Category Archives: WALB

Bell Brothers v. Sabal Trail Attorney Fees

You can help prevent this happening to you or your neighbors. Sabal Trail will use this to intimidate anyone who opposes them, just like they’ve been using previous court cases to scare people all along. Fortunately, the Bells have already provided a way everyone can help and thereby demonstrate we the people do not want Sabal Trail. The Bell brothers have set up a gofundme campaign. If you can’t contribute, you can help publicize it.

In the same case that people travelled to Leesburg, GA to attend twice, from Dougherty County and Lowndes County, GA and from places in Florida as far south as the Everglades, the Bell Brothers lost Continue reading →

County and news media digging deeper on Shiloh sinkhole story

Will nearby buildings fall into this 120-foot sinkhole? Will Shiloh Road have to be moved like Snake Nation Road was? What about sinkhole insurance? If there are “fault lines” causing sinkholes heading westwards in Lowndes County, wouldn’t they cross the proposed path of the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline? What will Lowndes County do if that thing goes in and a sinkhole opens under it? What if Sabal Trail declares such a sinkhole force majeure and doesn’t pay?

More on the usual detour on Shiloh Road. Joe Adgie, VDT, 6 August 2015, Sinkhole threat to Shiloh Road, Continue reading →

Videos: Hasty waste meeting @ LCC Waste 2015-03-16

See the LAKE video below, the WALB story by Colter Anstaett including interviews with Cary Scarborough of Deep South Sanitation and Steve Edwards of Advanced Disposal Services. The county actually posted the resulting Solid Waste Ordinance on their County Ordinances web page (although I don’t see the updated franchise agreement anywhere), and they even posted the results of that meeting. Neither the county’s results summary nor WALB mentioned Commissioner Marshall’s question about recycling glass nor Chairman Slaughter’s response that glass can be disposed of as ordinary trash, which means they’re not going to recycle it.

Here’s the paper agenda from the meeting and the county’s results summary: Continue reading →

VSU’s S.A.V.E. protests Sabal Trail pipeline and for fossil fuel divestment

Stop the Sabal Trail pipeline to help fossil fuel divestment. WALB got the connection at VSU Thursday 11 February 2015.

Colter Anstaett, WALB, 12 February 2015, Lowndes environmental groups march through VSU,

“We’re using so much at a rate that, within our generation or our lifetime, there’s gonna be catastrophic changes that won’t be reversed,” SAVE President Adrianna Taylor….

Taylor also said she believed that if the university ultimately did divest from fossil fuels, it would show that VSU students have the ability to critically think at the same level as students at Stanford, Harvard, and Continue reading →

Pipeline neighbor in Berrien County, Georgia on WALB TV

Most of the neighbors were camera-shy, but I found one for Colter Anstaett to interview for WALB.

Dave Miller wrote for WALB TV 7:26 PM EST 6 November 2014, Nashville city clears residential gas use, businesses asked to wait, which apparently was originally entitled “Gas must be conserved in Nashville”, by Colter Anstaett 11:20 AM 6 November 2014,

BERRIEN CO., GA (WALB) — The City of Nashville says residential customers can resume normal natural gas use, after they asked all gas customers to conserve gas in the wake of a ruptured line.

Commercial business customers were still asked to conserve gas use Thursday night, according to Dawn Morrison with the City.

Resident Elizabeth Cherry said Continue reading →

The Making Of Gretchen on WALB at Okra Paradise Farms 2014-04-02

Ever wonder what goes into the few seconds of video you see on TV news? As I promised reporter Colter Anstaetts when he interviewed Gretchen for WALB TV Friday May 2nd about Valdosta Farm Days (coming up again this Saturday 9AM to 1PM at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse in Valdosta), here’s The Making Of…, including birds singing, dogs rolling in the grass, Brown Dog frolicking and bouncing across, Yellow Dog prancing, red potatoes, and red, white, and blue corn at Okra Paradise Farms.

You can see both the WALB TV camera and the LAKE video camera in this picture.

After some initial discussion Continue reading →

Valdosta sewage PR reaches Florida

Valdosta sure has an effective PR mechanism, famous all the way to Florida again, for the second time this month. Most cities wouldn’t think to dump stuff into the river to get in the news! But Valdosta buried the solution at the end of a traditional press release:

“The city has planned, designed and bid a force main project and will award a $32 million contract in May that will prevent the majority of these overflows from occurring in the future.”

That would be one of the projects Valdosta will use the $36.7 million GEFA loan to fund. Other projects are related to the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), which wasn’t the culprit this time. This sewer spill came from manholes overflowing.

Winnie Wright wrote for WCTV yesterday, Over 1 Million Gallons Of Wastewater Spills Into Local Waterways,

The Florida Department of Public Health is warning residents to avoid contact with water from the Withlacoochee River.
Continue reading →

Videos: Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting @ FERC 2014-03-04

Here are videos of the whole thing.

Update 2014-03-08: Fixed date.

All against, except County Commissioners @ FERC 2014-03-04

At FERC’s Scoping Meeting for Spectra’s proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline, about 100 people, not counting FERC or Spectra. Lots of good questions. Not many answers. John Peconom of FERC said afterwards the comments were mostly about the big picture. Except questions from local government officials: there were none. Video to come.

WALB was there for a long time, so they’ll probably cover it (they did). Matthew Woody of the VDT had heaps of material and went off to file by 10PM (here’s his story).

Three Lowndes County Commissioners were there: Chairman Bill Slaughter, Joyce Evans, and Crawford Powell, and County Engineer Mike Fletcher and Utilities Director Mike Allen. Not one of them spoke.

In Gilchrist County, Florida, all five County Commissioners, plus Continue reading →

Taxes and outreach @ LCC 2014-02-28

Got a TV camera in there this morning.

Here’s the agenda.

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange