{"id":2288,"date":"2011-03-22T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/south-georgia-already-in-drought-parameters-for-industry.html"},"modified":"2011-03-22T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T21:00:00","slug":"south-georgia-already-in-drought-parameters-for-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/south-georgia-already-in-drought-parameters-for-industry.html","title":{"rendered":"South Georgia already in drought: parameters for industry?"},"content":{"rendered":"Droughts and floods: maybe we need to manage water better,\nincluding managing industrial use of water.\n

\nAccording to the AP,\n\nGa. foresters brace for busy wildfire season<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nA cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape,\nbut in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some\nof the lowest points that would be expected in a century, said David\nStooksbury, Georgia’s state climatologist at the University of Georgia.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe nearterm effects:\n
\n“We have a good fuel load with plenty of dry vegetation, the soil is\ndry and there’s a low relative humidity and there’s wind,” Stooksbury\nsaid. “That is the simple recipe for a trash fire to get out of control\nvery quickly and become a wildfire.”\n<\/blockquote>\nYes, Sunday Georgia Forestry cut off burn permits in Lowndes County because\nsome fires had gotten out of control.\n

\nThe long term problem?\n\n\n\n<\/a>\nWe need to\n\nput parameters on the types of industry we want to attract<\/a>\nincluding\n\nBen Copeland’s questions:<\/a>\n

\nWater is going to be very important as we expand our industrial\nbase. Because we’re going to have folks who like to start up jobs here\nbecause of the water we have. How much of that water can be used to\nsustain jobs. Those are the questions….\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nIn\n\nthis radio interview with WABE of 24 January 2011,<\/a>\nDavid Stooksbury remarked that:\n

\nAnd actually much of Georgia is already classified as being in at least\nin moderate drought.\nParticularly the southern 2\/3 of the state is already classified.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd that was in January.\n\n<\/a>\nAfter we already had\n\na big drought in 2007<\/a>\nin which\n\nmany trees were burned up.<\/a>\n

\nWhat’s the state doing to help?\nMore penny-wise pound-foolish budget cuts, of course!\n

\nSome in Georgia’s $19.7 billion timber industry worry about whether state\nforesters can handle a busy season after two years of budget cuts that\nslashed about 30 firefighters from the Forestry Commission’s payroll,\nleaving it with about 400.\n

\nThe cuts also shrunk the agency’s fleet of fire tractors by 10 percent\nto about 300, and they required forestry officials to close 16 out of\n128 fire control offices positioned across the state for quick response\nto wildland fires.\n

\n“We must be getting close to where budget cuts, if they get too severe,\nstart cutting through the meat and into the bone,” said Steve McWilliams,\npresident of the Georgia Forestry Association, which represents timber\nowners and wood product manufacturers. “The losses have been held in\ncheck by the small average size of the wildfires. But any fire can become\na major fire.”\n

\nWith fewer staff and less money, Dozier said, the cutbacks have mainly\nforced delays in aid the Forestry Commission typically provides to\ntimberland owners to help prevent fires — such as controlled burning of\nunderbrush and plowing firebreaks around a property with a tractor.\n<\/blockquote>\nI’m a member of the Georgia Forestry Association and I like GFA,\nbut it was GFA what recently pushed through major tax cuts for big\ntimber owners.\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Droughts and floods: maybe we need to manage water better, including managing industrial use of water. According to the AP, Ga. foresters brace for busy wildfire season: A cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape, but in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some of […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,14,16,740,19,21,289,55,89],"tags":[2554,4870,997,8701,742,793,4873,4871,4872,8727,3752],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-economy","category-environment","category-forestry","category-history","category-planning","category-science","category-water","category-weather","tag-ben-copeland","tag-david-stooksbury","tag-fire","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-forestry-association","tag-industry","tag-parameters","tag-state-climatologist","tag-university-of-georgia","tag-water","tag-wildfire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-AU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}