Category Archives: Solid Waste

No contracts for tenants of Leila Ellis Building @ LCC 2013-10-07

Two, four, six, many: that’s how Lowndes County counts tenants. It’s great the county is providing space for organizations that help the needy, but it’s kind of curious that the county didn’t seem to know who or how many organizations were using the Leila Ellis building, and had no lease agreement with them. Not to mention it took twenty questions from Commissioners to get staff to admit that lack of contracts, at Monday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

6.b. Leila Ellis Building-Available Space

Kind of like they have no contract with the alleged county attorney.

Chad McCleod at one point said two organizations are currently in the building, LAMP and Cash Prosperity. He said the County let LAMP use it, and LAMP let Cash Prosperity use it.

In response to a question from Commissioner DeMarcus Marshall, County Manager Joe Pritchard said under normal circumstances any organization would need to come to the Commission to ask for space. They currently have more applicants than space.

Commissioner Crawford Powell wanted to know if the county was going to set up guidelines for who could lease. Pritchard said they could, and they couldn’t lease to a private business.

Commissioner Richard Raines wanted to know if annual leases were the practice of this board. Pritchard, not actually answering the question asked, said “That would be my suggestion.”

JoTaryla Thomas came up to speak for Continue reading

October LAKE meeting Monday 7 October 2013

Different day (Monday) and time (4PM), and some new developments, also adding that natural gas pipeline to the usual agenda of local governance: Water (sinkholes, aquifer recharge, runoff, drinking water, and wastewater), trash (how about that Exclusive Franchise!), and money (no-bid contracts and plus SPLOST VII). If you want to help, we have a little list of tasks you can do.

If you're on Facebook, please Like the LAKE facebook page. You can sign up for the meeting event there, Or just come as you are.

Pipeline points with streets
What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: 4PM Monday
7 October 2013
Where: Michael’s Deli
1307 N Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601

-jsq

Cash for Trash –Deep South Sanitation

The longer you drag on that lawsuit, Lowndes County Commission, about your bogus exclusive franchise that benefits nobody but ADS investors in New York City, the more good PR local company DSS gets. We could use better than trash government around here.

Advertisement by Deep South Sanitation in the VDT yesterday: Continue reading

Common Community Vision for Lowndes County

What do you the citizens want Lowndes County to be? Here’s a chance to speak up, so when somebody asks where were you when the decisions were being made, you don’t have to answer “lying on the couch watching television.” (Thanks to Nolen Cox for that phrase.)

Corey Hull wrote on facebook today, Help Spread the Word for the Future of Lowndes County,

My office is conducting a survey and gathering public input on Facebook (go to www.facebook.com/valdostalowndesmpo) about what they want the Lowndes County Common Community Vision to be ( www.bit.ly/LowndesCCV). So far our participation has been low. I am calling on all of you to encourage your friends, family and colleagues to spread the word and let us know what you think about the future of Lowndes County and its cities.

Over the next two months there will be future opportunities for public input so stay tuned.

Thanks for your help.

On the Southern Georgia Regional Commission’s website, Lowndes County Common Community Vision, Continue reading

Japan or south Georgia?

How is our local landfill like Fukushima? No, not radiation: nobody seems to be responsible.

Colin P. A. Jones wrote for The Japan Times 16 September 2013, Fukushima and the right to responsible government,

Rather, the means of holding a member responsible for bad judgments are internalized as part of the rules and discipline governing the hierarchy to which they belong, with mechanisms for outsiders to assert responsibility — to assert rights — being minimized and neutralized whenever possible.

Sure, it’s not exactly the same. Our local governments live in fear they’ll get sued (or so they claim), and even sheriffs and judges occasionally get convicted around here. But it’s quite difficult to get local elected officials to take their responsibility to the people as seriously as “we’ve invested too much in that to stop now” where “we” means the local government or more frequently a developer.

And privatizing the landfills and now trash collection is not that dissimilar to the Japanese government keeping TEPCO afloat so they have an unaccountable scapegoat for Fukushima. Locally, nobody seems to even know, much less care, that the landfill is Continue reading

Waste from Superfund site in Waycross went to Lowndes County landfill

What was in that waste water that went into landfill in an aquifer recharge zone, with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River? The 44 shipments from the toxic waste site in Waycross to the Pecan Row landfill in Lowndes County were “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, but “PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes” and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, “To be a hazardous waste, a material must first be a solid waste.” So “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids” apparently says nothing about hazard or toxicity.

Cover 44 shipments went from the “7 Out Site” to “Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA” for $59,495.00 total of your federal tax dollars paid to Veolia, according to pages 12 and 13 of Final Report, Task Order # F-0032, Seven Out LLC Tank Site, Waycross, Georgia, Contract No. 68S4-02-06 for Emergency and Rapid Response Services, EPA Region 4, Prepared By WRS Infrastructure & Environment, Inc., 5555 Oakbrook Pkwy, Suite 175, Norcross, Georgia 30093, May 2, 2006.

Is this where those PCBs in the landfill came from? EPA itself says, Are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) regulated under RCRA as a hazardous waste?

PCBs are not defined as hazardous wastes (Memo, Weddle to Verde; May 18, 1984 (RCRA Online #12235)). However, it is possible that PCBs may be incidental contaminants in listed hazardous waste (e.g., solvent used to remove PCBs from transformers) or may be present in wastes that are characteristically hazardous. In these cases, wastes that otherwise meet a listing criteria or are characteristically hazardous are still subject to RCRA regulation regardless of PCB content.

Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA page 1 However, to avoid duplicative regulation with Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), certain PCB containing wastes that exhibit the toxicity characteristic are exempt from regulation under RCRA (Monthly Call Center Report Question; September 1996 (RCRA Online #14014)). Section 261.8 exempts from RCRA Subtitle C regulation PCB-containing dielectric fluid and the electric equipment which holds such fluid if they satisfy two criteria. First, these PCB wastes must be regulated under the TSCA standards of Part 761. Second, only the PCB wastes which exhibit the toxicity characteristic for an organic constituent (waste codes D018-43) may qualify for the exemption (ยง261.8).

Apparently any liquid wastes from a Superfund site would be “Non RCRA Regulated Liquids”, according to U.S. DoE EH-231-034/0593 (May 1993), Exclusions and Exemptions from RCRA Hazardous Waste Regulation,

Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA page 2
  • any solid or dissolved material introduced by a source into a federally owned treatment work (FOTW) if certain conditions, described in Sect. 108 of the FFCA of 1992, are met;
  • industrial wastewater discharges that are point source discharges regulated under section 402 of the Clean Water Act [ยง261.4(a)(2)]

If a Superfund site is not a federally owned treatment work, what is? And if the Seven Out site was not an industrial wastewater point source, what is?

Sample waste manifest, Onyx Pecan Row, Valdosta, GA The Onyx Waste Manifests on pages 75-120 say the materials were “Non-Hazardous Non-Regulated Waste water”. (Onyx became Veolia Environmental Services in 2005, according to Veolia.) As we’ve seen, “Non-Regulated” apparently means little. We don’t know what was in that waste water that went into a landfill in a recharge zone for the Floridan Aquifer, the source of our drinking water, and with surface runoff into the Withlacoochee River.

-jsq

September LAKE meeting Tuesday 10 September 2013

Same agenda as usual, local governance: Water (sinkholes, aquifer recharge, runoff, drinking water, and wastewater), trash (how about that Exclusive Franchise!), and money (no-bid contracts and plus SPLOST VII). If you want to help, we have a little list of tasks you can do.

What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: about 6:30PM Tuesday
(after the County Commission meeting)
10 September 2013
Where: Michael’s Deli
1307 N Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601

If you're on Facebook, please Like the LAKE facebook page. You can sign up for the meeting event there, Or just come as you are.

-jsq

Dollar General, trash, a tobacco warehouse, and alcohol @ Hahira 2013-09-05

The Teramore Development items are for a Dollar General (like the one in Naylor), even though the agenda doesn’t say (see Planning Commission videos). Since City Council District 2 Allen Bruce Cain, Sr. resigned to run for Mayor the ever-contentious, ethically investigated garbage contract last voted on 2 August 2012 could go differently this time. Thanks to City Clerk Jonathan Sumner for providing the agenda upon request, even though it’s not on the web. Stay tuned for LAKE videos. -jsq

Hahira City Council
September 5, 2013
Agenda
7:30 pm- Hahira Courthouse
  1. Call to order
  2. Establish quorum
  3. Pledge of allegiance
  4. Invocation
  5. Review/Correction of Minutes
    1. July 29, 2013 Work Session
    2. August 1, 2013 Council Meeting
    3. August 22, 2013 Special Called Meeting
  6. Public Hearing
    1. HA-2013-01: Rezoning Request by Teramore Development (Planning and Zoning Administrator)
    2. HA-2013-02: Variance Request by Teramore Development (Planning and Zoning Administrator)
    3. FY14 Budget Preliminary Adoption (City Manager)
  7. Citizens to Be Heard
  8. Review of Bills/Budget Overages
  9. Discussions Continue reading

Getting our road fixed after garbage trucks –Anita Armstrong @ LCC 2013-08-13

Yet another side effect of that exclusive franchise to Veolia (excuse me, ADS): dirt roads being damaged by garbage trucks, came up at the 13 August 2013 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

County resident and taxpayer Anita Armstrong said now that garbage trucks are coming down her road it’s in bad shape and they need help. Commissioners seemed to think that was comical.

Here’s the video:


Getting our road fixed after garbage trucks –Anita Armstrong
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 August 2013.

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Valdosta Fire Department Responds to Chemical Fire with Support of Mutual Aid

Lowndes County has no press release about today’s Perma-Fix fire, but as promised VDT has pictures and video, and here’s City of Valdosta PR, Valdosta Fire Department Responds to Chemical Fire with Support of Mutual Aid,

The City of Valdosta Fire Department responded to a chemical explosion on August 14 at PermaFix Environmental Services, located at 1622 James Rodgers Circle. The call came in at 2:22 p.m. and within minutes more than 40 firefighters and other first responders were on scene. The fire was under control by 4:30 p.m. with the assistance of the Lowndes County Fire Department and the Moody Air Force Base Fire Department. Also responding with aid were the Valdosta Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff’s office, the Georgia State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Due to the nature of the chemicals at the facility, the area was evacuated within a one-mile radius. At least three injuries have been reported, but no fatalities are known at this time.

The fire is under investigation. An update will be provided when more information is available.

-jsq