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On What Basis Does ZBOA Decide?
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City of Valdosta
Allan Strickland, Chair Laverne Gaskins Scott Orenstein, Vice-Chair Nancy Hobby Paul Alvarado |
Lowndes County
Gretchen Quarterman Dr. William Houseal Dave Kirk |
Left to right: Laverne Gaskins, Gretchen Quarterman, Paul Alvarado, Allan Strickland (Chair), Scott Orenstein (Vice-Chair), and Dr. William Houseal. (Nancy Hobby and Dave Kirk were not present at that meeting.)
According to the city’s web page about them:
The ZBOA is a joint board consisting of eight appointed citizens, four each for the City of Valdosta and Lowndes County. Members are appointed for three year terms. City board members are appointed by the Mayor-Council based on their experience in land development, their familiarity with the City of Valdosta Zoning Ordinance, and their willingness to commit sufficient time to the board in order to be an effective board member.What do they do? Continue reading
Eric Cornwell of APD explains location, process flow, and specific items covered by the permit (soot, SO2, NOX, CO, VOC, HCL, etc., but not CO2). He remarks that Wiregrass Power LLC is building a small plant with a “lower emission limit in order to avoid some of the red tape” by getting a minor permit instead of a major permit. The first half hour concludes with Bob Turner, the plant manager, presenting similar material, ending with:
“No new carbon is added to the atmosphere when burning woody byproducts.”I beg to differ on that: in the time it takes trees to grow back, there is indeed new carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. More from Dr. William Sammons on that.
Back to the video of the hearing. Questions start at 00:29:44. Here are some time markers and very brief summaries of Q and A; see the video for the full questions and answers. Continue reading
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Where does Georgia Power say Albany’s biomass plant will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 95 percent? Biomass proponents usually say what Forester Bell says: trees are carbon neutral. That ignores the time gap between clearcutting and new growth. That gap from 15 to 100 years or more can produce a lot of CO2.
As a tree farmer myself, I know the pulpwood market is down in Georgia due to the recession and foreign competition. I’d like to be convinced that biomass is the new market we need, but the more I look into it,
the more obfuscation I encounter.
Forester Bell seeks a study showing solar will work in Georgia. Georgia Power’s web pages (renewable energy -> solar -> solar potential)
http://www.georgiapower.com/spotlightsolar/solar_potential.asp
include a map of Georgia’s Solar Potential,
Continue reading
That’s Albert in the hat bending my ear.
There was food, there was blown glass
and much other artwork, and bands.
As previously mentioned, SAVE was educating people
about the problems with biomass.
More pictures in the flickr set.
First Friday, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 3 September 2010, Pictures and videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
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The Southwest is a solar-power hotbed. To supplement fossil fuel plants, long-distance transmission lines stretch from the Mojave Destert, which has plenty of sun.
The Austin solar solution doesn’t require massive new power lines, either. It’s mostly been accomplished with solar panels on houses and business roofs; panels that wouldn’t show up on National Geographic’s map because they’re small and distributed. Which is the point: they generate power where it’s needed, and at peak times when it’s needed, namely when it’s hot and sunny out and air conditioners are running on max. There’s no reason Georgia can’t do the same.
I would continue this series by showing wind generation proposed for Georgia, but there isn’t any of that, either. There could be, off the coast.
Which makes more sense: polluting our air with more coal and biomass plants, or getting a move on with solar and wind?
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Nonetheless, take this map of proposed biomass plants and combine it with the map of proposed new coal plants, plus the existing coal plants in Juliette, Georgia (dirtiest in the country) and Albany, and south Georgia is slated to become even more infested with polluting energy sources.
Does that seem like a good idea to you?
Next: proposed solar plants.
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Although everyone acknowledges the need for a better, smarter, cleaner grid, the paramount goal of the utility industry continues to be cheap electricity. In the U.S. about half of it comes from burning coal. Coal-powered generators produce a third of the mercury emissions in America, a third of our smog, two-thirds of our sulfur dioxide, and nearly a third of our planet-warming carbon dioxide—around 2.5 billion metric tons a year, by the most recent estimate.Then it talks about how it’s hard to get stodgy electric utilities to invest in anything else. However, there is at least one way:
A California law requires utilities to generate at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources as of this year.OK, so what new energy plant are proposed for Georgia? The online interactive map lets you select different energy types. The map above shows four proposed new coal plants in Georgia, surrounding south Georgia (plus something nonrenewable in Florida near Tampa). I recognize the one in far southwest Georgia as the one proposed for Early County and fortunately still tied up in litigation. All four are in addition to the existing Plant Scherer at Juliett, GA, near Macon, the dirtiest coal plant in the country, and the one that generates 2/3 of our power for south Georgia (as well as selling a lot of power to Florida). Adding still more dirty coal plants does not look like progress.
Continued in next blog entry.
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Debra M. Franklin: Continue reading
View Lowndes County Polling Places in a larger map
To find out where you should go vote, go to the Georgia Secretary of State My Voter Page. It will be one of these places: Continue reading