Category Archives: LAKE

Which new districts did the County Commission just vote for?

The VDT and the Commission’s district maps don’t agree, and the Board of Elections doesn’t know. David Rodock writes in the VDT today that County revives expanding Lowndes commission:
During a special meeting Monday, county commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to include two additional voting districts within Lowndes County.

The two proposed voting districts would allow for greater representation at County Commission meetings by allowing for an expansion of the current available voting representatives from three to five, while keeping a non-voting commission chairman.

Last year, this expansion failed in the legislature on a technicality. If the Commission and staff don’t make the same mistake, it seems likely the legislature will approve these new districts.

But the district map the VDT published (see above) is not the same Continue reading →

Covering the planners to connect the dots

Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: 5:30 PM, Tuesday 4 January 2011
Where: Smok’n Pig B-B-Q Express at Bemiss
3960 Macey Drive, Valdosta GA

Help cover food, water, transportation, incarceration, solar energy, biomass, and regular local government meetings. If you can take notes, pictures, or videos at meetings, or find out who’s meeting when, or talk about how things got the way they are, or if you have ideas about how to improve things locally to everyone’s benefit, you can help. See LAKE’s website or this blog, On the LAKE Front, for more ideas, or bring your own.

If you like, you can sign up for this event on LAKE’s new facebook page, which I hope you will like. Continue reading →

Brad Lofton’s memory fails him again

On 28 Dec 2010 Brad Lofton wrote:
No one but WACE has made any claims about our efforts to substantiate this project.
Who are all these people, then, asking questions at the VLCIA’s 6 Dec 2010 event?

For example, this one, following up about the Environmental Impact Study he requested back at the EPD air quality hearing (see video of that event). He didn’t get an answer then, and at VLCIA’s 6 Dec event he still only got allusions to studies and standards that were not produced.

You can see Brad Lofton in that video, listening. Did he forget so quickly?

What about SAVE’s event at VSU at which Dr. Sammons spoke? What about the well-attended Biomass Town Hall that Pastor Angela Manning organized? And other events.

What about my question at the 6 Dec 2010 VLCIA board meeting? Continue reading →

“folks come into the community.” –Col. Ricketts responding to WACE in VLCIA board meeting

Previously I promised to post the rest of what Col. Ricketts and Brad Lofton said about biomass in the 21 Dec 2010 VLCIA board meeting.

In these two videos, Col. Ricketts responds to materials sent to VLCIA by WACE. He dismisses certain material as being from Massachusetts or being from “folks come into the community.” That’s rather rich, since as near as I can tell, all of VLCIA’s “expert” panelists at their 6 Dec 2010 event were from not from around here. Some were from states a thousand miles from here. Maybe somebody can transcribe Brad Lofton’s enumeration of those “experts” from the board meeting, since as near as I can tell VLCIA has provided no written list of them. And of course Sterling Planet is located in Atlanta, not Lowndes County.

In the first video, Col. Ricketts says he’s responding to WACE materials: Continue reading →

“We’re moving forward now …ground breaking … Spring of 2011.” –Brad Lofton

I’m having deja vu from Lofton’s response to my request for substantion of some of his claims back in September: “We’re moving forward with permits in hand.” -jsq
To: “Michael G. Noll”, “Mary B. Gooding”, “Ricketts, Allan” <aricketts@industrialauthority.com>, “Copeland, Roy”, “‘John S. Quarterman'”, “Susan R. Wehling”, Kay Harris
From: “blofton@industrialauthority.com” <blofton@industrialauthority.com>,
Subject: RE: Wiregrass Power, LLC
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 17:08:10 -0500

Dr. Noll,

Please refer to my previous e-mail re our position and the ample community awareness, substantial documentation, state, federal, local and environmental support we are proud to enjoy. We’re moving forward now, and we are looking forward to the ground breaking which will be Spring of 2011.

Regards,

BL

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

A “center of innovation excellence for renewable and sustainable energy in Georgia”?

In a recent message, Brad Lofton wrote “we plan to move on now and focus our attention on new job and tax revenue creating projects.” OK, what are those projects?

Back in September Brad Lofton told me that VLCIA had (beyond whatever Wiregrass LLC is doing) “other renewable green energy projects”, which he then refused to describe.

When I asked about these projects at the 21 Dec 2010 VLCIA board meeting, board member Gary Minchew responded that VLCIA couldn’t talk about sensitive negotiations, but they didn’t want to be secretive. Earlier I had been talking to the fellow sitting to my left about his green energy project and whether VLCIA was going to move forward on it. He pointed out to the board that he and I were facebook friends and linked on LinkedIn. He’s sending me some information; more on that when I get it. Meanwhile, I wonder why the board wouldn’t talk about his project, and I remain dubious that VLCIA has any other “renewable green energy projects”.

In that same meeting, Col. Ricketts and Brad Lofton went on for some time about solar energy, saying they were answering citizen concerns.

As one of the people who has asked them most frequently about solar energy, I have to say Continue reading →

Brad Lofton: “Please have anyone interested e-mail us directly.”

Brad Lofton answers my response of 23 Dec 2010 Col. Ricketts. Mr. Lofton appears not to have noticed that the press releases are in the same post as Col. Ricketts’ message. I’m still waiting for the videos the Valdosta videographer took to appear on the VLCIA website. Meanwhile, LAKE’s videos of the 6 Dec 2010 Q&A session have been on the web since 19 Dec. -jsq
To: John S. Quarterman, Allan Ricketts <aricketts@industrialauthority.com>,
From: Brad Lofton <blofton@industrialauthority.com>
Cc: John S. Quarterman, Michael Noll, Susan Wehling, Mary B. Gooding, Roy Copeland, Kay Harris
Subject: Re: Wiregrass Power, LLC
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:49:56 -0500

John-

We enjoyed having you Tuesday night, and we were especially glad to have you attend on the night we planned to review the expert panel’s testimony regarding the positive environmental, health and economic impacts of our project. We appreciate you agreeing today to provide all of that data (or at least links) on your blog plus the recent flurry of pro-biomass press releases. As you know, December has been very active with EPA and USDA releases promoting biomass plus GA Tech and Duke researchers announcing that renewable energy (including biomass) will save Southeastern U.S. ratepayers $23 billion a year by 2030. That’s great news for residential and industrial consumers alike. The unanimous permission granted for the Gainesville, FL biomass facility was good news, and we were amazed at the large amount of support they received-from the FL State Department of Health, to the guardians of the Suwannee River basin, the U.S. Corps of Engineers, and numerous government and environmental groups in between.

Regarding access to our panel info, we have already e-mailed our panelists’ presentations to members of the public, and we would be more than happy to continue doing that. Please have anyone interested e-mail us directly.

Continue reading →

VLCIA Board Meeting videos, 21 Dec 2010

Here are videos of the regular public board meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), 21 Dec 2010. I videoed almost everything, except when I was speaking or they were answering. More posts later on some of the astonishing points arising from this meeting.
Update 1 Jan 2010: more videos posted, with some comment. Still a few more to come.
Update 2 Jan 2010: All the videos are there now, and there’s a blog post with Dr. Teaf’s slides, along with video of Brad Lofton saying “no way shape or form”.

I’m sure that every VLCIA board member has the best interests of the community at heart. Several of them invited me to contact them with any concerns. I will take them up on that invitation, and you can, too. Continue reading →

jsq to Col. Ricketts about VLCIA

Here’s my response to Col. Ricketts’ recent message. -jsq
From: John S. Quarterman
To: “Allan Ricketts” <aricketts@industrialauthority.com>
cc: “‘John S. Quarterman'”, “‘Michael Noll'”, “‘Susan Wehling'”, “‘Brad Lofton'” <blofton@industrialauthority.com>, “Mary B. Gooding”, Roy Copeland, Kay Harris
Subject: Re: Wiregrass Power, LLC

Col. Ricketts,

It’s good to hear from you.

I wondered during your re-presentation of slides you’d already said the entire VLCIA board had seen at the recent VLCIA biomass event, whether you would provide copies to interested parties, such as those sitting in the room, but you did not at the time.

Considering the increasing amount of public interest in this topic, as evidenced by the attendance and questions at the VLCIA Rainwater Conference Center event, and by recent newspaper activity, probably the public would like to see those press releases directly from the VLCIA’s web site. However, LAKE is always happy to link to relevant material, so if you will please send me the URLs of those press releases as you found them on the web, LAKE will be happy to link to them.

Similarly, if Dr. Teaf’s information is as good as you indicated,

Continue reading →

What’s the Industrial Authority’s Plan?

Appended is my LTE in the VDT today. I’ve added links. -jsq

What is the Industrial Authority’s plan to bring in real clean jobs?

MAGE SOLAR is hiring for the first of 350 jobs in its photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing plant in Dublin, Georgia, with half the population of Valdosta, in Laurens County, with half the population of Lowndes County. They’ve parlayed their position between the Atlanta airport and the Savannah seaport for many new clean jobs.

Suniva of Norcross’s second PV plant with its 500 jobs went to Michigan. Saginaw Valley calls itself Solar Valley and collaborates with governments, academia, and industry, winning thousands of clean jobs in wind and solar manufacturing and generating plants.

The Saginaw News remarked (7 Nov 2010): Continue reading →