Category Archives: Community

Keep the pipeline fox out of your henhouse! –Don Brotherton

LTE in the VDT yesterday,

scan by Michael Noll. And you can also rescind. -jsq

Say no to Sabal



I have been contacted by Sabal Trail Transmission for the permission
to survey our property for the proposed natural gas pipeline in
Lowndes County Afier receiving several letters from Sabal and now
having received the “scary” certified letter, my answer is
still the same. No. We already have one gas pipeline on our property
and having two will not be twice the fun.

Sabal is in the very early stages of gathering information to get a
permit from FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). They can
only gather this information from surveys. If property owners allow
them to survey It is the same as letting the fox in the hen house.
They will have the information they need to obtain the permit.

Keep the fox out of your hen house! If you haven’t already said yes,
just say no!


Don Brotherton

Valdosta




Here’s a sample letter

to deny permission to Sabal Trail Transmission.

And even if you already signed, you can resind permission.
Here’s a sample letter

to deny permission to Sabal Trail Transmission.

More on

SpectraBusters.

-jsq

Display the kind of responsibility that will benefit our university, community, region, and world –S.A.V.E. to VSU Foundation



A copy of what the VSU Foundation called the “
“well-intentioned request” by

Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.).
I added the links and images.
-jsq

October 17, 2013

Dear VSU Foundation and Board of Trustees,

Recent years have brought climate change to the forefront of public
discussion.



A newly released report from the United Nations
indicates with 95% certainty that humans are the primary cause of
the issue. It is our concern that the continuation of our current
practices and our dependence on fossil fuels will only result in
continued environmental degradation and human struggle. Knowing the
impact that anthropogenic climate change has upon our environment,
our health, and our economy, we are asking Valdosta State University
to take a stand and join in the effort to address this issue, as
social responsibility is part and parcel to the role of public
institutions.

As a public institution, Valdosta State University has a
responsibility to shape the debate about climate change through its
voice, and fossil fuel divestment is another medium for that voice.
We are asking that VSU immediately Continue reading →

SpectraBusters against the Sabal Trail pipeline

Pipeline opposition got

written up in the Albany Herald.
You haven’t seen many pipeline posts here in the LAKE blog lately
because

SpectraBusters
has its own blog now.


SpectraBusters

Other recent developments include

Florida PSC tentatively approved pipeline,
Gertrude Dickinson’s

stream of opposition from Sumter County Florida,
and

schedule of Open House meetings in December required by FERC
among the

FERC filings about the Sabal Trail pipeline
and

how to file a comment or become an intervenor with FERC.

Remember

Spectra will be haunting the Lowndes County Commission Work Session 9 December 2013.



And if you want to see where Spectra’s gas comes from,
come see

Gasland II at VSU 7PM Thursday 7 Nobemver 2013.


SpectraBusters: We ain’t afraid a no pipeline!

-jsq

Videos of Candidates and Mayor Gayle about SPLOST @ LCDP 2013-09-09



In which we discover one candidate works for the City of Valdosta
and opposes SPLOST.
Candidates took questions directly from the
audience and answered them, unlike at later candidate forums.
Candidates from the smaller cities started their tradition of
not showing up for forums outside their cities.
Here’s the list of
qualified candidates.
See also the videos of the

30 Club forum 2013-10-21
and the videos of the

AAUW forum 2013-10-15.

Opening


Call to Order,

Moment of Silence for Congress,

Pledge,

Approval of Minutes,

Treasurer’s Report.



SPLOST VII

Proactively make mental health a priority –Joyce Weaver Johnson

Blogged with permission from

Joyce’s facebook page. -jsq

Ok, I rarely do this but after reading something on FB earlier, I
just have to because I feel SO strongly about it! I have been a
social worker for 28 years. Of the 28 years, I have spent almost 15
years in the mental health field. When I started with community
mental health services, I was told the patient was the #1 priority
and QUALITY of service was most important.

Through the years MH
services have been significantly cut with treatment facilities for
youth closing, mental health hospitals closing and HMOs refusing to
pay for more and more outpatient services. Now the #1 priority is
BILLING and treating the paperwork not the patient is most
important.


When treatment facilities and hospitals were closed, we
were told Continue reading →

Videos: VLMPO Policy Committee @ VLMPO 2013-10-29



I commend VLMPO for addressing real issues and getting a broad variety of organizations to show up.
However, map after map on
the consultant’s slides
showed a straight-line highway going from Moody’s
front gate to Hahira:


Highway straight line from Moody AFB to Hahira?

There is no such road.
There better not be, since it would go straight through my property
and would drive development right through agricultural and forestry
areas that the Comprehensive Plan says aren’t supposed to be developed,.
not to mention the Moody MAZ.
I’m told the consultant is going to fix this.

I have my doubts, because Continue reading →

The SPLOST Debate –Tim Carroll

Received 27 October 2013. -jsq



I have had a number of folks contact me about the upcoming SPLOST
VII referendum and inquiring about a MOST. Trying to talk about all
of this in as few a words as I can is not easy. But to give you
some perspective—the city’s general fund budget is $32M.
$5.9M of the revenue for this fund comes from property taxes. Based
on the city tax digest a mill is worth $1.5M. The experts say
50.2% of the sales tax is paid by out of towners. In the opinion of
some folks, it is closer to 30%. Pick the experts or local guesses
….it still is a significant amount. It clearly is very beneficial
to the citizens of Valdosta and Lowndes County.

By now many have heard about a MOST or Municipal Option Sales Tax.

In the first part of this year—the city of Valdosta was faced
with Continue reading →

Fossil fuel divestment fastest


Divestment to Financial Hardship to Change in Conduct
Not just

faster than apartheid divestment;
faster than divestment from tobacco, armaments, and others:
fossil fuel divestment.
It’s not about direct reduction of market capitalization;
it’s about making it socially unacceptable to buy from stigmatized
companies, and it works, and it’s working faster than ever for fossil fuels.
Oh, and fossil fuel companies are a tiny sliver of university endowments,
so ditching them is pain free,
especially now that

fossil fuel stock prices are not rising while solar stocks skyrocket
(and nuclear stocks don’t).
Go fossil free, go VSU.




Stranded Assets and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign: What Does Divestment Mean for the Valuation of Fossil Fuel Assets?
8 October 2013 | Authors: Atif Ansar, Ben Caldecott, James Tilbury

Damian Carrington wrote for the Guardian Monday 7 October 2013

Campaign against fossil fuels growing, says study:
Investors being persuaded to take their money out of fossil fuel sector, according to University of Oxford study,

A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal, oil and gas companies, according to a
study from the University of Oxford.



The report compares the current
fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has attracted 41 institutions since 2010, with those against tobacco, apartheid in South Africa, armaments, gambling and pornography. It concludes that the direct financial impact of such campaigns on share prices or the ability to raise funds is small but the reputational damage can still have major financial consequences.

Continue reading →

Third Sabal Trail pipeline route misses Georgia entirely



Andrea Grover of Sabal Trail Transmission has been telling Florida
landowners about another proposed pipeline route that completely
bypasses Georgia.
Received yesterday on

Request pipeline town hall –Tim Bland to LCC:

For those that are against having the pipeline run through their
property, go to Ocala Star Banner on the web
where there is a map with the proposed route for the pipeline from

Alabama to Florida. This route barely touches the southwest corner

of Georgia (if at all). Why did Sabal change the route? I don’t
either. The newspaper is dated October 24, 2013.

-Ronald Kicklighter


Contracts for natural gas pipeline through Florida get initial OK,
by Morgan Watkins for Ocala StarBanner
picked up a story first run in

the Gainesville Sun,

A $3.5 billion, 600-mile natural-gas pipeline system that will
stretch from Alabama into Florida is still in the planning stages,
but homeowners near the Ichetucknee and Santa Fe rivers are
concerned because the routes being proposed might run through their
neighborhoods.


 

Landowners in Georgia don’t want it crossing their land or the
Flint or Withlacoochee Rivers, either.

Florida Power & Light selected Continue reading →

Open House at Mildred Hunter on Common Community Vision @ VLMPO 2013-10-23

“We have broadband”, said Bill Slaughter, while other people had
different opinions on that and other topics Wednesday night at
the Mildred Hunter Community Center.



Corey Hull introduced the session and a small but vocal group of citizens
discussed all

the main topic headings.
He noted that there are more than twelve plans already in place
in the various cities and counties in the Valdosta Lowndes Metropolitan
Planning Area.
Yet there were many common themes in those plans, and VLMPO was looking
for other common areas in these meetings and online,
and more specifically strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
If you have a community group of any size, VLMPO can come talk to it.
They’ve been to the Chamber, to Rotary, to churches, etc.
They expect to wrap this process up in December,
with common vision and goals for the next ten or twenty years.


Matt Martin
Local officials present included Matt Martin,

Planning and Zoning Administrator for the City of Valdosta,
and Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter.
Martin didn’t say much, but Bill Slaughter was quite vocal.
I thanked him for speaking up, even though I didn’t agree with everything he said.
He helped clarify current county codes for stormwater retention,
and Martin helped clarify the city’s codes.

As a long-time participant in
local development (he’s CEO of Waller Heating and Air)
Slaughter said when people are buying houses all they look at is Continue reading →