Category Archives: Health Care

Dr. William Sammons on Biomass Sustainability and Economics

Here’s an interesting video interview with Dr. William Sammons, the doctor who spoke in Traverse City just before that biomass plant was nixed.
Is it more important to reach the target … or to say we have new information and we need to revise the targets and what qualifies?
He’s talking about potential billions of dollars of health costs from particulates, about “waste” wood (what they say they will burn) vs. whole trees (what they end up burning), and most importantly about sustainability.

Biomass plants don’t have to report their CO2 emissions, so if all the proposed biomass plants get built we’re talking about as much as 800 million tons of CO2 from biomass plants by 2020, 12 to 14% of total CO2 emissions for the U.S. (not just power emissions: total national emissions). Trees don’t grow fast enough to suck all that back out of the air in ten years. Continue reading →

Valdosta in bottom 10 metro areas for wages

Richard Florida writes about The Geography of High-Paying Jobs, including this map based on Bureau of Labor Staistics (BLS) data:

The Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comes in the bottom 10 nationwide. That’s for overall average wages.

It doesn’t look quite as bad for specific classes of jobs (creative, service, and working class), but that’s mostly because there are almost no MSAs in the lowest pay tier. However, for service jobs, Valdosta is not as good as Tallahassee, and makes it into the bottom 10: Continue reading →

Biomass Town Hall Part 2

This is part 2 about the July 8th town Hall meeting about the biomass plant proposed for Valdosta.

First let’s hear George Rhynes explain that it’s never too late to reregulate our minds:

Here I’ve selected videos of local County Commission candidates: Continue reading →

Biomass Town Hall, 8 July 2010

On July 8th there was a town Hall meeting about the biomass plant proposed for Valdosta.

Pastor Angela Manning of New Life Ministries sums up why she called this Town Hall meeting:

Speakers included: Continue reading →

Biomass Permit Expected Fortnightly

The VDT published on May 18 Projects in the works: Industrial Authority reviews and discuss items at meeting, by Kara Ramos, in which there is this paragraph:
WIREGRASS POWER, LLC

The project should be approved and issued an air quality operating permit in the next 14 days, according to Lofton. A power purchase agreement should also be complete by June 1, 2010. The VLCIA granted an eight month extension for the project to begin construction.

(VLCIA is the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority. Brad Lofton is its executive director.)

We know from previous reports that this wood and sewage sludge incinerator is expected to produce a maximum of 25 long-term jobs. Many questions were asked at the air quality hearing about particulates, CO2, mercury, and other pollutants. The answers ranged from “we don’t monitor that” to Continue reading →

Green Exercise for Mental Health

Quantifying something we can all feel:
ScienceDaily (May 1, 2010) — How much “green exercise” produces the greatest improvement in mood and sense of personal well-being? A new study in the American Chemical Society’s semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology has a surprising answer.

The answer is likely to please people in a society with much to do but little time to do it: Just five minutes of exercise in a park, working in a backyard garden, on a nature trail, or other green space will benefit mental health.

All natural environments were beneficial including parks in urban settings. Green areas with water added something extra. A blue and green environment seems even better for health, Pretty noted.
Here’s a link to a news blurb in the journal:
Pretty says that his goal with this study is not to provide just another recommendation for individuals but to provide data that can be used in policy discussions. Those data “could translate into what the landscape guidelines are for schools or for public housing,” says Nancy Wells, associate professor of community ecology at Cornell University.
Here is a link to the actual article.

Local Thanksgiving

Here in Lowndes County and the surrounding area we have plenty of things to be thankful for:
  • A growing local food community, anchored by Jason DeLoach’s F.M. Guess Pecan Company of Valdosta, the Packhouse Market of Hahira, and of course Jim Fiveash’s Food Store of Hahira. Let’s not forget the Valdosta Farmer’s Market (1500 South Patterson Street) and Farmer Brown’s Produce. There’s even at least one local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) starting up.
  • Long distance transportation: Interstate 75 near I-10, numerous state highways, and an airport.
  • Delta Airlines (I never thought I’d be writing this) for competitive airfares (except during holidays). And landing on one of the longest runways in the state.
  • Railroads going in every direction carrying freight, which can also carry passengers whenever state and local people and governments get organized to do it.
  • Businesses moving in to take advantage of the transportation; working towards enough good jobs that young people don’t have to move away to find one.
  • County and city governments that are at least a little bit sceptical about exactly which businesses they encourage to move in.
  • Moody Air Force Base, by far the biggest employer, bringing diversity to the community both in serving personnel and in later retirees.
  • Two hospitals: South Georgia Medical Center and Smith Northview Hospital.
  • There’s even a Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) including the counties of Lowndes, Brooks, Lanier, and Echols, with a combined population of about 130,000. This is enough people to try things without waiting for Atlanta or Washington to tell us what to do.
  • Valdosta State University, one of two large regional campuses of the University of Georgia System, and one so active politically that it got its own voting precinct this year, the only college precinct in the state.
  • Live election results during each election, on the Lowndes County website. It’s the only county in the state that does this!
  • Georgia Military College, a liberal arts junior college.
  • Valdosta Technical College, or whatever it’s being called since the state reorganized it.
  • Thriving downtowns in Valdosta and Hahira. First Friday, Winterfest, Honeybee Festival: those are doing more to attract attractive businesses than any number of road projects.
  • Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area, preserving a little bit of the original ecosystem of the area; you know, pine trees, live oaks, wiregrass, pitcher plants, cypress swamps, alligators, great blue herons, and bobcats. Maybe you don’t. Go and see!
  • Trees, for forestry, and for themselves. See Patterson Street (a little planning kept it from looking like Ashley Street), and the oldest longleaf pines in the county are on the VSU campus; older than Valdosta. There are even a few left elsewhere in the county. Protecting forests is not just the right thing to do, it’s good business.
  • Rain, so trees and crops will grow.
  • Sunshine, much more than Germany, for example, so we can do solar if we want to.
  • Winning sports teams in Lowndes County and Valdosta high schools and VSU caused ESPN to name Valdosta TitleTown. Maybe that winning attitude can carry over to improving academics.
  • Theatre at the Dosta, VSU, and the high schools. If theatre was a sport, we’d be winning that, too!
    Dites-moi
    Pourquoi
    La vie est belle,
    Dies-moi
    Pourquoi
    La vie est gai?     		    Tell me why
    The sky
    is filled with music,
    Tell me why
    We fly
    on clouds above?
We live in an area with many advantages. You can probably list more of them.

Why stop with what we’ve got? Why not play up our advantages of transportation, natural environment, local culture, etc., and attract jobs for young people and make the place even better for everybody?

Rally for president Obama, 17 Oct 2009

Gretchen Quarterman and George Rhynes More than fifty people listened in a cold wind Saturday to a dozen speakers on the courthouse steps saying “I support president Obama”. Speakers included Gretchen Quarterman (MC), Tony Daniels, Marcus Rhone, Ruth Council, Mrs. Annie Fisher (on the Valdosta School Board), Gladys Lee (from Brooks County), Betty Marini (from Lanier County), Jim Parker, RJ Hadley (from Rockdale County, running for U.S. Senate against Johnny Isakson), Freeman Rivers, Lee Touchton, Gale Eger, John S. Quarterman, and others whose names I didn’t get.

In this example, Gladys Lee asks us all to think for ourselves: Continue reading →

Nature Makes Healthy

Wide base Something to consider when planning development:
The closer you live to nature, the healthier you’re likely to be.

For instance, people who live within 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of a park or wooded area experience less anxiety and depression, Dutch researchers report.

The findings put concrete numbers on a concept that many health experts had assumed to be true.

“It’s nice to see that it shows that, that the closer humans are to the natural environment, that seems to have a healthy influence,” said Dr. David Rakel, director of integrative medicine and assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

That’s Amanda Gardner, writing in USA Today. A few other points:
Children and poor people suffered disproportionately from lack of green acres, the researchers found.
And what affects the most vulnerable affects all:
More green space may also be a way for whole communities to become healthier.
The cypress pictured is much like those in the swamp on Val Del Road that the county let a developer cut down last year.

Jack Kingston Health Care Town Hall, Valdosta, GA, 28 Sep 2009

Who are the uninsured? Jack Kingston (R GA-01) came back to Valdosta, GA to hold another Health Care Town Hall after his previous one in August had ten times as many people as he expected. This time the 1200 seat Mathis Auditorium was maybe half full, so probably somewhere between 500 and 600 people attended.

The picture on the right is the core of Kingston’s argument. See for yourself. Here’s a YouTube playlist for all the LAKE videos by Gretchen Quarterman from that September Town Hall. This is Kingston’s complete presentation except for a few words lost between videos and a few cases of camera failure. We’re still adding more videos from the question session. All the videos from the questions session are now available (17 Oct 2009); starting with Microphones are open.

Here’s Kingston’s own blog about the event.

Here’s a Democratic view of part of what Kingston said.