Category Archives: History

Exclusive franchise on photographing County Commission? @ LCC 2013-05-28

Does the county ordinance that adversely affects Deep South Sanitation and no other company follow a pattern already set by the county? The VDT posted pictures clearly taken not from the media box during last night’s Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission: this one shows Gretchen videoing for LAKE from that media box. Has the Lowndes County Commission granted an exclusive franchise to the VDT for photographing, like the one it granted to ADS for trash collection? Or has the Commission admitted its anti-videoing ordinance was actually an illegal bill of attainder directed at LAKE alone? If so, why is it still posted on the door? And why is the county still planning to sue Deep South Sanitation on account of an ordinance and contract that directly adversely affects no other business? Hm, could that also be an illegal bill of attainder?

In case you had any doubt the VDT’s pictures were taken during the actual Commission meeting in session, this one is of Steve Parker speaking in Citizens Wishing to be Heard.

Even the Cumming City Council, which illegally ejected Nydia Tysdale for videoing an open meeting, realized its error and she now videos from the front row. Only Lowndes County, Georgia continues to post a sign on the door saying all videoing and photographing must be from the back of the room. And then it lets one news organization violate its own ordinance, but not another.

To quote former Chairman Ashley Paulk: Continue reading →

If Wal-Mart fires for not following procedures…

George Rhynes asks if Wal-Mart can fire employees who disarmed an armed robber for not following procedures, why can’t the manager he says didn’t follow procedures when the manager fired him be fired in return? I wonder why Wal-Mart procedures and profit are more important than employee safety, well-being, or the drain on public resources to cover what Wal-Mart does not?

George Boston Rhynes wrote to Wal-Mart CEO and President Mike Duke and Board of Directors 20 February 2011, Wal-Mart Store 899 and 2615, Valdosta, Georgia and China Workers!

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Valdosta Plans Flooding Discussions

Valdosta is finally announcing the 11 April 2013 watershed-wide flooding meeting organized by the Army Corps of Engineers.

WCTV yesterday carried a press release from the City of Valdosta; PR which, oddly, does not appear to be on the city’s website. I have added a few links. Prominently missing from the PR is any mention of water quality, the Floridan Aquifer, or sinkholes. -jsq

The City of Valdosta initiated planning discussions recently that brought together representatives from key local, state and federal agencies to seek solutions to a regional flood issue.

The 50-year flood event that occurred in late February, early March 2013 was a vivid reminder of the 2009 flood event that significantly impacted south Georgia. Since 2009, the city has worked to help identify potential causes and the scope and area of the regional flooding that occurred. This information has been shared with various state and federal officials and agencies in the hopes of gaining their interest and support to work together to address the regional flooding. Since Valdosta is located

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Gulf 3 years ago; Caspian 5 years ago: BP oil well blowouts

Two years before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig poisoned the Gulf of Mexico (Saturday was the third anniversary), apparently BP had a very similar disaster in the Caspian Sea and covered it up. Is this a company or this the 13 spills in 30 days industry we want piping tar sands crude across America to the Gulf for all of 35 permanent jobs and CO2 emissions like 51 coal plants? There’s a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-independent way: solar and wind power can power the U.S. and the world.

Greg Palast wrote for EcoWatch 19 April 2013, BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill,

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There’s more in the article, such as this:

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A grid with a million solar rooftops

Bill McKibben wrote for Rolling Stone 11 April 2013, The Fossil Fuel Resistance,

A grid with a million solar rooftops feels more like the Internet than ConEd; it’s a farmers market in electrons, with the local control that it implies.

Distributed solar power is exactly what electric utilities fear. There’s a reason why Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning consistently ranks “renewables” as his second-to-last power source; the only thing worse for big baseload utilities is his last one: efficiency, which could remove all demand for additional electrical supply in Georgia.

How big of an opportunity for the rest of us is this threat to the cozy business model of big baseload utilities? Continue reading →

BP: the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!

BP must be getting desperate about people catching onto what they did to the Gulf. A BP video ad has been replaying itself every few minutes beside various news stories since yesterday, claiming two years after the oil disaster (“spill” doesn’t describe it) “the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!” BP’s website says “We are helping economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast as part of our ongoing commitment to the region following the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010”. Neither the ad nor the website says BP actually cleaned up the oil. Because they didn’t. It’s still there, as is the even more toxic “dispersant” Corexit BP dumped on top of the oil to make it sink. Both are busily poisoning dolphins, fish, birds, and humans.

Antonia Juhasz wrote for The Nation 7 May 2012, Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers,

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Electric utiltiies know about Moore’s Law for solar power

And they know compound annual growth, even at a low 22% rate, is going to cause them a heap of trouble.

More from the Edison Electric Institute January 2013 report, Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business (rehosted on the LAKE web server, since it disappered from the EEI server),

The decline in the price of PV panels from $3.80/watt in 2008 to $0.86/watt in mid-20121. While some will question the sustainability of cost-curve trends experienced, it is expected that PV panel costs will not increase (or not increase meaningfully) even as the current supply glut is resolved. As a result, the all-in cost of PV solar installation approximates $5/watt, with expectations of the cost declining further as scale is realized;

Sure, costs won’t continue to drop forever, but Continue reading →

Solar could burn utility business model

Exhibit 2 Utilities say that like it’s a bad thing. The same utilities that left millions without power in the U.S. repeatedly last year, and that gouge ratepayers for 10% or more profits. Moore’s Law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up, with increasingly more each like compound interest. Utilties need to adapt or get out of the way.

Last November Moody’s reported that solar and wind were eroding credit for coal and gas power plants, and were already having ‘a profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal generation companies. That was in Europe. David Roberts wrote for Grist yesterday, Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities,

The thing to remember is that it is in a utility’s financial interest to generate (or buy) and deliver as much power as possible. The higher the demand, the higher the investments, the higher the utility shareholder profits. In short, all things being equal, utilities want to sell more power. (All things are occasionally not equal, but we’ll leave those complications aside for now.)

And they want to produce that power from big baseload power stations for their economy of scale while the monopoly power utilities get guaranteed profits, not to mention huge ratepayer and loan-guaranteed boondoggles like the new nukes at Plant Vogtle. (Electric Member Cooperatives are somewhat different.)

Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid.

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Banks as slumlord renters reducing property values

Lou Raguse write for WIVB.com 4 April 2013, Cheektowaga picks fight with big banks,

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WIVB)—Neighbors in Cheektowaga say empty houses are ruining the value of their neighborhoods and bringing in unwanted guests.

Residents want to know why these properties, seized by banking giants, have been left to crumble. The town board says they have serious issues with the homeowners.

“In normal life, you would call them slumlords,” says Town Board Member Charlie Markel.

Those so-called “slumlords” are big banks like Bank of America and Chase. Markel says in too many cases, a homeowner falls behind on a mortgage and the bank begins to foreclose. But then, it stops short. He says the bank continues paying property tax but allows the homes to fall into disrepair, never allowing them back on the market for sale, or to be auctioned.

Let’s remember what last year’s study of America’s richest and poorest cities found about the Valdosta MSA:

Despite these positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year [2011], higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent.

I wonder how big national and multinational banks are serving our area? And with a vacancy rate that high, and housing prices still dropping, why are we building more houses?

-jsq

NJ 1 GW Solar: GA #22

While Georgia failed to reform its antique Territorial Electric Service Act and toyed with a solar monopoly, New Jersey, far to the north with far less sun, finished installing a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of solar power. The rest of the U.S. installed 3.3 MW total, slightly higher than projections of 3.2 MW, but Georgia lagged behind. When will the legislature and the Public Service Commission, and perhaps more importantly, Georgia Power and Southern Company, stop stop wasting our money on that three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture boondoggle at Plant Vogtle and get on with solar in Georgia for jobs, for profit, and for clean air and water?

Pete Danko wrote for Earth Techling and Huffpo 20 March 2013, New Jersey Solar Capacity Hits 1 Gigawatt,

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