Tag Archives: Valdosta

Repeat trash talk, plus map @ LCC 2013-02-12

Dave Shepler, regional manager of Advanced Disposal, suddenly decided he didn’t have to be in Biloxi after all, and reappeared at Tuesday evening’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session for a more public (and more polished) version of what he said at the previous morning’s Work Session.

Trash day map There was a bit of new information, which included that his company had delivered a map of on which day to expect waste collection pickup, which is now on the Lowndes County website and he said it was published as an advertisement in the VDT.

Here’s the video:

He also got into a TV news station’s website report. Eames Yates wrote for WCTV yesterday, Company Apologies for Problems with Trash Collection.

Thanks to Commissioners Demarcus Marshall and John Page for getting some public explanation out of this company granted by the Commission before those two Commissioners were elected.

-jsq

Radioactive tritium leak at Plant Hatch discovered yesterday

Will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say this tritium leak at Plant Hatch is not a problem, like he did about the one in September 2011? Meanwhile, how many tritium leaks have you heard of from solar panels or wind mills?

According to the NRC’s Event Notification Report for February 14, 2013, OFFSITE NOTIFICATION DUE TO TRITIUM RELEASE ONSITE,

“As part of routine rounds on 2/13/13, site personnel discovered an overflow condition at a collection tank containing water with low levels of tritium (approximately 6,000 pCi/L). The discharge pump for the tank was found to be nonfunctional which resulted in the overflow condition. Following discovery, a portable pump was utilized to pump the water to the normal monitored discharge path and terminate the overflow condition. The exact volume could not be determined but it is estimated that the volume of water that overflowed to the ground was greater than the 100 gallon threshold for voluntary reporting as indicated in Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) 07-07, ‘Industry Ground Water Initiative-Final Guidance Document.’ A rough estimate of the release is between 100 and 300 gallons. The tritium was contained to a small area on the plant site in the vicinity of the discharge structure, and there is no significant potential for off-site impact or impact to on-site personnel.

“Because the leak remained on site, there will be no offsite impact to drinking water sources. Furthermore, the release posed no threat to employees or the public. Southern Nuclear [SNC] will continue to monitor the affected area as required.

Sure, and they’ve got a ten-mile-radius emergency plan for Plant Hatch, too! Nevermind the Floridan Aquifer that underlies the whole coastal plain hereabouts, and that we drink from over here, only 100 miles from Plant Hatch. The report says they’ll report to the state:

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Video of Tabling of Abandonment of Old State Road to Hotchkiss Crossing at the Alapaha River @ LCC 2013-02-12

First the Chairman talked about how many people could speak and for how long in the public hearing; then at Tuesday evening's Regular Session the Commission tabled it for two weeks, so closing the only public access to the Alapaha River in Lowndes County will be up for a vote again Tuesday 26 February 2013.

6.a. Public Hearing: Abandonment of a portion of Old State Road (CR 16)

You can see in the video that the room was packed, which is very unusual. The great majority were there to oppose closing the road. As Chairman Bill Slaughter remarked, about nine people signed up for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard to speak about this item; as he noted, anyone can speak in a public hearing without signing up. To my knowledge, only one person was there to speak for closing the road, and that was the applicant who had just agreed to ask for it to be tabled. The Chairman said:

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Renewable energy much needed in Georgia —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today; I’ve added links, plus some more after the op-ed.

Finally! Kewaunee, Calvert Cliffs, and now Crystal River permanently closing say it’s time for Georgia to stop wasting money on Southern Company’s already over-budget and increasingly-late nukes and get on with solar power and wind off the coast: for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and plenty of clean water.

February 2013:
Duke Energy is closing the Crystal River nuclear reactor (Tampa Bay Times, 6 Feb 2013), 160 miles south of us, because nobody wants to pay to fix it: between “$1.5 billion and $3.4 billion, plus what it costs to buy power to replace what Crystal River would have produced while it is being repaired” [Charlotte Business Journal, 11 Jan 2013].
November 2012:
NRC terminated Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs 3 (NRC 1 Nov 2012) after Constellation Energy dropped out because the cost “is too high and creates too much risk for Constellation” [Bloomberg 10 Oct 2010].
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Ninety percent of life is just showing up. —VDT

I hate to agree with the VDT, but I do with this editorial of 8 February 2013, The importance of ‘showing up’,

If you can’t show up for meetings at least 90 percent of the time, you shouldn’t have sought office or volunteered for an authority seat in the first place.

-jsq

PS: This is what Woody Allen actually said, which has pretty much the same meaning, in Woody Allen Interview by Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 15 August 2008.

You have to do the stuff. Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren’t. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren’t applying themselves. As a kid I wanted to do magic tricks. I could sit endlessly in front of mirror, practicing, practicing, because I knew if you wanted to do the tricks you’ve got to do the thing. I did that with the clarinet, when I was teaching, I did that with writing. This is the most important thing in my life because I see people striking out all the time. It’s not because they don’t have talent, or because they don’t want to be, but because they don’t put the work in to do it. They don’t have the discipline to do it. This was something I learned myself. I also had a very strict mother who was no nonsense about that stuff. She said ‘If you don’t do it, then you aren’t going to be able to do the thing.’ It’s as simple as that. I said this to my daughter, if you don’t practice the guitar, when you get older you wouldn’t be able to play it. It’s that simple. If you want to play the guitar, you put a half hour in everyday, but you have to do it. This has been the biggest guiding principle in my life when I was younger and it stuck. I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.

 

As went Maine Yankee, so goes San Onofre: another reactor will close

San Onofre 4 will stay down, if opponents can stop the hidden experiment shell game. Maine Yankee was down for about a year, and never started up again.

Front page of the Bangor Daily News 28 May 1997, Maine Yankee plant may be closed down: Owners weigh repair costs, deregulation,

Page 1A Bangor Daily News 28 May 1997

Maine Yankee President Mike Sellman said that spending will be reduced by about 20 percent, or $41 million, from June through December.

“I think every plant that I’m aware of that has made the decision to essentially curtail start-up activities has then gone ahead shut down permanently,” said Sellman.

Maine Yankee has been off line since Dec. 6, 1966. Several repair and improvement projects had been planned so the plant’s operators could seek Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to restart and return the plant to service.

See also “It has to close because of the pocketbook.” —Kyle Jones on Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.

-jsq

“It has to close because of the pocketbook.” —Kyle Jones on Maine Yankee nuclear power plant

Instead of demonstrating to influence legislators, sometimes it's better to get elected and legislate: that's what Kyle Jones did in Maine, and he closed the Maine Yankee nuke, de-monopolized the state's electrical utilities, and instituted a 30% renewable energy goal. All this was helped by the nuclear industry's own incompetence.

Bangor Daily News, Page A2, 28 May 1997, Maine Yankee plant may be closed down: Owners weigh repair costs, deregulation,

Page 2A Bangor Daily News 28 May 1997 Cracking in the plant's steam generator tubes, which carry the superheated, radioactive water, was first discovered in 1990. In 1994, Main Yankee officials predicted that the plant's problems were over after they plugged more than 300 of the cracked tubes. However, testing of the tubes during a shutdown for refueling in 1995 revealed as many as 10,000 additional cracked tubes.

Sounds a lot like San Onofre.

At the time, it was estimated that permanently shutting down the plant would cost at least $316 million while, after 23 years of operation, Maine Yankee had collected only $100 million to pay for its decommissioning. The most recent estimate for decommissioning is $369 million, of which only $169 million has been raised as of this month.

Facing the accumulation of these engineering and operational difficulties, the owners of the plant signaled a departure from business-as-usual and, earlier this year, brought in the New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. to provide management services at Maine Yankee.

Oh, my! The same Entergy that's now likely to close Vermont Yankee. And Vermont Yankee wasn’t the first to follow this financial path to closure:

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Tabled for two weeks: proposed Old State Road to Alapaha River @ LCC 2013-02-12

The good news: they didn’t close the road to Hotchkiss Crossing at the Alapaha River. Lowndes County Water Resource Protection Districts Ordinance (WRPDO) Overlay Map They tabled it until their next meeting, which is in two weeks, 26 February 2013. Video will follow tomorrow, in which you will see the room was packed, mostly with people opposed to the road closing, some from as far away as Tifton. All concerned now have two weeks to absorb all the new information and work out a solution.

Below is what I sent to the Lowndes County Commission at Commissioner Joyce Evans’ request before the meeting tonight, followed by a bit more information.

Subject: River Corridor Protection Plan
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:49:50 -0500

Dear Commissioners and County Planner,

When I was talking to Joyce Evans just now, I mentioned the 100 foot natural vegetative buffer state law requires local governments to establish next to perennial rivers. Here is a summary of the state law, the definition it contains, the GA EPD rules, and some notes on the relevant parts of the Lowndes County Comprehensive Plan.

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No list of who bought waste collection center cards? @ LCC 2013-02-12

How can Lowndes County not have a list of who it sold waste collection center cards to? How can it not provide it in response to an open records request?

In the 9 October 2012 Regular Session, Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard said:

Just under 5,000 residents who have purchased the cards

That was in his curiously redacted summary of the history of solid waste handling in the county, and he was referring to the access cards to the waste collection centers.

Paige Dukes to April Huntley 2013-01-28 Yet when April Huntley submitted an open records request asking for the names of the 5,000 people who would be affected by the waste collection centers, this is what County Clerk Paige Dukes replied:

In regards to your open records requst for a copy of the 5,000 residents in unincorporated Lowndes County who will be affected by the closing of the recycling centers, the document you have requested does not exist.

Maybe this explains part of why Veolia, excuse me, ADS, seemed so confused yesterday morning. Come tonight to see if any Commissioners ask about this.

-jsq

Letters against closing Old State Road to the Alapaha River @ LCC 2013-02-12

Here is a list of the letters I have copies of that oppose closing Old State Road to the Alapaha River; probably more have been sent. The vote is tonight 5:30 PM 12 February 2013 at 327 North Ashley Street 2nd Floor, Valdosta, GA. According to state law and the public hearing notice,

Any citizen of Lowndes County or any person wherever residing may be heard by the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners during the aforesaid public hearing.

That means anyone from anywhere may speak.

Here’s the list.

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