{"id":2541,"date":"2011-01-02T08:58:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T13:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/no-way-shape-or-form-brad-lofton-on-dr-teaf.html"},"modified":"2011-01-02T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T13:58:00","slug":"no-way-shape-or-form-brad-lofton-on-dr-teaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/no-way-shape-or-form-brad-lofton-on-dr-teaf.html","title":{"rendered":"“no way shape or form” –Brad Lofton on Dr. Teaf"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/a>
\nA week after Brad Lofton failed to produce evidence and offered
\n
\nto file Dr. Noll’s correspondence “in the appropriate file”<\/a>,
\nVLCIA has still not published the videos or slides from their
\n6 Dec 2010 event at the Rainwater Conference Center.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nHowever, Brad Lofton and Col. Ricketts summarized that event for
\nthe VLCIA board at their recent board meeting,
\nand they never presented any actual evidence there, either.<\/p>\n

\n
\nBrad Lofton said his toxicologist says the biomass plant in
\n“no way shape or form” will cause health problems.<\/a>
\nThen he rattled off a long list of supporters of a Gainesville biomass plant.
\nThe rest of this post has videos of what he and Col. Ricketts said, plus screenshots
\nof each of Dr. Teaf’s slides: see if you can find the details.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

\nLofton enumerated the speakers at the 6 Dec 2010 event.
\nCan someone try to transcribe that list?
\nNone was given out at the 6 Dec event, and if it’s on the VLCIA web site,
\nI can’t find it.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nThen
\n
\nCol. Ricketts used<\/a> what were apparently Dr. Christopher M. Teaf’s
\nslides from the Rainwater event.<\/p>\n

\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

\nThe slide on
\n
\n“Basic Issues”<\/a> gives the flavor right off:<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nWhat people had an image of a biomass facility as a “smoky fire pit”?
\nIt’s VLCIA and Wiregrass LLC that keep talking about visible emissions;
\nwhat everybody else is talking about is health effects,
\nparticulates, and odor.<\/p>\n

\nBullet number two tells us how to think:<\/p>\n

\nFacility must be judged on engineering, emissions\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a pine tree farmer, I’m also interested in fuel sources
\nand forest health, thank you very much.
\nLike many other people, I’m also interested in human health.
\nNot to mention economic risks and the cost in credibility
\nof the VLCIA.<\/p>\n

\n
\nNext slide:
\n
\nFuel Availability<\/a>.
\nHm, unless fuel is emissions, Dr. Teaf contradicts himself already,
\nor we aren’t supposed to use this slide to judge.
\nI’m still waiting for
\n
\nthe redacted fuel study from Sterling.<\/a>
\nIf I don’t get it soon, I will go ahead and post a critique of what was
\npresented at Rainwater about that.<\/p>\n

\nMeanwhile,
\n
\nVLCIA board chair Jerry Jennett just discovered through
\nsome other source that there’s a wood pellet plant
\ngoing in in Waycross<\/a>,
\nso it’s a little hard to believe this fuel sourcing study was
\nvery thorough.
\nNeither Lofton nor Ricketts mentioned that Waycross plant
\nas being taken into account in the fuel sourcing study.<\/p>\n

\nRegarding emissions controls, Col. Ricketts says
\n“I won’t go into all that detail”
\nand claims the details are in the air quality permit.
\nThat’s pretty much his (and Dr. Teaf’s) approach throughout:
\npresent no details, and cite no publicly available studies
\nor scientific literature.
\nDr. Teaf’s slide on
\nMercury<\/a> mentions unspecified criteria.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nDr. Teaf’s slide on
\nParticulate Matter (PM)<\/a>
\nrefers to unspecified standards,<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nand makes the dubious and unsupported claim
\n“Valdosta\/Lowndes air quality good”.
\nIt mentions “open burning (e.g., field fires, forest fires)<\/em>
\n(his italics), while saying nothing about prescribed burning,
\nsuch as
\n
\nis necessary to maintain health of pine forests.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nIts claim that burning in an incinerator wood
\n“of equivalent mass show substantial reductions<\/u>
\nby controlled burning within facility”
\n(his underlining)
\nis misleading at best, since during thinning most tops and limbs
\nare not burnt up, they are left to rot and become nutrients.
\nPrescribed burns are also not all concentrated in a single point source of emissions.<\/p>\n

\nCol. Ricketts took a break due to arrival of half a dozen new audience
\nmembers, and then continued
\n
\nsummarizing Dr. Teaf’s summary.<\/a>
\nDr. Teaf’s slide on
\n
\nDioxins<\/a> repeats the highly dubious point about field burning
\nthat doesn’t even mention prescribed burns.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nCol. Ricketts mentioned EPA and CDC about
\n“where we are moving, the direction we are moving”
\napparently saying that since dioxins have been reduced in recent years
\nit’s OK for us to emit them.
\nI know some Agent Orange sufferers who would not agree.<\/p>\n

\nOn to
\n
\nPolycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nThe slide refers to scientific data with no citations.
\nWhere is this data? Citations, or it doesn’t exist!
\nCol. Ricketts refers to “breathing roadside air”
\nas being more dangerous, with no mention of
\nthe delivery trucks coming into the facility.<\/p>\n

\nFinally, Col. Ricketts presents a slide from Dr. Teaf on
\n
\nClosing Thoughts.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nCol. Ricketts touts the incinerator’s multiple overlapping controls.
\nSure, and so did
\n
\nthe Harrisburg incinerator<\/a> that’s been shut down twice
\nand is now bankrupting Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\nThen Col. Ricketts claims VLCIA has<\/p>\n

\n“made this presentation available to anyone in the community who asks for it”.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I keep asking for it to be put on the VLCIA web site
\nso anybody who wants to can see it.
\nDoes “made available” mean you can come to a board meeting with a video
\ncamera and upload it to YouTube yourself, as LAKE did?
\nWhy is it that a professional entity funded by 1 mil of dedicated taxes
\ncan’t seem to manage that, while a tiny volunteer group can?
\nWhat does that say about VLCIA’s ability to manage money?<\/p>\n

\nEarlier in the presentation, Col. Ricketts repeatedly says “we”
\nreferring to VLCIA and Wiregrass Power, LLC: “we” approached Dr. Teaf,
\n“we” commissioned studies, etc.
\nOK, so tax money at least partly funded these studies.
\nLet’s see them!
\nNot just overview slides, either: the actual studies, with the actual data.<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n

\nPS: The rest of what Col. Ricketts and Brad Lofton said about biomass
\nat the VLCIA board meeting will follow in another post.<\/p>\n

\nPPS: To anyone who thinks it’s unfair for me to present these
\nslides and videos with my commentary, remember I’ve been asking
\nfor quite a while now (for example I asked Brad Lofton in person
\nafter the event on 6 Dec 2010, and I asked Col. Ricketts
\non 23 Dec 2010<\/a>)
\nfor the VLCIA to publish their own version themselves.
\nI’m still asking for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week after Brad Lofton failed to produce evidence and offered to file Dr. Noll’s correspondence “in the appropriate file”, VLCIA has still not published the videos or slides from their 6 Dec 2010 event at the Rainwater Conference Center. However, Brad Lofton and Col. Ricketts summarized that event for the VLCIA board at their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,556,120,141,216,48,14,16,740,2,41,19,21,32,23,73,289,178],"tags":[4923,193,8738,1747,5016,300,969,4894,1246,793,189,186,847,548,8702,12,1169,185,181,183,8714,180,8749],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-air","category-biomass","category-co2","category-coal","category-code-enforcement","category-economy","category-environment","category-forestry","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-planning","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-science","category-vlcia","tag-21-dec-2010","tag-allan-ricketts","tag-biomass","tag-brad-lofton","tag-christopher-teaf","tag-development","tag-economics","tag-exports","tag-gary-minchew","tag-industry","tag-j-stephen-gupton","tag-jerry-jennett","tag-jobs","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-marketing","tag-mary-gooding","tag-norman-bennett","tag-roy-copeland","tag-solar","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","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=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}