Tag Archives: Clinch County

Videos: Grant match for Dark Sky and resolution against mine too near Okefenokee Swamp @ Clinch County Commission 2023-09-11

Update 2023-09-12: WWALS blog, Clinch County Resolution against strip mine, for Okefenokee Swamp 2023-09-11.

The Clinch County Commission set aside $50,000 as cash match for a Dark Sky Observatory next to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), and passed a resolution supporting the Okefenokee Swamp against the proposed titanium mine.

[Collage @ Clinch County Commission 2023-09-11]
Collage @ Clinch County Commission 2023-09-11

The Dark Sky project involves a building with a rollaway roof. Superior Pine Products has donated some land next to ONWR; exactly where is not clear, although it has to be north up GA 177 near the refuge entrance, yet across the Suwannee River on the west or right bank. It will be interesting to see how people will get in to use it.

The resolution includes:
“7. Request the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge from a tentative list to become a full UNESCO World Heritage Site, and support a bill by a bipartisan coalition of members of Congress in support of that move.”

As Chairman Henry Moylan remarked, the UNESCO World Heritage List is a big deal, since it goes through the U.N. and includes sites like the Pyramids and the Grand Canyon. Getting ONWR on it should attract more visitors. That list also includes Yellowstone, Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, and Everglades National Parks, so it’s a bit puzzling why ONWR is not already on there.

That was in addition to regular business, including renewing a solid waste removal contract and building an EMS building: they decided to look into building a steel building first, and then see about the insides.

Clinch County is not one of the ones declared a federal disaster area (Lowndes, Cook, and Glynn), but it is among those eligible for public assistance for debris removal. Which requires hiring both a debris removal company and a monitoring company. As the representative from DebrisTech explained, that’s because of Hurricane Katrina, after which there was much fraud. So his firm follows each debris removal truck as it picks up and delivers, photographing with GPS coordinates. Homerville City Manager Wallace Mincey said the city had been looking into debris removal, but would probably go in with the county on that.

The Commissioners did not do anything about a Fargo Water Well Easement, because nobody could identify any land owned by the county inside Fargo City Limits. Nobody from Fargo was at the meeting.

Here is the agenda: Continue reading →

Homerville, GA pipeline explosion 2018-08-17

A pipeline much smaller than Sabal Trail destroyed a business in Homerville, Georgia yesterday.

Coffee Corner demolished, Homerville, GA, Picture
Photo: GA Insurance and Fire Commissioner, of Coffee Corner demolished, Homerville, GA.

So small the U.S. agency supposedly responsible for safety doesn’t even show it in its maps. A pipeline is owned by Southern Company, and apparently originates on my property, starting from another pipeline half-owned by Southern Company.

That SONAT pipeline in 2014 was snagged by a dirt road ditch puller, sending a plume of dust 300 feet into the air. If there had been a spark, people I’ve known all my life might not have had homes to go back to.

So why does Sabal Trail claim its 500-mile-long IED is safe? And why is Southern Company wasting our resources and risking our safety by buying into pipelines while ramping down its new investments in solar power?

Brunswick Daily News, 17 August 2018, The Latest: Leaking gas blamed for coffee shop explosion, Continue reading →

Jack Kingston has a green tongue —Gretchen Quarterman

VDT LTE today. -jsq
Georgia has gained enough population in the past ten years to add a congressional seat. This means redrawing the Congressional district lines not only to balance population, but to also add another representative in Congress. Lowndes County has been split between the first and second districts, and all spring rumors of where we might end up were circulating. Eventually we saw a draft map that had Lowndes completely in the 8th District,

Before
along with other counties along Interstate 75. That map made some sense south of Macon. Some communities of interest were preserved (most of the Lowndes-Valdosta MPO was in the same district) and the hospitality corridor of I-75 was in one district, along with the rural farms that surround it. Valdosta to Macon is easier to traverse than Valdosta to Savannah, or Valdosta to Columbus.

But then Congressman Jack Kingston stuck out his green tongue.

Continue reading →

Gerrymandering Georgia for Jack Kingston to get Moody AFB

Jack Kingston told Gretchen last week in Tifton that he was heading to Atlanta the next day to try to retain Moody Air Force Base in his district. Looks like he may get that, by chopping just the Moody area out of Lowndes County, and splitting the Pine Grove precinct.

Walter C. Jones wrote for the Rome News-Tribune yesterday, Revised congressional map passes House committee

The House redistricting committee voted along party lines Wednesday to approve a revised congressional map with multiple changes from the one made public Monday.

The changes restore Valdosta’s Moody Air Force Base to Republican Jack Kingston’s district and about 16,000 people in Effingham County to Democrat John Barrow’s to keep the two equal in population.

Yeah, they restore it all right. Here’s before and after:

Before
After

Hard to see? Look at the detail map on the right here. This latest proposed gerrymander gives Kingston Clinch and Echols Counties just so Jack can send a green tongue out from Echols to lap up Moody with as little of the rest of Lowndes as possible.

It gets better. Look at the Lowndes County precinct maps: Continue reading →