Category Archives: History

Gauging the Little River west of Hahira @ LCC 2013-08-26

After the 2009 floods, Lowndes County agreed to help USGS fund a stream gauge on the Little River west of Hahira. It’s time to renew that. They vote tonight about what was proposed at the 26 August 2013 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

6.b. USGS Funding Agreement for Hwy 122 Stream Gauge

This time Emergency Director Ashley Tye said it’s on the Little River.

He said during ihe 2009 floods the county only had a gauges on the Withlacoochee River at Skipper Bridge and US 84, and no way to monitor the level of the Little River, so he contacted USGS, who supplied and installed the equipment. The county since then pays for the maintenance. If something breaks, USGS comes and fixes it. He’s also worked with the National Weather Service to establish flood stages for better warning for residents. It’s time to renew the funding.

Commissioner Demarcus Marshall wanted to know how many inspections were carried out by USGS.

Answer: Continue reading →

Solar will overtake everything –FERC Chair Jon Wellinghof

“Everybody’s roof is out there,” for solar power, so natural gas or oil pipelines are a waste of time. Solar prices dropping exponentially drive solar deployment up like compound interest, eventually onto everybody’s rooftops, where eventually means in about a decade, after which we’ll be ramping down natural gas like we’re already ramping down coal. It’s time for Georgia Power and Southern Company and all of Georgia’s EMCs to get on with solar and stop wasting resources on dead ends, especially that bad idea of fifty years ago, nuclear power.

Herman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media yesterday, FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff: Solar ‘Is Going to Overtake Everything’: One of the country’s top regulators explains why he is so bullish on solar.

“Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything,” Wellinghoff told GTM last week in a sideline conversation at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.

If a single drop of water on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium is doubled every minute, Wellinghoff said, a person chained to the highest seat would be in danger of drowning in an hour.

“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years,” he said.

Indeed, as GTM Research’s MJ Shiao recently pointed out, in the next 2 1/2 years the U.S. will Continue reading →

Down, up, down again: Arkansas Nuclear One

Entergy announced August 8th that its Arkansas nuke was back up after a man died there in March, but it only made it to 87% power on August 12th and then back to zero yesterday. There’s no NRC event for yesterday’s downtime: what’s going on? Meanwhile, the dead man’s family is suing Entergy, and Entergy is suing its contractors. Sounds like the Plant Vogtle circular firing squad.

ANO Feb-Aug 2013

THV11 wrote 8 August 2013, Nuclear One unit back on after deadly accident and EBR staff wrote more detail for Energy Business Review 9 August 2013, Entergy restarts Unit 1 at Arkansas Nuclear One power plant,

Prior to restart, the unit needed an extensive restoration, including damage evaluation, repairs to non-nuclear plant components and rescheduling its refueling activities.

The restoration was made compulsory following the collapse of a contractor’s crane on 31 March 2013, while shifting a generator stator out of the turbine building.

Hm, “made compulsory” by whom? NRC? OSHA, which also investigated? Arkansas? Other? Continue reading →

Climate change adversely affecting U.S. power grid

Yes, and moving away from baseload coal, nukes, and natural gas and towards distributed solar and wind power will help with that, both directly by making the grid more resilient, and indirectly by slowing climate change.

Clare Foran wrote for NationalJournal 12 August 2013, Climate Change Is Threatening the Power Grid: So says the White House, in a new report that recommends strengthening the grid.

Just days away from the 10-year anniversary of the worst power outage in U.S. history, the White House and the Energy Department released a report on Monday evaluating the resiliency of the nation’s electric grid and recommending steps to prevent future blackouts.

The report called storms and severe weather “the leading cause of power outages in the United States,” and warned against the steep cost of weather-related damage to the electric grid. It put the price tag for electrical failures caused by inclement weather at between $18 billion and $33 billion annually, and noted that costs have increased in recent years, jumping from a range of $14 billion to $26 billion in 2003 to $27 billion to $52 billion in 2012. Storms exceeding a billion dollars in damages (electrical and otherwise) have also become more frequent in the past decade, as the chart below shows.

Well, Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear 1 (ANO1) is still down more than four months after a fatal accident (hey, look at that; Continue reading →

New nukes make no financial sense –financial expert to GA PSC

If new nukes make no sense because of natural gas prices, they make even less sense with continually-dropping solar power prices.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Regulator: New nuke plant now wouldn’t make sense,

If Georgia was starting from scratch, it would not build a nuclear power plant….

An analyst working for state regulators, Philip Hayet, said in written testimony that the total costs of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) is more expensive than the next-best option, constructing natural gas plants.

Still, Hayet said it is cheaper in most scenarios to finish the nuclear plant rather than halt the project and instead build natural gas plants.

But it’s not cheaper to finish a nuke than to halt it and get on with wind offshore and distributed solar power throughout Georgia.

GA PSC didn’t publish Hayet’s calculations, using the old excuse of “they involve proprietary financial information from Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power”. But Edison Electric Institute didn’t need any proprietary financial information to compute that Continue reading →

REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing, Val Del Rd @ LCC 2013-08-12

County Planner Jason Davenport said the proposed Moody Family Housing was “in the Nelson Hill neighborhood”, and there were at least 30 pages of updates, but the County Clerk wouldn’t show them to LAKE without an Open Records Request, which hadn’t yet been satisfied at the end of the day. Commissioners had some questions about acreage and traffic, some of which were answered by the ubiquitous Attorney Bill Holland, and others of which were not answered very well by County Engineer Mike Fletcher, at this morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

6.b. REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing, Val Del Rd R-1 to Residential PD, LC Water & Sewer, ~64 acres

Davenport said:

As of last Friday we did receive an updated site plan as well as some elevations from the applicants to let us know exactly what the houses would look like, what they’re anticipating. The site plan did have four changes and I’ll hand these out to you in just one minute. We added some notes about the uses. We wanted to make them show us where their proposed signage was and we wanted to make them clarify who would be maintaining the open space and the green space….

He passed those updates out, but the County Clerk refused to supply copies for LAKE without an Open Records Request. Gretchen filed an ORR, but if the county takes the statutory three days, we won’t get copies, nor will you, before the Commission votes tomorrow evening..

Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading →

Dump CCA and other private prison stocks now –smart analysts

If business is so good, why did CCA lose two contracts for new prisons in Georgia last year when neither the state nor the feds had enough prisoners to fill them? And why was the private prison in Ocilla nearly sold at auction? Why this year was Gladiator School closed and two other CCA prisons cancelled? And all that was before U.S. DoJ announced today it will “avoid charging certain low-level and nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory minimums”.

Ed Arnold wrote for Memphis Business Journal 23 July 2013, Corrections Corp. of America debunks Anonymous report,

As reported on Monday, the computer hacking collective known as Anonymous Analytics published a blog warning investors that a declining prison population and reforms designed to reduce incarceration rates in the U.S. point to shrinking revenue for Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW) going forward.

CCA flatly denied the Anonymous Analytics conclusions in a statement.

CCA apparently didn’t dare link to the actual report. Anonymous Analytics wrote 9 July 2013, Corrections Corporation of America: The Dismantling of a National Disgrace, Continue reading →

Avoid charging low-level and nonviolent drug offenders –U.S. DoJ

It’s about time! The War on Drugs has failed, admits the U.S. Department of Justice, by saying it will “avoid charging certain low-level and nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory minimums”.

Ryan J. Reilly wrote for Huffpo today, Eric Holder Outlining New Justice Department Drug Sentencing Reforms,

The Justice Department will avoid charging certain low-level and nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory minimums, Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Monday. The policy shift will allow certain defendants — those without ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels — to avoid what Holder called “draconian mandatory minimum sentences.”

Holder, in a speech before the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday, Continue reading →

Little guys must stick to the letter of the ULDC @ GLPC 2013-07-29

An individual with a request about family land got told by staff he didn’t fit the letter of the zoning code, in sharp contrast to the Moody Housing item which got to slide on traffic, safety, use of local contractors, and vague affirmations from the developer that maybe there’d be no mold or unpaid subcontractors this time. Walkout Most of the attendees didn’t care, and walked out as soon as this item started. But some of the Commissioners did care.

County Planner Jason Davenport said nobody is currently renting the property and “you have the recommendation from staff”.

Stubbs The applicant said the land had been deeded by grandmother to family members years ago, and one now wanted to sell his part. The TRC’s analysis said the request didn’t meet ULDC requirements and the TRC’s recommendation was laconic: Continue reading →

VDT links Plant Vogtle nuke cost overruns to Kemper Coal

Even the VDT has caught on to cost overruns for Kemper Coal and the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

VDT posted an AP article 29 July 2013, Miss. deal may figure into Georgia nuclear plant, and Charlotte Observer posted it the day before, including Ray Henry as the author,

In Mississippi, the Southern Co. utility took financial losses when the cost of building a new power plant went over budget. In Georgia, another of the company’s projects is going over budget, but it has not yet taken a financial hit.

Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power promised utility regulators that it would charge its customers only for $2.4 billion in costs for building a coal-fired power plant in Kemper Country. Those customers will also have to pay off another $1 billion in bonds for the project, though the utility cannot make a profit off that borrowed money.

The utility’s deal in Mississippi has become a point of debate as Georgia regulators consider who should pay for the increased cost of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl), southeast of Augusta. Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said he wants Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power to consider a Mississippi-style deal here, and Georgia regulators are carefully tracking financial developments in Mississippi.

Echols said he was interested in the idea of a project spending cap.

“I’m sure when they made that deal they didn’t think they were going to over the cap, but they did,” Echols said.

Oh, come now, they went 26 times over budget last time. Why would anyone believe Continue reading →