How much does it cost to pave 3.5 miles of dirt road?
Apparently $1,413,097.92, or around a million dollars a mile,
when the county insists on paving it like a state highway
at the expense of safety:
How Much
To Whom
From
For What
$7,200.00
Lovell Engineering Associates
Valdosta
Design of Culvert
$48,010.00
Doyle Hancock & Sons Construc.
Doerun
Clearing and Grubbing
$1,357,887.92
The Scruggs Company
Valdosta
Paving
$1,413,097.92
All contractors
Total
This financial information comes from an open records request
filed by Carolyn Selby more than a year ago
and finally fulfilled 17 March 2011.
Copies of all the pages received are
in the flickr set.
How many other roads could have been paved for $1.4 million?
If this road had been paved like a local rural road,
instead of like a state highway (literally according to
state highway standards) it would not have cost nearly
as much and probably another shorter road could have been paved, too.
And if other roads were paved like local roads instead of state
highways, how many more of them could be paved?
They still wait while this one got paved to the tune of $1.4 million.
U.S. nuclear-power output remained near a 4½-year low for a fourth day
as the Vogtle 1 reactor in Georgia shut down unexpectedly, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said.
Power generation nationwide decreased 538 megawatts to 71,781 megawatts
from yesterday, or 71 percent of capacity, the smallest amount since
Oct. 22, 2006, according to an NRC report today and data compiled by
Bloomberg. Twenty-nine of the nation’s 104 reactors were offline.
Southern Co. (SO)’s 1,109-megawatt Vogtle 1 reactor automatically
tripped offline yesterday at 5:34 p.m. when it was at full power. The
cause is under investigation, the NRC said.
The mayor prefaced a comment that he’s read (apparently in this blog)
that he’s been criticized for not paying attention while people are speaking.
He clarified that he’s often taking notes.
Then Dr. Mark P. George spoke, wondering when people would get answers
to their more substantive questions.
I have an attorney.
These folks have an attorney.
He’s sitting right there.
Dr. Mark P. George @ VCC 7 April 2011 Part 1 of 3:
Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Dr. George amplified the not paying attention comments
by adding in body language,
and saying he did appreciate taking notes.
He asked if the meeting is recorded.
Mayor Fretti answered yes.
Dr. George remarked:
It seems to me you are now cloaking the lack of response
in legalities.
…
Legality does not equal morality.
Council Sonny Vickers remarked that he
already told everyone he is for the biomass plant.
Dr. George recommended conversation,
following up on new information.
The mayor asked Dr. George to wrap up.
Dr. George responded:
Dr. Mark P. George @ VCC 7 April 2011 Part 2 of 3:
Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
More back and forth between Dr. George and the mayor
about how or whether or when he or somebody might answer
questions, followed by interchange between Dr. George
and the audience.
Dr. Mark P. George @ VCC 7 April 2011
Part 3 of 3:
Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Florida is already forging down the path Georgia wants to follow
on private prisons.
Steve Bousquet
writes in the Miami Herald:
The Florida Legislature’s push to privatize many more prisons, its
most far-reaching cost-cutting plan in years, could open a lucrative
door to politically connected vendors who stand to profit.
Senate and House budgets require the state to privatize prisons in
South Florida, home to one-fifth of the statewide inmate population
of 101,000. The region is the home of the GEO Group, the nation’s
second-largest private prison operator, which currently runs two private
prisons, including the largest private lockup, the Blackwater River
Correctional Facility in Milton.
Why is this path so popular with the Florida legislature?
Continue reading →
So what’s the evidence that these
biomass opponents are many, as the VDT says?
We could review letters to the editors in the VDT,
but let’s look at the visual evidence LAKE has recorded.
With no pro-biomass demonstrators anywhere to be seen.
Sure, a few people show up at government meetings to speak for the
biomass plant, but by my tally they are indeed very few,
and most of them are either former employees or board members
of the Industrial Authority.
Yes, LAKE has posted videos of
them, as well:
Ken Garren,
Nolen Cox.
Crawford Powell.
Or watch the people at the microphones during the
6 December 2011 VLCIA biomass “forum”
and see what you think the ratio is.
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
Karen Noll of WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy,
asked the Valdosta City Council not to sell wastewater
to the proposed Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant.
She presented
“500+ signatures from community members and organizations”
asking for that.
She also said
“…furthermore a response to our request each
member of the council is expected before the next council meeting.”
WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
It’s Sunday, so let’s see what a local preacher thinks about the
biomass plant.
Mayor Fretti asked if there were any Citizens Wishing to be Heard,
and a preacher said, “yes”.
No, not Rev. Rose.
He last spoke to the Valdosta City Council back on 10 February,
and left in disgust.
Besides, the Council
thinks people are frightened of little old him.
This time, 24 March 2011,
Angela Manning, minister of the 1500-member New Life Ministries
in Valdosta near the proposed site for the Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant,
read from the Valdosta City Council’s own mission statement and
asked,
Why do some people deny the overwhelming science of climate
change in a time when the evidence and analysis is so thorough
and so conclusive that no reputable scientific organization
in the world doubts any longer that humans are changing the climate
of the whole planet for the worse:
because it threatens their political and economic beliefs.
Naomi Klein: Why Climate Change Is So Threatening to Right-Wing Ideologues:
And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue
on the right. People are defining themselves, like they’re against
abortion, they don’t believe in climate change. It’s part of who
they are.
It’s like denying the earth goes around the sun.
Why would they identify with such a silly thing?
Because of what actually dealing with climate change would mean:
Continue reading →