{"id":3254,"date":"2013-05-03T09:58:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T13:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3254"},"modified":"2013-05-03T11:42:42","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T15:42:42","slug":"sinkhole-costs-and-prevention-vs-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/sinkhole-costs-and-prevention-vs-reaction.html","title":{"rendered":"Sinkhole costs, and prevention vs. reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe day after the VDT ran\r\n\r\nLowndes County’s admission that the sewer line break was theirs, not Valdosta’s<\/a>,\r\ndid the VDT start a series of financial investigation\r\n\r\nlike they did about Valdosta’s water issues<\/a>?\r\nNope, they ran a piece about how much weather costs the county,\r\nwith no recognition of watershed-wide issues,\r\nnor of any need for the county to participate in proactively\r\ndealing with them, to reduce costs, for better quality of life,\r\nto attract the kinds of businesses we claim we want.\r\nNope, none of that.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nJason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 27 April 2013,\r\n\r\nWhat natural events cost Lowndes taxpayers<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn the Deep South, near a river plain where floodwaters rise and ebb\r\nfrom season to season and wetlands that distinguish the region from\r\nanywhere else in the nation, flooding makes a significant portion of\r\nthe concern for Lowndes County emergency management.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nOK, that’s close to getting at some of the basic issues.\r\nWe’re all in the same watershed, and we need to act like it\r\ninstead of every developer and every local government\r\nclearcutting and paving as if water didn’t run downhill.\r\nDoes the story talk about that?\r\nAfter all, the county chairman attended the\r\n\r\n11 April 2013 watershed-wide flooding meeting<\/a>\r\nthat led to the\r\n\r\ncity of Valdosta’s likely participation in flodoplain planning<\/a>.\r\nNope; according to the VDT,\r\neverybody around here seems to be hapless victims of weather:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAccording to disaster history, the county is plagued by severe\r\nstorms, heavy rainfall, tornadoes and hurricanes, but lesser-known\r\nevents like sinkholes and, yes, even severe snowstorms during late\r\nwinter remain costly, though uncommon.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe story goes on with costs to the county of various weather events.\r\nNow I admire the good works of Ashley Tye and Emergency Management\r\nand all the other county employees who get out there and get the\r\njob done when they have to.\r\nBut remember when the County Commission refused to accept<\/em>\r\na grant for NOAA Weather Radios because they were\r\n“wasteful spending”<\/a> as Richard Raines put it\r\nwhen he made the motion to reject and he and Crawford Powell voted for it?\r\nCitizen J.L. Clark tried to explain next Comission session that\r\n\r\nthose radios would be quite useful in a natural disaster<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nI tried\r\n\r\nto explain to Raines and the Commission<\/a>\r\nthat we did get tornadoes around here,\r\nand that\r\n\r\nLowndes County is in the edge of Tornado Alley<\/a>,\r\naka Dixie Alley.\r\nOthers\r\n\r\nquestioned the county’s priorities<\/a>.\r\nOne year later Raines went up in a Moody AFB helicopter to survey\r\nthe damage from an F2 tornado (F3 in Lanier County)<\/a>.\r\nFortunately, Ashley Tye could report that\r\n\r\nthere was no loss of life<\/a> but he also had to report that\r\nthere was massive property damage and no financial assistance available.\r\nThose NOAA weather radios could have helped reach the 14% of people who\r\nwere not reached by the county’s Code Red weather alert system.\r\nAnd what about next time?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSlightly later, Raines was\r\n\r\nsurprised to hear Tye say the county was in extreme drought<\/a>.\r\nWill the County Commission start paying attention to what’s going on\r\naround here, for example by being wary of approving businesses\r\nthat use a lot of water, and by enforcing the parts of the county zoning\r\ncode that have to do with \r\nriver corridor protection<\/a> and wetlands?\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nMaybe even stop developers from\r\n\r\nbulldozing swamps to make subdivisions<\/a>,\r\ninstead of asking for\r\n\r\n$3 million to widen Val Del Road<\/a>.\r\nOr will the county continue to just react, instead of act to prevent?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhat was that about sinkholes?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOther disastrous risks for Lowndes County include sinkholes and\r\nfires. In 2011, the county had to repair a sink hole that opened in\r\nthe middle of Snake Nation Road. Repairs cost $430,000 for the\r\nrerouting of the road around the affected area, said Finance\r\nDirector Stephanie Black.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNothing about\r\nhow the county first tried to fill in the sinkhole and later\r\nhad to move the road, thus paying twice to deal with it, probably paying even more because\r\nmoving the road\r\nwas done as a change order, with no competitive bids<\/a>.\r\nNothing about\r\n\r\nwhy the sinkhole happened<\/a>.\r\nNothing about\r\n\r\nthe sinkhole in Michael McCormick’s garage<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMore reaction, no reflection, and no prevention: is that what\r\nLowndes County needs?\r\nThat way lie more disasters and higher disaster costs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The day after the VDT ran Lowndes County’s admission that the sewer line break was theirs, not Valdosta’s, did the VDT start a series of financial investigation like they did about Valdosta’s water issues? Nope, they ran a piece about how much weather costs the county, with no recognition of watershed-wide issues, nor of any […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[14,16,2,88,2919,21,22,1577,73,289,6114,133,55,89],"tags":[293,8704,8706,59,8701,8699,609,8702,12,7,8734,8862,8711,8712,1048,882,6233,550,8731,8758,2504,208,60,6,8727,8735],"class_list":["post-3254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-noaa-weather-radios","category-planning","category-politics","category-radio-2","category-safety","category-science","category-sinkhole-2","category-vdt","category-water","category-weather","tag-drought","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-flood","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-grant","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-noaa-weather-radios","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-prevention","tag-radio","tag-reaction","tag-revenues","tag-safety","tag-science","tag-sewer","tag-sinkhole","tag-tax","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-weather"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Qu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3254"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3266,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions\/3266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}