Tag Archives: Valdosta

Arsenic, Outings, and Flooding: WWALS Watershed Coalition @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

Water issues strongly affect economic development, so I talked about the new WWALS Watershed Coalition at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

The VDT declined to speak, so I did. After apologizing for no okra today, I commended the Authority for talking about the missing agenda items and for mentioning due diligence and flood control.

Mostly I talked about the new WWALS Watershed Coalition, www.wwals.net, incorporated in June 2012, which is about watershed issues such as flooding, water quality, and invasive species related to the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River System. I mentioned arsenic in some local well water, which the Department of Health has finally said should be tested, three years after Janet McMahan discovered it was a problem. I invited VLCIA board and staff to two upcoming WWALS events: Continue reading →

A New Home! Year Six @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

The Industrial Authority was very forthcoming about everything about their new office purchase except who they were buying it from; this was at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority. The seller turns out to be a household name hereabouts.

New Office –Roy Copeland

Chairman Roy Copeland talked about the at least five year process for finding “a new home” for VLCIA. 103 Roosevelt Drive He noted that before he joined the board they were considering buying a property he and his wife own. He and former Lowndes County Chairman Ashley Paulk looked at another property near the Courthouse. VLCIA even toured the historic Lowndes County Courthouse but concluded it couldn’t be renovated for their purposes. Jerry Jennett noted the search had gone on even longer than five years. Copeland said the parameters they had set were, as far as he recalled, Continue reading →

Two more megawatts of local solar power! @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

One megawatt at DuPont and one megawatt at Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant: that’s two more megawatts of solar power coming to Valdosta and Lowndes County! This was revealed at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

Project Director Allan Ricketts was on a speaker phone, so Executive Director Andrea Schruijer gave the Existing Industry and Project Report. She thinks maybe three existing industry expansions in second and third quarter 2013. They’ve continued working with a pharmaceutical company about locating here; more on that later. Continued work with three renewable and sustainable energy companies, and Georgia Power is cooperating.

We did receive notification that two of those advanced solar initiatives have been approved by Georgia Power Company.

One of them is a megawatt solar expansion at DuPont. The other is a megawatt solar expansion at the City of Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Plant.

She didn’t mention that in most states such projects wouldn’t have to be approved for doled-out quotas by a power company.

Schruijer also talked about Continue reading →

Logistics and YouTube Videos! Marketing @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

So many things the Industrial Authority is doing that they could be promoting! Some of them came out at their 16 April 2013 Board Meeting. Maybe they even took notes about the Georgia Logistics Summit putting all its presentations on its YouTube channel.

In her Marketing Report, Meghan Duke said branded materials were now available and in use. Valdostalowndesprospector.com has new feature for comparison of features by county, city, etc. for any community in the world. Several recent guests, including Georgia Power South Region, whom VLCIA took on a tour of their industrial parks and Steeda Autosports. VLCIA hosted Board of GA Dept. of Economic Development at Moody AFB. She didn’t say, but GDEcD Board of Directors says:

Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Board of Director’s meeting will be held in February 21st, 2013 at Moody AFB, 1800 Moody Road, Valdosta, GA 31601. Due to security on base you will need to have a government (state, federal, etc.) issued ID, such as a driver’s license, with you before you can enter the base. A background check with need to be ran prior to the meeting day so please contact Carrie Bisig & she will let you know what information the base will need.

VLCIA had a community presentation in Atlanta with Continue reading →

If UB, why not VSU? Solar Strand Earth Week

Earth Week at the University at Buffalo, featuring the Solar Strand, 3,200 solar panels generating 750 kilowatts about 1,000 miles north of Valdosta State University. Rutgers U. in New Jersey has 8 solar megawatts coming from a parking lot. If there, why not here? -jsq

Videos: trucks and row crops, and Earth Day again @ LCC 2013-04-22

Seven minutes, with some discussion about trucks and irrigation of row crops on a liquid waste application site. There was no special presentation, not about the Westside Archives, nor about anything else. They did mention this morning’s Earth Day event again, and added a little bit of detail.

Here’s the agenda with a few notes, and links into the video.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Videos: No road abandonment, Yes deannexation, and Earth Day @ LCC 2013-04-09

Eight minutes and a few seconds for the Regular Session of 9 April 2013 of the Lowndes County Commission, with the road closing withdrawn (while it’s still unclear who owns the land next to that road) and the deannexation approved. No special presentation was seen at the scheduled item, but an Earth Day event was announced at the end of the meeting.

Here’s the agenda, with a few notes, and a few links into the video.

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
Continue reading →

Earth Day at the Lowndes County Courthouse @ LCC 2013-04-09

11AM this morning the County will plant three hardwood trees where the Annex was at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse.

At the 9 April 2013 Regular Session, The Chairman announced that at 11AM on Earth Day, Monday 22 April 2013,

over at the historical Courthouse square, Lowndes County Board of Commissioners and Lowndes County Public Works Department will plant three trees that are native to south Georgia in celebrating a three-day free-to-the-public electronic recycling event. The public is welcome. And I’d like to also recognize at this time special thanks to Advanced Disposal and Yancey Caterpillar for helping with the funding of this event.

What we’re doing is at the request of the Committee for the Preservation of the Courthouse. The scene around the Courthouse as you see it now the Annex has come off. There is sod down at this point. We’re going to add three more trees on that, which would be the north side of the Courthouse. It would be three different species of hardwood trees. And when that is completed, we should have a sample of each hardwood tree that is representative of south Georgia around the perimeter of the Courthouse.

So it’s going to be really nice, and it will still allow us to be able to use that green space and all right there for some events and such as that, for Farm Days and what have you. So if you do have it, put it on your calendar, take the opportunity to come out and enjoy the morning with us as we plant those three trees.

There’s no press release about this on the Lowndes County website. Buried in their calendar there is this blurb: Continue reading →

Solar rooftops in a New Orleans neighborhood

Want people to get rooftop solar? Put solar on rooftops where people can see it. Cities and power companies and even NGOs like Habitat for Humanity can help with that.

Andri Antoniades wrote for Takepart.com 10 November 2012, Katrina-Ravaged Neighborhood Reemerges as ‘Largest Solar Housing Development in Southeast’: The former St. Thomas Housing Projects are reborn into a square mile of solar-powered homes,

The St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans used to be known best as a high-crime area, until Hurricane Katrina swept it it all away. But seven years after the fact, St. Thomas has been reborn as the mixed-income River Garden Apartments, which has once again gained notoriety, but this time as the “largest solar neighborhood in the Southeast.”

The River Garden Apartments encompass eight blocks that cover about one square mile of New Orleans. The brightly colored homes are topped with solar panels and according to Clean Technica, the development is Louisiana’s largest solar project to date.

And also in Oakland, California:

Continue reading →

Gulf 3 years ago; Caspian 5 years ago: BP oil well blowouts

Two years before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig poisoned the Gulf of Mexico (Saturday was the third anniversary), apparently BP had a very similar disaster in the Caspian Sea and covered it up. Is this a company or this the 13 spills in 30 days industry we want piping tar sands crude across America to the Gulf for all of 35 permanent jobs and CO2 emissions like 51 coal plants? There’s a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-independent way: solar and wind power can power the U.S. and the world.

Greg Palast wrote for EcoWatch 19 April 2013, BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill,

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There’s more in the article, such as this:

Continue reading →