The VDT apparently declined to print this LTE submission. I added the links and images. -jsq
When I opened a recent “Sunday Business” section of the Valdosta Daily Times I was expecting to see a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of smart meters. After all, the headline read: “Smart Meters — Fact or Fiction?” What I found, however, was quite different. In case you missed it, here a summary of the highlights:
According to Georgia Power “concerns about smart meters are nothing more than myths.” These concerns range from health risks and increased bills to an invasion of your privacy and house fires started by electrical shorts. Myths or not, the best way to counter customers’ concerns would be to provide studies that, for example, show that smart meters are less dangerous than cellular phones or that electricity bills have not increased as a result of smart meters. However, customers only get assurances which, frankly, do nothing to dispel existing concerns.
Georgia Power also claims that it is using smart meters to be more environmentally
Economics, as in the stealth tax rate hike, $8.3 billion loan guarantee,
cost overrun passthrough boondoggle sucking up money that could be going to make Georgia a world leader in solar and wind for jobs, energy independence and profit, is the main point.
But let’s not forget the health risks of nuclear power, from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl to Fukushima. Or Southern Company’s Plant Hatch, for that matter, leaking radioactive tritium into the ground water 90 miles from here. No tsunami and no earthquake was required to produce that leak. It’s our money and our families’ health Southern Company is experimenting with.
Notification of Open Meeting of the Hospital Authority
Regularly scheduled meetings of Hospital Authority occur on the third Wednesday of each month at 9:30am in the SGMC Executive Board Room unless otherwise posted.
They added that since I last looked back last August. Hm, maybe somebody should go to that open meeting and record it.
Our high schools and college graduates mostly have to go somewhere else, because jobs here are few and many of them don’t pay enough for a decent living. Should we not care enough about our families and our community to come up with strategies that grow existing businesses and attract new ones that will employ local people?
We need discussions and strategies that involve the whole community, going beyond just the usual planning professionals, to include all groups and individuals with information or opinions, whether they got here generations ago or last week: for fairness and for freedom.
The Industrial Authority focus group meeting I attended Wednesday was refreshing, because their consultants asked the opinions of people some of whom previously had to picket outside. The previous day, VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland said this strategic planning process was a long time coming. I agree, and while nobody can say what will come of it at this point, I hope it does produce a real Economic Development Strategy.
PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE PURSUANT TO O.C.G.A. 31-7-74.3
PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE PURSUANT TO O.C.G.A.
31-7-74.3
The Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County, Georgia will
hold a public hearing regarding a proposed sale to Acadia Greenleaf,
LLC, an affiliate of
Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc., 830 Crescent
Centre Drive, Franklin, Tennessee 37067, the real estate, assets and
operations owned by The Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes
County, Georgia associated with its operation of the Greenleaf
Center located at 2209 Pineview Drive, Valdosta, Georgia and the
Greenleaf Outpatient Center, located 2217 Pineview Drive, Valdosta,
Georgia. The public hearing shall be held on July 23, 2012, at 9:00
a.m. in Dining Rooms 1 and 2 on Level 1 at South Georgia Medical
Center, 2501 N. Patterson Street, Valdosta, Georgia 31603. At said
public hearing, the subject matters required by O.C.G.A. 31-7-74.3
will be described, discussed and disclosed.
J. Randall Sauls, Secretary,
The Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County, Georgia
Walter H. New
Attorney at Law
P.O. Box 111
Quitman GA 31643
00030430
5/22,25;06/01/12
How can a man with health care financial troubles make a living with a shop he’s had for decades when some of the neighbors complain about a rezoning that is now required? A controversial case that raised issues ranging from wetlands to public safety to Moody Air Force Base jets flying out of Valdosta Airport made its way through two appointed boards to a Solomonic rezoning decision by the elected Lowndes County Commission. Nobody wanted to deny a man a living, but many people wanted to limit potential commercial uses of the subject property. The Commissioners attempted to take all that into account, yet failed to incorporate two major considerations raised by neighbors, mentioning one of them only to disparage it. Even that isn’t the end of it, since it may head back to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a buffer variance. Here are videos of REZ-2012-09 Copeland at the Lowndes County Commission.
At the 8:30 AM Monday Work Session, County Planner Jason Davenport had several updates since Commissioners had received their packets the previous week.
An email from a Mr. Bradford in opposition.
Some open records requests to be filled after the work session.
Davenport had met with the applicant, Mr. Copeland, who had provided more materials because he believed there were some accusations about lack of continuous operations in the building.
Davenport summarized that he thought there were three camps:
Those not supporting the case.
Those supporting the case,
Those supporting the case with conditions,
He said one possibility would be for he and the county attorney to meet with the opposition attorney to try to work out some conditions.
He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road.
I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL,
due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road,
but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance.
There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground
or wires on poles.
Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon,
with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.
Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas,
for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.
Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
…Lafayette, Louisiana,
Bowling Green, Kentucky,
Lagrange, Georgia,
and
Thomasville, Georgia.
They use it for
public safety,
education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU),
and
It attracts new industry.
If you want knowledge-based industry,
they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work,
but at home, whereever they live.
On the eve of Southern Company (NYSE: SO) holding its annual meeting
of stockholders in Pine Mountain, GA., the nonprofit Green America
released a report today ranking the major U.S. power producer as
“the United States’ most irresponsible utility.”
Titled “Leadership We Can Live Without: The Real Corporate Social
Responsibility Report for Southern Company,” the Green America
analysis assigns letter grades to seven major U.S. utilities on four
fronts: reliance on coal; pollution; reliance on and expansion of
nuclear power; and lobbying expenditures. Southern came in dead last
with straight “F” grades in all four of the categories.
The PR and the report have a lot more detail, such as this:
Clean Air Task Force data shows that Southern Company’s coal-fired
power plants cause 1,224 deaths, 1,710 heart attacks, 20,770 asthma
attacks, and 752 cases of chronic bronchitis per year. The total
annual cost of all of this damage is over $9 billion.
Hey, that’s more than the original projected cost of the new nukes!
Georgians, do you like trading your health for SO’s
coal plants
and its nuclear boondoggle?
The chief executives of three major Georgia hospitals are getting together to discuss the future of health care in the state.
Probably a good idea. Which hospitals?
CEOs scheduled to sit on the panel are Tim Stack of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Don Faulk of Central Georgia Health System in Macon and Maggie Gill of Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah.
“…the vast array of services offered at SGMC. We are a progressive hospital with many services that are unique to South Georgia.”
So who organized the hospital CEO discussions?
The Executive Forum, an outreach program of Mercer University’s business school, will host the hospital CEOs….
Hm, maybe VSU could host some hospital CEOs. Maybe unlike Mercer’s Forum, they could make the discussion open to the public. Maybe even invite questions from the public.
The home among the trees was supposed to be Mark Goolsby's inheritance. His 78-year-old mother now lives in the large, white, wood farmhouse that his family built before the Civil War.
But Goolsby says he'll never live there now.
That's because across the street and through those trees is one of the largest coal ash ponds in the country. It belongs to Plant Scherer, a coal-fired plant that came to the neighborhood considerably later than the Goolsby family. In the mid-1970s, Goolsby said, “when (Georgia Power) bought 350 acres from my dad, they told him we'd never know they were there.”
Those acres are now part of an unlined pond where Georgia Power deposits about 1,000 pounds of toxic coal ash a day. Neither federal nor Georgia rules require groundwater monitoring around the pond. The federal Toxic Release Inventory shows that in 2010 alone, the pond received ash containing thousands of pounds of heavy metals and radioactive compounds including arsenic, vanadium, and chromium.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that up to 1 in 50 residents nationally who live near ash ponds could get cancer from the arsenic leaking into wells. The EPA also predicts that unlined ash ponds can increase other health risks, such as damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system, from contaminants such as lead.
A massive 2008 spill from a Tennessee coal ash pond led to greater scrutiny of the dams that hold these ponds in place, and the EPA promised new rules for storing coal ash. The process led to broader awareness of a more long-term health threat: groundwater contamination from the ponds.
So what's Georgia Power's solution?
Monroe County property records show Georgia Power has spent about $1.1 million buying property near Plant Scherer between 2008 and the end of 2010. But the true number may be higher.
They're going to have to keep doing that until they buy up a lot more property, I predict.
Wouldn't it be cheaper for the future bottom line of Georgia Power and its parent the Southern Company to invest in solar and wind power?
nothing more than myths.” These concerns range from health risks and increased bills to an invasion of your privacy and house fires started by electrical shorts. Myths or not, the best way to counter customers’ concerns would be to provide studies that, for example, show that smart meters are less dangerous than cellular phones or that electricity bills have not increased as a result of smart meters. However, customers only get assurances which, frankly, do nothing to dispel existing concerns.
