Category Archives: Environment

Overwhelming majority of Americans want clean water and renewable energy –poll

A new poll says 94% want new energy balanced with clean air and water, 86% want to shift from coal and nuclear to wind and water power, and 79% are concerned about shale gas fracking affecting water quality.

A few excerpts from the PR Water is High Priority for Bipartisan Majority of Americans, 10 January 2013,

  • 92 percent of Americans think “U.S. energy planning and decision making” should be based on “a comprehensive understanding of what our national water resources are” — a national water roadmap that Congress asked for, but which was never produced. The national water roadmap attracts the support of 92 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Independents, and 94 percent of Democrats.
  • 86 percent of Americans want leadership on shifting from coal and nuclear energy to wind and solar. Support for this approach exists across party lines, including 72 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of Independents, and 97 percent of Democrats.
  • 86 percent of Americans “support more studies of the health and environmental consequences of the chemicals” used in fracking. Supporters of this approach include 81 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of Independents, and 89 percent of Democrats.
  • Three quarters of Americans have heard of fracking, with 51 percent saying they are very or somewhat familiar with it. 79 percent of Americans are concerned about fracking “as it relates to water quality.”

What is to be done?

Continue reading →

The water is not lost. —Forrest H. Williams

Valdosta resident Forrest H. Williams replied in the VDT today to my op-ed of 6 January. His information seems a bit out of date. For example, he cites Progress Energy’s Crystal River nuke as a good example, when it’s been down since 2009 and is still producing zero percent power, both according to the NRC. Readers of this blog know that the blog version of my op-ed already links to sources for everything I said. I may respond more later, but no doubt there are other people who want to get involved in this discussion. And I do thank Forrest H. Williams for airing the sort of disinformation that is out there, so others can dispel it.

Oh, and saying water that is evaporated is not lost is like saying trees that are burned are not lost. Evaporated water is not available for agricultural or wildlife or drinking water use, and thus is indeed lost.

Continue reading →

Vogtle nuclear reactor train wreck

Ever wondered what a nuclear reactor vessel looks like? Here’s one that’s literally a train wreck, on its way to Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River.

Rob Pavey wrote for the Augusta Chronicle 10 January 2013, Vogtle reactor vessel slips between Savannah, Burke County,

A 300-ton reactor vessel bound for Plant Vogtle was stranded briefly in south Georgia this week after a malfunction with the specially designed rail car moving the nuclear component from Savannah to Burke County. Workers examine a rail car that was transporting a 300-ton reactor vessel from the Port of Savannah to the Plant Vogtle nuclear site in Burke County. A misalignment between the cargo platform and the rail car caused the component to be returned to Savannah.

“The platform that contained the RV (reactor vessel) during transport became misaligned with the Schnabel railcar, so the railcar stopped immediately,” said Georgia Power Co. spokesman Mark Williams. “The platform and car were re-aligned the same day and safely returned to the port.”

The Schnabel railcar, which features extra axles that help distribute and support the weight of heavy objects, did not break, he said. Georgia Power would not divulge the location of the incident.

I wonder what the locals think. We’d ask them, if we knew where they were.

Well, that’s the only mishap so far, right?

Continue reading →

Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal (WABE, 14 Nov 2012) temporarily forgot that “conservative” includes conserving something, like Theodore Roosevelt and national parks, or when Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge which also administers Banks Lake, when Richard Nixon started the EPA, and when Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act. If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to be a liberal working for water for our state!

Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen

listed the biggest boondoggle of all as #11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In 2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law letting Georgia Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle, to the tune of about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

Continue reading →

Plant the seeds for viable water future

This AJC op-ed is about coastal wetlands, but much of it applies to wetlands such as cypress swamps and streams in Lowndes County and the rest of central south Georgia, especially since our state water plan for the Suwannee-Satilla Region points us at County-Level Population Projections from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget that project 45% growth in Lowndes County population in 20 years to 156,650 people by 2030, which means near doubling in 30 years to 2050. -jsq

David Kyler wrote for the AJC 29 December 2006, “Plant the seeds for viable coastal future”,

Recent population projections for the Georgia coast issued by 2010-2030 Change in Population of Georgia Counties Georgia Tech say nothing new. We’re growing at almost 20 percent a decade, meaning a near doubling every 35 years.

The Center for a Sustainable Coast projected a population of about 1 million by 2030 for the 11 counties in the coastal region as defined by the Department of Natural Resources, somewhat higher than the 844,000 predicted by Georgia Tech. This compares with a population of 538,469 reported in the 2000 Census report.

But the accuracy of projections is not the point. Increased population will result in more land clearing and environmental disturbance than in the past—there will be larger homes, bigger lots and fewer people per household.

National studies show up to twice as much land is

Continue reading →

Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?

Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s maybe “next decade” for solar power? Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers trying to push solar off for fifty years? Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done: Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.

Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012, Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride

When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June. It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300 miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds, slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….

And since that story: Continue reading →

Waste offer letter: take it or….

Unsigned trash letter from Lowndes County I received the appended unsigned letter from Lowndes County recently, which says the 5,000 residents of the unincorporated parts that currently use the county’s waste disposal sites can sign up with Advanced Disposal (of New York City) for curbside pickup or…. There is no or. So look forward to trash dumping long roadsides, in parking lots in town, and on your property. And neither outgoing County Chairman Ashley Paulk nor County Manager Joe Pritchard even had the courtesy to sign the letter.

After noting that back in June the county changed waste permit cards from 12 months to 6 months, the letter says:

At purchase, information was made available regarding possible future options for solid waste management in unincorporated Lowndes County.

So the county is backing off from claiming card buyers got a letter spelling out options. I got no such letter with card purchase.

This consideration became necessary due to revenue generated by the sale of the permit cards, not covering the cost of operating the centers.

And that’s all the accounting we get. Where is the summary of expenses for the centers compared to revenue? The VDT reported from the Commissioners’ stealth retreat back in April:

“In total, the county is currently spending $782,058.34 each year for solid waste disposal, a reduction from $1,176,207.75 in 2007.”

As I pointed out then, “So that’s a rapid reduction in cost to less than a third of what it used to be, and less than half of what it was only a year ago.” Later Joe Pritchard said those numbers didn’t include everything being spent. So what was actually being spent? We the taxpayers and we the card payers don’t know. After a long series of meetings to which the public was either not invited at all or was not invited to provide input, at its last meeting of the year (exactly as I predicted), Commissioners approved changes to the solid waste ordinance eliminating the collection sites and granted a monopoly to Advanced Disposal Services of New York City.

Former Chairman Ashley Paulk recently complained Moody AFB had become “privatized”. Yet at his last Commission meeting he presided over privatizing the county’s public service of solid waste collection.

Three new Commissioners were just sworn in yesterday, including a new chair. The new Commission in the new year is not, so far as I know, bound by the decisions of any previous Commission. It could undo the damage the old one just did. Or it could, like the old one, ignore concerns of public health, safety, and the environment that the state requires them to implement, plus concerns of local waste collection businesses, of local residents about recycling and about the lack of any other option than curbside; will the new Commission continue to kick 5,000 county residents towards curbside collection or tossing their trash in the your yard?

Unsigned trash letter from Lowndes County:

Continue reading →

Fracking: coming soon to a state near you?

Lest you think fracking is something that happens only in faraway places like Alberta or Pennsylvania, look at this map of North American shale gas basins, extending right through the Appalachians from Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina into Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Source: Canada fracking creates ‘test tube‘ residents in B.C., Alberta,
by Lynn Herrmann for Digital Journal 5 January 2012.

How long before Georgia Power or Southern Company decide natural gas would be even cheaper if they fracked in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi? How long until unavoidable human error starts fracking polluting our local groundwater and rivers? For that matter, isn’t it bad enough already that other people’s water is fracked for cheap gas in Georgia?

We could just get on with solar power, which doesn’t spill.

-jsq

Frack human error

What do you get in a solar spill? A sunny day. What do you get in a fracking spill? Polluted groundwater and drinking water. When do you get it? Whenever somebody makes a mistake, which turns out to be frequently.

Alberta Finds Mismanagement of Errors Causes Fracking Water Contamination,

“There is no amount of regulation that can overcome human error,” said Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) spokesman Darin Barter. ERCB released an investigation report that cites inadequate management of risks as one of the main causes of a September 2011 accident that contaminated groundwater with toxic hydraulic fracturing chemicals, including the cancer causing agent known as BTEX (benzene, toulene, ethylbenzene, and xylene).

At least the company involved in this particular incident did something about it:

Personnel from Crew Energy told the Calgary Herald the company is “embarrassed” about the accident. Rob Morgan, chief operating officer for Crew said, “there’s no question of our appreciation of the severity of this,” adding, “pretty much all of the personnel who were involved in this particular circumstance are no longer with the company.”

But the groundwater is still contaminated. And where will they find replacement personnel who will never make mistakes?

Meanwhile, a solar spill is called a nice day.

-jsq

 

Fake fracking reports: professor and institute head quit, other institute disbanded

From Austin to Buffalo, fake science for fracking is increasingly being exposed, Frack U with academic consequences: lead professor resigns, institute head quits, another institute disbanded. The image on the right (Frack U) is not a reputation any university wants to see. At least academia takes conflicts of interest seriously; now if government and the voters would do the same…. Or energy companies. Remember, shale gas (plus nuclear) is what Georgia Power and Southern Company are shifting to from coal, while shading us from the finances that would enable solar power for jobs and energy independence in south Georgia.

Terrence Henry wrote for NPR 6 December 2012, Review of UT Fracking Study Finds Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest (Updated)

The original report by UT Austin’s Energy Institute, ‘Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,’ was released early this year, and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. But this summer, the Public Accountability Initiative, a watchdog group, reported that the head of the study, UT professor Chip Groat, had been sitting on the board of a drilling company the entire time. His compensation totaled over $1.5 million over the last five years. That prompted the University to announce an independent review of the study a month later, which was released today.

The review finds many problems with the original study, chief among them that Groat did not disclose what it calls a “clear conflict of interest,” which “severely diminished” the study. The study was originally commissioned as a way to correct what it called “controversies” over fracking because of media reports, but ironically ended up as a lightning rod itself for failing to disclose conflicts of interest and for lacking scientific rigor.

Unrepentant as recently as July, Professor Groat resigned in November. Plus this:

Raymond Orbach of UT’s Energy Institute has resigned after the group became engulfed in controversy over a study of fracking.

And elsewhere even more drastic results have ensued:

Continue reading →