Category Archives: Safety

Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director @ LCC 2014-01-28

Lowndes County’s Emergency Management Director reported yesterday on projected icy roads today.

Here’s the video:


Weather report by Ashley Tye, Emergency Management Director
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 January 2014.

All the local schools are closed, public and private, K-12 and college, so the best thing to to is to stay home.

Commissioner John Page said a constituent had just asked him if Lowndes County owned any snow plows. Answer: no, but the county can get access to them if needed.

County Clerk Paige Dukes enumerated ways she had tried to get the word out, including this information on the county’s front web page, which will probably disappear without trace in a day or so, so I’ve copied it below. Continue reading

America’s Dangerous Pipelines –Center for Biological Diversity

7,978 fatalities by in 2013 – 4,199 by 2001 = 3,779, which is more than the 2,977 killed by the hijackers on 9/11. If the fossil fuel industry was a foreign country, we would have invaded it by now. Why should we let that industry invade our lands for their profit? Let’s not permit a fossil fuel disaster here.

Center for Biological Diversity wrote on YouTube 31 July 2013 America’s Dangerous Pipelines: Continue reading

Nottinghill resolved, Spectra profit sharing? Planning Commission transparency? @ LCC 2013-12-10

The Commission’s designated first speaker confused order with good. Chairman Bill Slaughter required a sitting judge to go to the podium to speak, even though he had not required that for multiple Spectra pipeline reps the previous morning. Nottinghill is finally resolved, after yet more probing questions by Commissioners; more than they asked the Spectra reps. A VSU professor and a landowner asked very good questions about the pipeline, a KLVB board member gave a report, and Gretchen asked the Commission to post Planning Commission minutes online.

Two people were appointed; one spoke. The two beer licenses, a liquor license, the decorative special tax lighting district for Windstone, the contracts, the resolution to ask the legislature for an additional judge, and the bids were all approved with little discussion. The settlement for back pay it turns out didn’t actually involve employees having to sue to get paid.

Here’s the amended agenda with the two added items, plus links to the videos and a few notes. See also the previous morning’s Work Session.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
AMENDED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
Continue reading

Sabal Trail not a common carrier with open access in Georgia –Mindy Bland @ LCC 2013-12-10

A local landowner said that with no open access in Georgia, Sabal Trail Transmission should have no standing to use Georgia eminent domain law. And Sabal Trail must comply with local, state, and federal laws and ordinances, including ones that could be passed by the Lowndes County Commission, she said at their 10 December 2013 Regular Session.

For example, a depth ordinance, or an ordinance requiring a minimum distance from homes or schools. Or a tax on the pipeline easement. She recommended PipelineSafetyInfo.com. She asked for the Commissioners to use their voice.

As WCTV quoted her in their coverage, she said,

I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night.

County Manager Joe Pritchard shuffled papers and alleged County Attorney Walter G. Elliott yawned during these citizen presentations.

Mindy Bland noted Commissioner Powell had asked for Continue reading

Last day to oppose NRC bad nuclear waste plan

Today you can object to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) inadequate plan for radioactive waste storage.

Comment through regulations.gov on Docket #NRC-2012-0246-0456; here’s a link to the comment form.

NRC’s web page on Waste Confidence:

The public comment period on the Waste Confidence Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement and proposed rule ends on Friday, December 20, 2013.

Background from Beyond Nuclear:

No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world—and may never be found—for the nuclear waste problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage.

Facebook event with more information.

Here’s a petition:

The NRC, by court order, has been required to gather public input regarding a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) regarding the storage of nuclear waste that is grossly inadequate and leaves over 150 million Americans who live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant at risk.

The NRC has declared that it would only be a SMALL risk to the environment and communities near nuclear power plants to store nuclear waste on-site for 60 years, 160 years or even INDEFINITELY if no permanent repository is established….

And NRC’s oversight committee is the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which just held a hearing 12 December 2013 on Oversight of NRC Management and the Need for Legislative Reform.

-jsq

ADS included household trash in their recyclded items –Tim Carroll

Personal recollection from Valdosta City Council Tim Carroll received today on ADS fails to recycle, appeals DSS ruling anyway, adding detail that wasn’t in the VDT article.

The main problem the City was having with ADS was they included household trash in their recycled items. Used diapers and other household products mixed in with recycle materials is not allowed. The City advised ADS back to this past October of the issue and no improvements were made. Eventually the city had no choice but to cut them off. The City is a regional hub for recycle material and proud to offer the service.

OK, so is that a violation of the county’s “exclusive franchise” with ADS?

-jsq

I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night –Mindy Bland on WCTV @ LCC 2013-12-10

The Commission didn’t let citizens speak after Spectra’s sales pitch for the Sabal Trail Pipeline Monday, but some citizens spoke up in Citizens to Be Heard Tuesday and WCTV covered that.

Winnie Anne Wright wrote for WCTV yesterday, Citizens Address Lowndes County Commission About Sabal Trail Pipeline,

Residents covered topics such as the lack of economic impact on Lowndes County, the legality of the pipeline, and also the safety.

“As a mother of three, I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night. And you hear a lot of people say that natural gas line explosions don’t happen, and for those that feel that they don’t, I really encourage them to go on the internet and google gas line explosions and then tell me that they don’t happen. As a mother, I feel like I have to step up and do what I can to protect my children”, says Mindy Bland, an impacted homeowner.

Continue reading

All 4 Commissioner questions about the pipeline –VDT @ LCC 2013-12-09

The VDT let local citizens speak, unlike the Lowndes County Commission. Perhaps the VDT, like many local citizens, does not think transparency means what the County Commission thinks it means.

Matthew Woody wrote across the top of the front page of the Valdosta Daily Times today, Sabal Trail presents at County Commission work session,

Protesters stood outside of the Lowndes County Judicial and Administrative Complex at 8:30 a.m. in opposition to the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline project as representatives from the company made a presentation at the Commission Work Session.

That’s Matthew Woody across the street taking that picture, and here are more pictures of the protesters.

“We strive everyday for zero incidences,” Fahrenthold said “All of our meetings, company wide, starts with a safety update.”

Really? So why afterwards did both Brian Fahrenthold and Andra Grover Continue reading

Spectra Sales Pitch, Nothing about Nottinghill, etc. @ LCC 2013-12-09

Given dozens of questions submitted by citizens and every opportunity, Commissioners asked only four perfunctory questions after Spectra Energy’s Sabal Trail pipeline sales pitch. Chairman Bill Slaughter repeatedly let multiple Spectra reps speak from the audience without having them come to the podium, or even identify themselves before they spoke. They were pointed at by the chief Spectra speaker when he named them, but they did not stand up or raise their hand at the time, so it was quite hard to tell which was which. The Chairman never allows that sort of behavior from local citizens. Why is he granting extra courtesies to a company from Houston that wants to exercise eminent domain on local citizens’ lands? Who does the Lowndes County Commission represent?

At least WALB and WCTV let a landowner speak: that’s more than the County Commission did.

Nottinghill is back yet again. A Commissioner did ask staff whether it was really ready, and it isn’t, but no Commissioners asked any such probing questions of the Spectra reps.

The three beer licenses, a liquor license, the contracts, and the bids were glossed over in almost as perfunctory a manner. There were some questions from Commissioners about costs to the county government. But there were none from Commissioners about costs to landowners from gashing a pipeline through their property.

Given that there’s a settlement for back pay for some county employees, it appears that the employees maybe had to sue to get paid.

Staff did express concern about “customer service” for a decorative special tax lighting district, but none about service to the landowners of the county whose land Spectra proposes to run through, or for that matter to the taxpayers of the county to whom the Commission and staff cannot be bothered to show what they’re voting on before they vote.

Here’s the agenda plus links to the videos and a few notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED-AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2013, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Continue reading

U.S. EPA, GA DNR, GA Health Dept., and landfill in Lowndes County @ EPA 2013-11-14

At the EPA meeting in Waycross about the Seven Out Superfund site, EPA, GA EPD, and state health officials also had information about crossover contamination in Lowndes County.

Matthew J. Huyser, On-Scene Coordinator for U.S. EPA, told me that before EPA shipped those 196,500 gallons of wastewater from Seven Out to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County they had applied procedures that were supposed to ensure those liquids were no longer toxic and had tested them to be sure. He said he would send me the specifics on that. I didn’t ask him whether CSX toxic wastes were shipped to Lowndes County.

Huyser also said EPA had checked the record of that receiving landfill before sending anything there, and it had a good record. He seemed surprised to learn Continue reading