Received yesterday. -jsq
Continue readingDate: Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:43:47 -0400
All, just so everyone is on the same page- the sewer line is currently spilling sewage. It just started at mu house but has been going strong at sugar creek for awhile by the looks of it. Here are some current pictures as of 3:30 today. It will get worse until the river crests..
Gabe
A beer license, and some filters for public works:
that's all that's on the agenda for the unquestioning Lowndes County Commission.
They did have two very brief reports on the weekend's
weather and how they dealt with it.
Then they went into executive session for real estate and litigation,
which seems to have been the real purpose of this meeting,
which otherwise lasted four minutes.
They vote on the agenda items Tuesday at 5:30 PM.
Here's the agenda, with links to the videos and some notes.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
The solar bill that’s been talked about for weeks has finally appeared in the Georgia legislature: HB 657. It’s better than I expected, because it’s about rural solar generation and distribution. However, there is a catch: a “community solar provider” must be certified by the Public Service Commission, instead of just setting up in business as in most states, and the PSC could certify only one state-wide monopoly; note the summary at the front says “an independent community solar provider” as in only one. But the body of the bill is more circumspect and says “any”. Perhaps if we get enough installations the benefits of solar will become obvious enough that the PSC will certify a lot of community solar providers, and we can get on with solar in Georgia, including house and business rooftop solar. Many thanks to Representatives Kidd of the 145th, Kirby of the 114th, Rogers of the 10th, Brockway of the 102nd, Fullerton of the 153rd, and others. And special credit to Robert E. Green, Shane Owl-Greason, and Ted Terry of Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) for shepherding this bill into the legislature.
Shane Owl-Greason, Ted Terry, Robert E. Green
at the
Dublin High School solar groundbreaking.
The bill requires the PSC to study changes in retail rates because of this bill. Too bad it doesn’t go the rest of the way to what North Carolina did, and require timely public posting of who buys and sells which types of energy at which prices, but at least it’s a start.
Maybe HB 657 will help get HB 503 passed for Renewable Portfolio Standards. However, HB 657 is cleaner than either HB 503 or SB 51 because it does not mess around with biomass or for that matter any other energy source: HB 657 is about solar energy and nothing else.
The main part of HB 657 is in Section 1, but first here’s how it shoehorns Continue reading
All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it:
from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100%
at all Apple data centers.
Cost? They’ll save more than they spent.
Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet
and help us get on with it in Georgia.
Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that Apple got nudged:
Continue reading
Some thoughts on the
Kay Harris resignation letter.
Certainly a SPLOST is better than a MOST.
-gretchen
Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.
In Georgia,
HB 503,
sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott
Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,
would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of
renewable portfolio standards,
as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,
Let the Sunshine In.
Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.
Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case
since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as
a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.
Nope, in
the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):
‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor, including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation, and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers
The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees, but the rest isn’t much better. We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2 and end up stripping our forests. In North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate to whole trees. We already fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia; let’s not have it encouraged statewide. Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power. HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess before they submit it again.
Speaking of North Carolina, Continue reading
Received today: PDF, with transcription appended below. -jsq
Continue readingMarch 15, 2013
Joe Pritchard
County Manager
Lowndes County
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601
Dear Mr. Pritchard:
It is with great regret that I find the need to step down from the Lowndes County
and South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees. I fear that I am no longer
capable of holding this position in light of the county’s recent actions.
As you are aware,
Wanting to go to the Industrial Authority meeting tonight? Oops, you missed it: they held it 11 days ago. Did you want to speak there? Nope, no Citizens to be Heard on that agenda, and not much else, either.
To find that agenda on VLCIA’s website: Home → About Us → Industrial Authority → Meeting Schedule,
There will be a Special Called Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority on Friday, March 8, 2013, 11:00 am at the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices. This Special Called Meeting will also serve as the Regular March 2013 Meeting.
Agenda (PDF) There will be no meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.
I don’t know when they put that on their website, but they announced the same thing on their facebook page on March 4th. Much of the usual agenda boilerplate is replaced by an executive session, and the agenda doesn’t even say for what. I seem to recall the Industrial Authority’s attorney on several occasions reminding the Chair that before going into executive session it was necessary to say for what purpose. As the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG) puts it:
Continue readingWhat is the procedure for going into and holding an “executive session” or “closing a meeting”?
Risks at
Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi?
Push those costs onto the public, of course!
Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power
got the MS Public Service Commissioners to approve super-CWIP
(Construction Work in Progress)
for Kemper Coal: automatic rate increases for MS Power customers for years.
Just like Southern Company and its biggest subsidiary Georgia Power
got the Georgia legislature to approve Super-CWIP for the new nukes
at Plant Vogtle back in 2009.
And both CWIP projects are already over budget.
How about we cancel those boondoggles and build solar and wind instead?
AP reported 13 December 2012, After spending $1.88 billion, Southern Co. still faces risks on plant in Kemper County,
Continue reading
David (tiny five-person activist group NIRS with no lawyer)
defeated Goliath (the world’s biggest nuclear reactor manufacturer, Areva, and operator, EDF).
Previously
a committee terminated the licensing process
but the proposed operator wanted NRC review for the Calvert Cliffs 3
nuclear reactor.
For the first time ever, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied
a nuclear license, closing the book on Calvert Cliffs 3 for good,
and probably taking down
with it half a dozen or more other proposed reactors.
ENENEWS posted a roundup 12 March 2013, NIRS: Victory! License denied for U.S. nuclear reactor — First time in history NRC has upheld denial
Who is this proposed nuclear operator? The NIRS press release explains:
Continue reading