No geotechnical study was seen from the developer before drawing the sinkhole buffers shown in the the Air Force Draft Environmental Assessment for the proposed Moody Housing on Val Del Road, just rezoned as REZ-2013-09, PDF courtesy of Prof. Michael Noll of VSU. You can see sinkholes and wetlands in its maps:
Most of the site area, including all of the Phase I area subject of REZ-2013-09, is colored for medium wetland habitat quality: Continue reading
A VSU professor
said he was in favor of the economic benefits,
but geotechnical issues should determine whether
the new Moody Housing on Val Del Road
(REZ-2013-09)
should be built, and those were still unclear,
at
the 13 August 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
Dr. Michael Noll of VSU said he was speaking because he had been referred to by previous speakers (Jason Davenport and Tom Kurrie), and he was neither for nor against REZ-2013-09. Dr. Noll’s neither-in-favor-nor-against position seemed to puzzle County Engineer Mike Fletcher. Noll said he and his colleagues had looked at the Environmental Assessment (EA) which has been available at the public library and concluded that they had a number of questions they’d like answered, and he was sure the developers had similar concerns for safety of the project.
Dr. Noll said they’d been trying to get a copy of the geotechnical analysis Continue reading
All about public-private partnerships (PPP) and military rank waterfalls by an Atlanta and K Street lawyer at the 13 August 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session. about REZ-2013-09, introduced by local lawyer Tom Kurrie to answer a question by Commissioner John Page.
G. Scott Rafshoon of
McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP
of Atlanta and K Street in DC spoke for.
His law firm bio says in part:
G. Scott Rafshoon has a diverse legal practice that includes corporate law, government affairs and project finance. Combining these disciplines, Mr. Rafshoon is a leader in the Firm’s public-private partnership (“P3”) practice….
Manages the Firm’s representation of Balfour Beatty Communities, a subsidiary of Balfour Beatty plc, in the privatization of family and unaccompanied personnel housing at military installations around the country. To-date, Mr. Rafshoon has assisted Balfour Beatty with privatizing facilities at 48 Army, Navy and Air Force installations in 23 states and the District of Columbia, in separate transactions valued at more than $4 billion.
This is apparently the same Continue reading
Tom Kurrie said Phase I has a structural issue and Phase II of the proposed Moody Housing has a sinkhole, at the 13 August 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
Tom Kurrie spoke for
the rezoning for Phase I,
REZ-2013-09,
first giving something unknown to the County Clerk,
and then saying:
Bill Holland and I are the applicants, we represent the owner of the property, the Howard Dasher Company, as well as the developers of the property, Balfour Beatty Communities.
The ubiquitous Bill Holland had spoken the previous morning in the Work Session.
This time, Kurrie said the project had been in the makings for over two years. (Funny how the county didn’t tell us about it until they were ready to rush it through.) He said it was for “prestige housing” for base personnel. He said it was unusual in being 8 miles west of Moody AFB. He introduced Ron Nestor, Senior Vice President of Balfour Beatty, and said it was a public-private partnership. And use would be restricted to Air Force personnel. We’d already heard about such restrictions at the Planning Commission. He said it would be a “gated community”. We’ll see if that actually happens this time, unlike at Nelson Hill just up Val Del Road; you can see both locations on this map:
Kurrie also mentioned professor Noll and geotechnical issues such as sinkholes, Continue reading
County Planner Jason Davenport said he had heard concerns there could be
sinkholes under the proposed new military housing on Val Del Road,
but he recommended approval anyway,
at
the 13 August 2013 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session.
6.a. REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing, Val Del Rd R-1 to Residential PD, LC Water & Sewer, ~64 acres
See
Work Session video
for context.
This time, County Planner Jason Davenport said “we have an updated copy on the screen” of the site plan.
He mentioned:
…there has been some communications between the applicant’s agents and really professor Noll and possibly some other colleagues at VSU about some of the geotechnical aspects of this site plan I believe they might speak on the soils and possibly the karst features in this area or the sinkholes or potential for that.
Pictured here is the older site plan, because County Clerk still hadn’t responded to Gretchen’s Open Records Request of the previous morning. State law says the county can take three days to respond, which is great for developers, but not so good for the public.
Here’s the video:
Continue reading
The day after the VDT ran
Lowndes County’s admission that the sewer line break was theirs, not Valdosta’s,
did the VDT start a series of financial investigation
like they did about Valdosta’s water issues?
Nope, they ran a piece about how much weather costs the county,
with no recognition of watershed-wide issues,
nor of any need for the county to participate in proactively
dealing with them, to reduce costs, for better quality of life,
to attract the kinds of businesses we claim we want.
Nope, none of that.
Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 27 April 2013, What natural events cost Lowndes taxpayers,
In the Deep South, near a river plain where floodwaters rise and ebb from season to season and wetlands that distinguish the region from anywhere else in the nation, flooding makes a significant portion of the concern for Lowndes County emergency management.
OK, that’s close to getting at some of the basic issues. We’re all in the same watershed, and we need to act like it instead of every developer and every local government clearcutting and paving as if water didn’t run downhill. Does the story talk about that? After all, the county chairman attended the 11 April 2013 watershed-wide flooding meeting that led to the city of Valdosta’s likely participation in flodoplain planning. Nope; according to the VDT, everybody around here seems to be hapless victims of weather:
Continue reading
Fake and real sinkholes form in the same porous limestone underground
here in the Floridan Aquifer, and we get an explanation of that from
another limestone area in western New York.
Nalina Shapiro wrote for WIVB.com yesterday, What’s behind sinkholes in WNY?
So what causes these sinkholes to form?
University at Buffalo Geology Professor Dr. Marcus Bursik says there are two types of sinkholes. One type is caused by aging infrastructure, like old pipes that burst underground and eventually cause a collapse on the surface. This is more common and is sometimes called a “fake sinkhole.”
Like the Sinkhole on US 82 near Tifton August 2012, caused by a broken water main, and since filled in. The other type is much more common: Continue reading
Water disasters of droughts and floods and sinkholes
already affect us more here in south Georgia
than the kinds of disasters TV news likes.
In
north Florida,
next to
a church in Albany, under
a garage in Lowndes County,
and next to the Shoney’s in Tifton,
sinkholes are spreading: can we go beyond reacting to them and work
on preventing them?
Next to a story yesterday about disaster preparedness, the Tifton Gazette posted this picture and caption:
Tift County experienced massive flooding in early August 2012. The heavy rains made the then-sinkhole located on Hwy. 82 into a massive waterfall. Tift County EMA has to be prepared for such events in our community. Photo credit: Latasha Everson/The Tifton Gazette
Here’s
a 2011 YouTube video of the sinkhole
that says the sinkhole had been next to the Shoney’s five years already then,
two years ago.
Stephanie Springer wrote for WALB 9 and 13 August 2012,
Tifton sinkhole continues to grow,
As
we saw,
ESG’s Pecan Row Landfill Gas Facility flash flyer
quotes Jeff Pratt, President of Green Power EMC, who said this is Green Power
EMC’s third landfill energy project.
Curiously, Green Power EMC’s Landfill Gas Project page doesn’t
list the other two, and its
FAQ is apparently out of date, saying “Currently, our one landfill gas-to-electricity projects generate a combined four megawatts of power.”
However, the other two appear to be:
Sinkholes aren’t just
for Florida anymore: Albany’s got them.
Are sinkholes risky?
You may think so if one is under your house.
And here above the Floridan Aquifer you probably won’t know that
until your foundations starts cracking.
Maybe we should do something to prevent the problem,
and to help people who are affected by it.
Perhaps the Lowndes County government till pay attention when
somebody’s house falls into a sinkhole.
Jim Wallace wrote for WALB 9 March 2013, Expect more sinkholes,
Some sinkholes have opened up in South Georgia since the recent heavy rains.
And engineers and public works experts say they expect more sinkholes to develop in the coming weeks. It’s just nature at work, but it can really cause some problems.
Really? Does “nature at work” include sinkholes predictably forming after massive water pumping to sprinkle strawberries during a cold snap?
The WALB story pooh-poohs the possibility of anything like that Sefner sinkhole showing up in south Georgia, and then details two Albany sinkholes:
Continue reading