{"id":2574,"date":"2010-10-29T07:42:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T11:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/vdt-turns-against-vlcia-and-its-biomass-plant.html"},"modified":"2010-10-29T07:42:11","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T11:42:11","slug":"vdt-turns-against-vlcia-and-its-biomass-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/vdt-turns-against-vlcia-and-its-biomass-plant.html","title":{"rendered":"VDT turns against VLCIA and its biomass plant"},"content":{"rendered":"The newspaper of record in Valdosta and Lowndes County\nhas reversed course on biomass.\nTop of the front page in a landmark issue:\nWednesday, October 27, 2010:<\/a>\n
\n\nBiomass plant fuels questions<\/strong>\n<\/font>\n

\nby Johnna Pinholster\n
\nThe Valdosta Daily Times\n

\nVALDOSTA \u2014 As the state and nation look to renewable energy solutions, locally, a proposed green energy plant is causing controversy and raising questions that remain unanswered.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority and Wiregrass Power,\nLLC are in the beginning phases of developing property for a future\nbiomass electric generating plant.\n

\n…\n

\n\nIssues with lack of information\n<\/strong>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\nMembers of the editorial board met with Authority personnel at the\ninception of the project several years ago. Since then, due to the amount\nof time that the taxpayer-funded Authority has spent on securing the\nnecessary land and permits, the Times has requested information, which\nhas been incomplete, so the Times resorted to filing an Open Records\nRequest, which the Authority complied with at a cost of $150.\n

\nThe Times\u2019 questions concern a number of areas of direct concern to citizens.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nAin’t that the truth!\nThe VDT is having \nthe same experience I had earlier:<\/a>\ngetting information out of the VLCIA is like pulling teeth.\n

\nAnd if the point still wasn’t clear, the VDT summed it up in\n\nan editorial:<\/a>\n

\nWith opposition groups becoming increasingly vocal about the proposed\nWiregrass biomass plant in Valdosta, The Times has been trying to find\nanswers to what we consider to be reasonable questions.\n

\nWith millions in local, state and federal incentives being paid to support\nthe plant, and with so much time and money invested by the Industrial\nAuthority, the Authority is compelled to educate the public and keep\nall transactions open and above board.\n

\nThe issues that The Times was most interested in are questions which have\narisen since the plant was first discussed several years ago. Thinking\nthat this would be the Authority\u2019s opportunity to provide a solid\ndefense of the project and to dispel the rumors about the plant, The\nTimes submitted an Open Records request.\n

\n…\n

\n\n<\/a>\nUntil such time as citizens of this community who are paying for all of the incentives being provided to this company are told the whole truth about who is behind it, who is profiting from it, if the environmental concerns are valid, and if the technology being discussed even exists and has been proven to work in another facility, it\u2019s difficult to endorse this supposed green energy initiative.\n

\nAs a matter of fact, it\u2019s difficult to describe anything about this plant as being green, other than the millions of tax dollars that are being expended to support it.\n<\/blockquote>\nLike the VDT, my first impression of the biomass plant was as\ngreen energy, also a new market for my pine trees.\nThen I looked into it, and noticed questions weren’t getting answered.\nSome questions were being answered incorrectly, \nsuch as the VLCIA’s claim that the plant would be carbon neutral.<\/a>\nI asked again and again, and VLCIA slammed the door in my face with\nthis sign nailed to it:<\/a>\n

\nWe’re moving forward with permits in hand. Have a nice day.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nNow that the VDT has done some real investigative reporting\nand found a lot of questions that don’t get answered,\nmaybe you’d like to ask some of your elected or appointed\nofficials some of those same questions.\n\nHere’s how to reach them.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The newspaper of record in Valdosta and Lowndes County has reversed course on biomass. Top of the front page in a landmark issue: Wednesday, October 27, 2010: Biomass plant fuels questions by Johnna Pinholster The Valdosta Daily Times VALDOSTA \u2014 As the state and nation look to renewable energy solutions, locally, a proposed green energy […]","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":[97,120,141,48,14,16,2,41,733,21,32,23,289,24,133,178],"tags":[8738,2061,1069,876,4718,5231,1879,8713,5232,8714,383,2900,180,8742,8749,4123],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-co2","category-code-enforcement","category-economy","category-environment","category-government","category-health-care","category-media","category-planning","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-science","category-solar","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-biomass","tag-electricity","tag-fuel","tag-health","tag-investors","tag-polution","tag-power","tag-renewable-energy","tag-reporting","tag-solar","tag-taxes","tag-valdosta-daily-times","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vdt","tag-vlcia","tag-wiregrass-power-llc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Fw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","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=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}