Tag Archives: Valdosta

Believe So. Cal. Edison about San Onofre?

Should we believe the operator of the broken San Onofre 2 nuclear plant that it’s safe to restart at 70% power? The same operator that knew the now-broken steam generators were flawed before it installed them? Recommended by the same NRC staff who couldn’t answer opponents’ questions? The same NRC that doesn’t publish licensee documents and says that’s never been a practice?

SanDiego6.com wrote yesterday, Sen. Boxer Blasts Report on San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,

On Monday, Southern California Edison announced it had formalized a request to amend its operating license to allow it to operate its Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent beginning June 1.

The reactor was undergoing scheduled maintenance in January 2012 when a small, non-injury leak was discovered in plant’s other reactor. The plant has been shut down since.

According to Edison, vibrations that led to premature wearing of steam pressure tubes in the reactors don’t occur at 70 percent power. The utility wants to operate on limited power for the five warm weather months and then shut down for an inspection of the tubes.

After the inspection, the reactor would resume operating at 70 percent power. The company said it would use the collected tube data to determine an appropriate power setting for the long term.

There’s the catch:

Continue reading →

Videos of ZBOA April meeting @ ZBOA 2013-04-02

Here are videos of the two Lowndes County cases (both in Lake Park) and the one Valdosta case at the April meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA).

ZBOA is setting an example for local elected and appointed authorities by publishing its own agendas and minutes which you can find here on the City of Valdosta website. The minutes for the March 2013 meeting are not up yet, but the agenda is. Here’s transcription of the case descriptions.

Here’s a video playlist:


Videos of ZBOA April meeting
Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 April 2013.

-jsq

IKEA biggest solar in Georgia

The biggest solar rooftop installation in Georgia? Not by mighty Georgia Power, not by an EMC, not even by GaSU: it’s IKEA’s distribution center in Chatham County. Chatham is also trailing only Atlanta in solar installations in general.

Mary Landers wrote for Savannahnow.com 7 January 2013, New solar adds to Chatham’s growing inventory,

Just in time for the new year, and for a tax break for the old one, Consolidated Utilities began producing electricity from solar panels at its water treatment plant in west Chatham County on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.

“When I left on Monday the meter was receiving power,” said Tony Abbott, president of Consolidated Utilities, a private local water company.

The 416-panel, 100-kilowatt system is big enough to power about 10 average homes for 25 years, said Julian Smith, of SolarSmith, which installed the system. At the water treatment site, however, solar will instead power the blowers that keep the sewage ponds aerated. The panels occupy previously useless property in a flood zone, Smith noted.

OK, the Wiregrass Solar installation at Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is larger, and the Valdosta City Council recently voted to expand it further. Go Valdosta!

But what about IKEA?

It’s not the largest solar installation in the county. That honor still goes to the IKEA distribution center, which in October plugged in its 1,460-kilowatt solar array on the roof of its distribution center. That IKEA installation is in fact the largest in the state.

Back in July I mentioned that IKEA was going to build that array, and IKEA was building almost as much solar as all of Georgia Power’s parent Southern Company. BusinessWire reported 9 Oct 2012 IKEA Plugs-In Georgia’s Largest Private Solar Rooftop Array on Savannah Distribution Center: Surpasses 75% U.S. Solar Presence.

This installation represents the 34th completed solar project for IKEA in the U.S., with five more locations underway, making the eventual U.S. solar presence of IKEA nearly 89% of its U.S. locations, generating with a total 38 MW. IKEA owns and operates each of its solar PV energy systems atop its buildings — as opposed to a solar lease or PPA (power purchase agreement) — and globally has allocated €590 million to invest in renewable energy, focusing on solar and wind during the coming three years. This investment reinforces the long-term commitment of IKEA to sustainability and confidence in photovoltaic (PV) technology. More than 250,000 solar panels have been installed on IKEA stores and buildings across the world. The company also owns and/or operates approximately 110 wind turbines in Europe.

The Savannahnow article mentions something happening in Chatham County but not so much yet in Lowndes County:

“What’s really going on in Chatham is that lots of homeowners put solar on their rooftops,” Arora said. “The excitement exists in Chatham for solar.”

-jsq

Banks as slumlord renters reducing property values

Lou Raguse write for WIVB.com 4 April 2013, Cheektowaga picks fight with big banks,

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WIVB)—Neighbors in Cheektowaga say empty houses are ruining the value of their neighborhoods and bringing in unwanted guests.

Residents want to know why these properties, seized by banking giants, have been left to crumble. The town board says they have serious issues with the homeowners.

“In normal life, you would call them slumlords,” says Town Board Member Charlie Markel.

Those so-called “slumlords” are big banks like Bank of America and Chase. Markel says in too many cases, a homeowner falls behind on a mortgage and the bank begins to foreclose. But then, it stops short. He says the bank continues paying property tax but allows the homes to fall into disrepair, never allowing them back on the market for sale, or to be auctioned.

Let’s remember what last year’s study of America’s richest and poorest cities found about the Valdosta MSA:

Despite these positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year [2011], higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent.

I wonder how big national and multinational banks are serving our area? And with a vacancy rate that high, and housing prices still dropping, why are we building more houses?

-jsq

Videos of ZBOA March meeting @ ZBOA 2013-03-05

Here are videos of the March meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA). They had two cases, one each for Lowndes County and Valdosta.

ZBOA is setting an example for local elected and appointed authorities by publishing its own agendas and minutes which you can find here on the City of Valdosta website. The minutes for the March 2013 meeting are not up yet, but the agenda is. Here are the two cases from that agenda:

LOWNDES COUNTY CASES

2. VAR-2013-02 — Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (4914 Timber Drive, Lake Park)
(TABLED from the February meeting)
Variance to ULDC Chapter 9.01.06(A)(3) as it pertains to nonconforming signs.

CITY OF VALDOSTA CASES:

3. APP-2013-01 — Macedonia First Baptist Church (715 J.L. Lomax Drive)
Variance to LDR Section 230-9(D)(8) as it pertains to the size of a freestanding sign.

Here’s a video playlist:


Videos of ZBOA March meeting
Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 March 2013.

-jsq

SB 104 that changed comprehensive plan rules: good or bad?

The Georgia legislature overwhelmingly passed a rather brief bill that changes the requirements for Comprehensive Plans by local governments. ACCG and GMA both supported it. It seems to be related to recent Department of Community Affairs (DCA) rulemaking that was mostly positive. Does that make it a good law? Opinions seem to differ. Here’s what I’ve found.

The Bill: SB 104

Continue reading →

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:

Continue reading →

Activists Grill NRC on San Onofre Restart

Ecological Options Network (EON) posted video of public comments at the latest Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meeting about restarting San Onofre 2, where documents indicate Southern California Edison knew the new steam generators were defective years before they even installed them.

EON noted:
In these video excerpts from the 4-3-2013 NRC webcast, informed activists hammer the NRC staff and SoCal Edison reps with penetrating comments and questions about apparently collusive fast-track plans to restart one of San Onofre’s broken reactors—in a tsunami and earthquake zone, in the middle of a strategic U.S. military base, in a surrounding urban area with a population of 8.5 million people—a plant that is not cost-effective 99% of the time, operated by a utility with the worst safety record in the country.

What could possibly go wrong?

Participants include Ace Hoffman, David Freeman, Kendra Ulrich, Dan Hirsch, John Geesman, Ray Lutz, Gary Headrick and Myla Reson.

Activists just helped convince NRC to deny a license for Calvert Cliffs 3 in Maryland, and Continue reading →

Road abandonment, deannexation, and a mysterious special presentation @ LCC 2013-04-08

The Lowndes County Commission is holding a Special Presentation; apparently so special they don’t say what it is. Come see for yourself Monday morning at 8:30 or Tuesday evening at 5:30, whichever meeting they’re going to have the Special Presentation; the agenda doesn’t say that, either. And see what they do about an abandonment of a road and a deannexation request.

Here’s the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, APRIL 8, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  4. Special Presentation
  5. Minutes for Approval
    1. Work Session — March 25, 2013
    2. Regular Session — March 26, 2013
  6. For Consideration
    1. Abandonment of Log Road (CR 8)
    2. Deannexation Request, Houser, 2990 Stallings Rd, 148-58A, ~36 acres, R-15 (City)
  7. Bid — Six Month Fuel Contract
  8. Reports-County Manager
  9. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address

-jsq

Alcohol, drugs, and broken nuke equipment

A broken cooling water pump at Fermi 2 yesterday plus 60% lost safety data today. Airflow and quality problems at Kewaunee and Three Mile Island. Drugs at Saint Lucie in Florida and alcohol at Nine Mile Point 1 in New York and at Braidwood in Illinois. And four workers injured at Callaway in Missouri. Apparently nuke employees can get terminated for off-site recreational drug use, but not for fires or broken equipment.

We’ve already seen the event about fire at Plant Vogtle. Here are more events in the NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013 and also today, April 5, 2013,

Continue reading →