're an institution of higher learning—we teach this stuff—so we should also lead by example. It's a living laboratory in many respects.”

Lead by example: now there's an idea! An idea that might even attract businesses.

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Solar parking lot in Atlanta

We don’t have to look to far Texas for examples of where to put solar panels. Let’s try Atlanta.

Next to the downtown Marriott in Atlanta:


Atlanta, Georgia, 26 June 2011.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

That’s Gretchen in the center as reference human for scale.

Google map picture:

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No land for solar in Georgia?

Nelson Hawk, after an excellent panel presentation at the Georgia Solar Summit, repeated the old canard that there’s not much land available for solar in the southeast. I couldn’t stand it, and blurted out “parking lots!” And airports, and road rights of way, and, let me think: rooftops! Or waste water treatment plants, like Valdosta just used, or barns on the north edges of fields, or the acreage Georgia Power is wasting on nuclear plants, or….


Gretchen Quarterman and Dan Corrie
Dan Corrie notes that Cobb EMC bought up 3600 acres in Ben Hill County for a coal plant. That acreage could generate quite a bit of solar power!

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Solar Parking Lots

One objection I’ve heard to solar power in Georgia is that it would take an area the size of metro Atlanta to power metro Atlanta. Well, why not use metro Atlanta do do that? Put solar panels on housetops and business rooftops. And use parking lots:

Lin Edwards writes in physorg.com about Parking lots could become ‘solar groves’ (w/ Video):

Architect Robert Noble, who specializes in sustainable design has come up with the idea of turning parking lots into “solar groves” that shade the vehicles, generate electricity, and serve as recharging stations for electric vehicles.
Or forget Atlanta. Hahira or Valdosta could do this just as easily.

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