Who will be
appointed tomorrow
to the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Construction Board of Adjustments and Appeals (VLCCBAA),
who’s on it, and what do they do?
Let’s look back a few years. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Valdosta
Construction Board of Adjustments and Appeals appointment @ LCC 2013-05-28
GEMA, juvenile justice, mowing, and an appointment to the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Construction Board of Adjustments and Appeals
at Tuesday morning’s Work Session, with voting at 5:30PM
that same evening (tomorrow) in the Regular Session.
Who might they appoint?
Who knows?
They don’t tell the public until they meet.
But I’ll guess they’ll reappoint Randy Crews;
see
other post for why.
Here’s the agenda.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
China carbon cap and Georgia Power
If China implements a carbon tax, will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers
change his recent answer to a question about a carbon tax,
which was “why would anyone want that?”
In February
the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MoF) said China would soon tax
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,
and that’s getting closer in
the country whose capital Beijing has smog bad it’s literally off the charts.
Katie Valentine wrote for ThinkProgress 22 May 2013,
Bombshell: China May Be Close To Implementing A Cap On Carbon Pollution,
Continue readingChina is taking steps to tackle its huge carbon output. Today, the country announced the details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014.
And according to one local news source, China could implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon emissions by 2016. China’s 21st Century Business Herald reported this week that the country’s State Council still needs to approve the carbon cap proposal submitted by the National Development and Reform Commission, a government entity that controls much of the Chinese economy. The proposal, which the State Council is reportedly likely to support, would ensure China’s emissions would not increase past the country’s target cap, regardless of economic growth — though it’s still unclear what that cap would be. The paper reported that the NDRC also predicts China’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025, rather than 2030, as earlier predictions stated.
If the cap is adopted,
Monsanto rider came from south Georgia: Jack Kingston GA-01
Jack Kingston (GA-01) slipped the Monsanto rider into a recent law, requiring “the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed”.
Alexis Baden-Mayer wrote for AlterNet 8 July 2012, The “Monsanto Rider”: Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity From Federal Law?
Whom do we have to thank for this sneak attack on USDA safeguards? The agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) — who not coincidentally was voted “legislator of the year for 2011-2012” by none other than the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto and DuPont. As reported by Mother Jones, the Biotechnology Industry Organization declared Kingston a “champion of America’s biotechnology industry” who has “helped to protect funding for programs essential to the survival of biotechnology companies across the United States.”
The Biotechnology Industry Organization’s PR about that award of 24 April 2012 says down at the bottom:
Photos of the award presentation are available upon request.
If that award is such an honor,
why are they hiding the pictures of Jack Kingston receiving it?
If Monsanto’s products are so great, why don’t they label them
so we can tell which they are?
Why did a French court
just uphold a conviction of Monsanto
for poisoning a French farmer?
Why does Monsanto
oppose independent GMO research?
And why did
hundreds of thousands of people just march against Monsanto?
Could it be because of
liver and kidney damage, cancer and birth defects, pollution of water and air,
systematic gaming of the patent system,
perversion of the regulatory system,
and corruption of the legislative system?
Speaking of corruption, Kingston has put the survival of biotechnology companies above the survival of farmers and the health of the American people.
Jack Kingston, voted Biotech “Legislator of the Year.” Responsible for adding the Monsanto Immunity Rider to the farm bill (H.R. 5973, Section 733). Tell him what you think!
www.facebook.coim/jackkingston/, 202-225-5821, 912-352-0101
-jsq
Profits also link Vogtle nukes and Kemper coal
Southern Company gets substantial profits from utility customers paying in advance
for “clean coal” in Kemper County, MS and for new nukes at Plant Vogtle
on the Savannah River in Georgia.
As long as SO can keep raking in those profits, it has incentive
not to get on with distributed solar power.
Kristi E. Swartz wrote for the AJC 27 July 2011, Southern Co.’s profits up on nuke finance fees,
A fee added to Georgia Power bills to help finance a planned nuclear plant expansion also helped parent Southern Co. post an 18 percent profit gain in the second quarter.
The $3.73 monthly fee offsets financing costs for two proposed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Atlanta-based Southern cited it as one of the factors lifting net income to $603.3 million, or 71 cents a share, in the April-June quarter compared with $510.2 million, or 62 cents a share a year earlier. Profits were also helped by a hot early summer, the company said.
Back then SO CEO Tom Fanning said,
“The whole issue is to preserve schedule and costs,” Fanning said.Continue reading
Nuclear reactor percent power from NRC data
Do nuclear reactors really deliver dependable baseload capacity? I hear industry execs say 99.99% uptime. The real average from seven years of NRC data for 104 reactors is 88.13%.
According to Power Reactor Status Reports
posted online by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
here are the actual percent power percentages over time
for the 104 listed nuclear power reactors.
The timeframe is 31 March 2006 through today, 21 May 2013.
(The NRC data appears to go back to 1999, but seven years
is a good sample to start with.)
The computation for each reactor is the sum of the uptime
percentages for each day divided by the number of days.
The total uptime is the sum of the reactor uptimes divided
by the number of reactors.
Here’s the list, sorted two ways:
Content in today’s Industrial Authority agenda! @ VLCIA 2013-05-21
Names of projects!
Lists of PR and marketing items!
Is this a new trend from our Industrial Authority?
Or will it be like
the last time I complimented them on an agenda with content
and was told later that one was an accident.
Here’s the agenda. Sure, the project names are codewords, but that’s how they talk to prospective companies without revealing all their cards to the competition. And this one has a name:
-
Georgia Power Company Advanced Solar Initiaitve (GPASI) Projects
Maybe we’ll hear more about those two megawatts of solar power. Maybe even more are scheduled for Lowndes County.
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial AuthorityContinue reading
Agenda, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Library Board this afternoon @ SGLB 2013-05-21
1PM-3PM today, according to
the VDT calendar.
Who’s running it now that
Kay Harris isn’t chair?
And will whoever it is welcome video cameras?
The South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees will be meeting Tuesday, March 19 at 1PM in the Folsom Room of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Public Library to conduct regular business.The meeting is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. For more information call 333.0086.
Yes, that says March, but the calendar entry says May 21, today.
And it says “open to the public and all are welcome to attend”.
But are all welcome to record?
Or do all have to
stay inside an 8×4 foot blue rectangle next to a loud air cleaner?
Was that just Kay Harris’ policy and will it change now that she
has resigned as chair and from the board?
If there’s anything about this meeting on the library’s website, I can’t find it.
-jsq
Board of Health meets this morning @ VLCHA 2013-05-21
The Board of Health meets this morning at 7:30 AM,
according to the
VDT calendar.
There’s nothing about this
on
its own web page.
Gretchen is there with the LAKE video camera.
-jsq
Videos: paving and suing @ LCC 2013-05-14
See how the Commission does “the people’s business” one of the
Christian minister Commissioners mentioned in
his invocation
before another Baptist minister Commissioner
expressed concerns about a different religion’s choice of location.
No explanation for
why county citizens can’t choose their trash service
or
why the county is suing a local business on behalf of New York City investors,
and
half a million dollars for paving without any competitive bid named
while
one man says the county took his property for road right of way.
One more potential board appointee showed up, for 2 out of 3.
Here’s the agenda with links to the videos and a few notes. See also the videos of the previous morning’s Work Session.
Continue readingLOWNDES 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