{"id":2558,"date":"2010-12-19T11:55:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T16:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/vlcia-biomass-event-qa.html"},"modified":"2010-12-19T11:55:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T16:55:49","slug":"vlcia-biomass-event-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/vlcia-biomass-event-qa.html","title":{"rendered":"VLCIA biomass event Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\nHere are videos that illustrate the VDT’s point today in\n\nWhat We Think<\/a>:\n
\nWhile officials continue to downplay local citizen anger about current\nprojects, citizens are organizing in a variety of ways to affect change\nthe next election cycle. When Sterling Chemical came to Lowndes County in\nthe 1990s, citizens were told the project was a \u201cdone deal,\u201d and so\nit was. Sterling is still here, but those in office at the time aren\u2019t,\nand the director of the Industrial Authority at the time is no longer\nhere either.\n

\nAs has been shown worldwide, citizens are tired of being told what\u2019s\nbest for them, having no say so in how their tax dollars are spent,\nand having their concerns ignored.\n

\nUntil officials understand that it is coming from all directions and not\njust led by a few malcontents, the swell will continue to grow. And those\nwho continue to ignore the anger and frustration do so at their own peril.\n<\/blockquote>\nMaybe the VDT is referring to this kind of response from the VLCIA panel\non 6 Dec 2010:\n

\n“these things do prop up the local economy, period, end of discussion.”\n<\/blockquote>\nA previous questioner who had a job in Vietnam\nnotes he was lied to about Agent Orange\n\nand asks “can you assure me that I won’t be affected by this?”<\/a>\n\n\n

\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object>\n

\nThe answer is “as a toxicologist there will not be any health effects”\n“It is not about Agent Orange….”\n

\nThe questioner wasn’t saying it was about Agent Orange.\nHe said he was tired of being lied to.\n

\nNowhere in any of the VLCIA panel’s 90 minutes of canned presentations\non 6 Dec 2010 or in any of its answers to questions was there any hint\nthat VLCIA might reconsider opening the biomass plant.\n\nVLCIA had already posted on its facebook page on 10 Nov 2010:<\/a>\n

\nThe Industrial Authority stands behind its decision for the construction\nof Wiregrass Power LLC and feels like this green project will be a\nwin\/win for the community.\n<\/blockquote>\nI think that, like “period, end of discussion”,\ntranslates as “done deal”.\n

\nYet an increasing number and variety of people are protesting that deal\nin a variety of ways.\n

\nIt’s too bad we don’t have a video of the last question of the evening.\nGretchen Quarterman asked why the VLCIA doesn’t instead promote efficiency\nand conservation, which would produce more jobs and then there would be\nno need for additional electricity.\nThat was the only question that got a sustained round of applause.\nNone of the panel’s answers got applause.\n

\nThe moderator interrupts another questioner to say\n\n“we’re not going to get into debate”.<\/a>\nWhen was there ever any real public debate about this plant,\nas opposed to VLCIA telling us all how it would be?\n

\nHere’s \na playlist<\/a>,\nand here it is embedded:\n

\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object>\n

\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the\n\nLowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.<\/a>\n

\nVideos of the VLCIA presentations will follow.\nMeanwhile, maybe the VLCIA will put on the web the videos the City of\nValdosta video crew made of the whole event and turned over to VLCIA.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are videos that illustrate the VDT’s point today in What We Think: While officials continue to downplay local citizen anger about current projects, citizens are organizing in a variety of ways to affect change the next election cycle. When Sterling Chemical came to Lowndes County in the 1990s, citizens were told the project was […]","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":[97,120,141,216,48,15,49,16,740,2,41,19,11,21,22,32,23,73,289,24,133,178],"tags":[5198,5201,8738,931,5178,8704,1031,1484,8801,8701,847,8702,12,7,3793,8715,8714,383,6,2900,180,8742,8749,4974],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-co2","category-coal","category-code-enforcement","category-education","category-elections","category-environment","category-forestry","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-lake","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-science","category-solar","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-6-dec-2010","tag-agent-orange","tag-biomass","tag-conservation","tag-done-deal","tag-economy","tag-efficiency","tag-election","tag-forestry","tag-georgia","tag-jobs","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-organizing","tag-pollution","tag-solar","tag-taxes","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-daily-times","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vdt","tag-vlcia","tag-wood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Fg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","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=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}