Here are pictures and videos of the Withlacoochee River at GA 122
on
18 February 2013
(on the left when the river was rising)
and
27 February 2013 (on the right,
when it was clearly in flood stage).
Pictures and videos of the Withlacoochee River at GA 122 by John S. Quarterman and Gretchen Quarterman for WWALS Watershed Coailition.
Brandon Powers for the VDT |
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AP picked up the story about flooding at Valdosta's Withlacoochee wasterwater treatment plant, citing the VDT and the City as sources. The City of Valdosta thinks the County should contribute to replacing the plant, or maybe the legislature will authorize a municipal option sales tax (MOST).
AP in GPBNews 1 March 2013, Valdosta Treatment Plant Floods,
Authorities shut down a Valdosta wastewater treatment plant as a river flooded critical buildings and structures. The city estimates an average of 5 million to 6 million gallons of untreated sewage will discharge daily into the Withlacoochee River until the flood waters recede and the plant can resume operation. (Photo Courtesy of John S. Quarterman via Flickr.) |
VALDOSTA, Ga. —Authorities shut down a south Georgia wastewater treatment plant as a river flooded critical buildings and structures.
Valdosta city officials said power at the plant was shut down Thursday to prevent further damage to equipment and control systems.
The city estimates an average of 5 million to 6 million gallons of untreated sewage will discharge daily into the Withlacoochee River until the flood waters recede and the plant can resume operation.
The AP story continues, but let's cut to the sources.
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Brett Huntley responded
to the Commission's mysterious ruling against the public
at the
26 Febuary 2013 Lowndes County Commission meeting,
to close the only public access to the Alapaha River in Lowndes County.
Neither County Manager Joe Pritchard nor County Engineer Mike Fletcher
were paying any attention.
Continue readingI would like to publicly say that I am shocked with the decision. I feel the decision was in favor of a sole person, and not in the interests of the community and the citizens. We tried to speak and explain our side of the story. And the county road has not ceased to be used. It's been being used in our county for over 100 years. I feel your guys just made a decision that will have an impact on our culture and heritage in the community that is not good. It's a bad decision, I feel.
I kind of feel hurt. I feel it's a personal thing for our community. That whole road abandonment idea stems from one sole person
San Onofre 4 will stay down, if opponents can stop the hidden experiment shell game. Maine Yankee was down for about a year, and never started up again.
Front page of the Bangor Daily News 28 May 1997, Maine Yankee plant may be closed down: Owners weigh repair costs, deregulation,
Maine Yankee President Mike Sellman said that spending will be reduced by about 20 percent, or $41 million, from June through December.
“I think every plant that I’m aware of that has made the decision to essentially curtail start-up activities has then gone ahead shut down permanently,” said Sellman.
Maine Yankee has been off line since Dec. 6, 1966. Several repair and improvement projects had been planned so the plant’s operators could seek Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to restart and return the plant to service.
See also “It has to close because of the pocketbook.” —Kyle Jones on Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.
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Instead of demonstrating to influence legislators, sometimes it's better to get elected and legislate: that's what Kyle Jones did in Maine, and he closed the Maine Yankee nuke, de-monopolized the state's electrical utilities, and instituted a 30% renewable energy goal. All this was helped by the nuclear industry's own incompetence.
Bangor Daily News, Page A2, 28 May 1997, Maine Yankee plant may be closed down: Owners weigh repair costs, deregulation,
Cracking in the plant's steam generator tubes, which carry the superheated, radioactive water, was first discovered in 1990. In 1994, Main Yankee officials predicted that the plant's problems were over after they plugged more than 300 of the cracked tubes. However, testing of the tubes during a shutdown for refueling in 1995 revealed as many as 10,000 additional cracked tubes.
Sounds a lot like San Onofre.
At the time, it was estimated that permanently shutting down the plant would cost at least $316 million while, after 23 years of operation, Maine Yankee had collected only $100 million to pay for its decommissioning. The most recent estimate for decommissioning is $369 million, of which only $169 million has been raised as of this month.
Facing the accumulation of these engineering and operational difficulties, the owners of the plant signaled a departure from business-as-usual and, earlier this year, brought in the New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. to provide management services at Maine Yankee.
Oh, my! The same Entergy that's now likely to close Vermont Yankee. And Vermont Yankee wasn’t the first to follow this financial path to closure:
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Director Lisa Biagiotti
spent two years travelling around the South
interviewing people about AIDS to make a film,
deepsouth.
She found rural AIDS is a bigger and faster-growing problem
than AIDS in center cities,
yet most health and prevention funding goes to urban areas.
The root cause seemed clear to her: poverty.
Here’s some deeper dirt (literally) on rural poverty in the U.S.,
and one thing we know can help with that: distributed solar power,
for jobs, for reduced electrical bills, and for energy independence.
What politician wouldn’t want jobs for their constituents?
The director said the screening at VSU at the end of November drew more people than the day before in Little Rock. There were clearly more than 150 in the audience in Valdosta. It’s a topic very relevant to here, as Dean Poling wrote in the VDT 26 November 2012,
Organizers note that Georgia is ranked sixth highest nationally for its cumulative number of AIDS cases reported through December 2009. More than 40,000 known HIV/AIDS cases were reported in Georgia as of 2010.
The South Health District’s 10 counties, which include Lowndes and
surrounding counties, report 950 confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS, while many more are likely infected and risk becoming sick because they are not being treated. More specifically, there are about 460 reported cases in Lowndes County.
In reporting these numbers, HIV is the virus (HIV disease) and AIDS is the medical diagnosis made by a doctor of the symptoms, according to South Health District.
It’s a great movie and I highly recommend it. Director Biagiotti spent a substantial amount of her own money and two years to make this film, yet there are aspects she could only note in passing, such as incarceration. She can’t be expected to have researched every aspect; maybe somebody else can step up and help follow more threads.
The movie starts with some maps about poverty and AIDS in the South. It did not, however, look outside the South for poverty. Here are better poverty maps, from the CDC:
Ron Borders
introduced
Congressman Austin Scott (R GA-08) who
made some remarks
on the front porch at the Chamber of Commerce Thursday 10 January 2013.
Bookended by some formulaic remarks about debt (without mentioning that it’s already mostly solved), the Congressman noted he is on the Committee on Armed Services. He said there is no current BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure Commission), although one has been asked for. He said a BRAC wouldn’t do anything for near-term debt, anyway (but he didn’t say anything about ending the war in Afghanistan or stopping funding for un-needed weapons systems as ways of saving money).
He said he is the chair of a House Agriculture Subcommitee (Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture). He said he was for research, for the agricultural extension, and for agricultural exports.
Here’s the WCTV news report, with responses by Gretchen Quarterman, Chair of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP).
Here’s a video playlist:
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The new Commission with the new portrait got to hear about money and
transparency right away.
And a surprise alcoholic vote caused by their lack of transparency.
Crawford Powell (Dist. 3), Richard Raines (Dist. 2), Bill Slaughter (Chairman),
Joyce Evans (Dist. 1), John Page (Dist. 5), Demarcus Marshall (Dist. 4).
Here’s the agenda, with links to videos, and a few notes, followed by a video playlist. See also the Monday Work Session.
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Gretchen Quarterman thanked and congratulated Commission members at the 8 January 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
Then she reminded them she ran on a platform of transparency, and she asked them to make Commission packets available to the public, and move CWTBH to the beginning of the meeting so citizens can comment before the commissioners vote.
Here’s the video:
Make available packets Commisioners see? —Gretchen Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 January 2013.
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The
public defender said the county palace (that we’re still mysteriously
paying on) didn’t have space for his office.
The
Industrial Authority request to buy some still-unspecified property
“has been pulled from the agenda” by unspecified forces.
The new
4-H agent spoke and
a bus was discussed.
One Commissioner forgot to show up until late to hear
Workers’ compensation is going up and the Commission’s own
schedule is being adjusted for holidays.
There was little substantive discussion, and
there’s no sign anything will change at the Lowndes County Commission
unless enough people want it to.
They vote this evening at 5:30 PM, and they do have Citizens Wishing
to be Heard, although it is still at the end, after all the votes.
Here’s the agenda, with links to videos, and a few notes.
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