Received today on Solid Waste, Developer Favors, Dollar General, Library, and Alcohol: Agenda @ LCC 2012-12-10:
Veolia was acquired by Advanced Disposal, there is no conspiracy theory here or a change of vendor than was previously voted for. http://www.wasterecyclingnews.com/article/20121120/NEWS01/121129990/advanced-disposal-closes-veolia-deal, Continue reading
Update 8 December 2012: Actually, Houston County does have enforceable encroachment zones around RAFB.
Houston County hasn’t had a enforceable encroachment zone around
Warner Robins Air Force Base (RAFB) and is now fixing the problem
after the fact by using state money to buy up houses near the base.
Houston County Commission Chairman Tommy Stalnaker labelled encroachment
his number one priority, in stark contrast to Lowndes County Commission
Chairman Ashley Paulk, who has put
two items on the agenda for Monday and Tuesday
related to a proposed rezoning next to Moody Air Force Base,
and already at a previous Work Session
invited the developer to speak
without letting anyone else speak.
Gene Rector wrote for WRWR “10 months ago”, Stalnaker ‘ecstatic’ over state action on Robins encroachment issue,
In a word, Houston County Commission Chairman Tommy Stalnaker was “ecstatic” last week when he learned state officials
will allocate $7.5 million to help resolve the encroachment issue affecting Robins Air Force Base.
State Rep. Larry O’Neal called and gave him a heads-up before Gov. Nathan Deal made the announcement on Friday.
“I felt like jumping up and down and screaming and hollering,” Stalnaker admitted. “But then I remembered we hadn’t done our part yet.”
Encroachment has dogged Robins for a number of years. Some 250 parcels — mostly private residences — spread over 1,600 acres in south Bibb and north Houston counties fall within the base’s noise or potential mishap zone.
That risk to homes in the designated region could restrict or limit current operations or force the Air Force to look elsewhere for future workload and mission growth.
Stalnaker has labeled resolving encroachment his number one priority.
Mike Stucka wrote for the Telegraph 31 May 2012, Interactive map: Robins AFB encroachment and property purchases,
Continue readingReceived yesterday, referring to TXT-2012-02, which is on the agenda for Monday morning’s Work Session and Tuesday evening’s Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission. -jsq
From: Richard RainesContinue reading
To: Gretchen Quarterman
Subject: RE: Text Amendment
Gretchen,Based on a conversation with the Chairman yesterday, it is my
understanding that this issue will be tabled until sometime next year (Chairman-elect Slaughter will decide when to put it back on the agenda) because we are working with MAFB on a compromise as they are well aware of our mandate to balance property rights with protecting against base encroachment.
Since I’ve been on the County Commission we have made it a priority to constantly evaluate the ULDC and all zoning districts. MAZ 1-3 is no exception and must be evaluated to make sure that it is balanced and consistent.
We have discovered
Updates 9 Dec 2012: Marked with *.
Will the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday evening
finish railroading through their non-solution to solid waste disposal,
without shouldering its legal responsibility to protect
the environment and the public health, safety, and well-being from solid waste,
and what’s this about a vendor change?
Will the Chairman once again invite a developer to speak in Monday morning’s
Work Session without letting anyone else speak?
Will the Commission change the zoning code and rezone inside and against
the Moody Exclusion Zone for that same developer they already
provided $130,000 in road construction labor to back in 2007?
Does Naylor need the area’s nineteenth Dollar General, and who’s behind it, anyway?
How come the Five Points library is still on the agenda even though SPLOST VII failed?
And what are they doing to the Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance this time?
Come Monday morning at 8:30 AM and Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM and see!
Better yet, also call or write your Commissioner before then.
6.b. Solid Waste Ordinance
Will the Commissioners finish
railroading through their
already-failing non-solution to solid waste disposal
in the last session of this Chairman?
The plan for which they held
zero public hearings while any of
the Commissioners who voted on it this October were on the Commission,
yet someone down there feels free to
anonymously ridicule concerns about that plan failing?
Two citizens
spoke up anyway,
even though
Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
was after the scheduled vote last time,
and
another on this blog,
all willing to state their names, unlike the anonymous pro-trash-railroad
ridiculer.
What was that
unspecified new information
that caused them to table it last time, anyway?
8.b. Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Residential Solid Waste Collection Services with Advanced Disposal Services of Central Alabama, Inc.
What happened to Veolia; Continue reading
Somebody wrote me a week or two ago:
I saw in todays paper Chip Rogers and other Senate leadership was changed yesterday. Thank goodness!
Well, don't cheer too soon. According to Jim Galloway in the AJC 15 November 2012,
"Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock withdrew his re-election bid and endorsed Ronnie Chance of Tyrone, the governor's floor leader, for the position."
Ronnie Chance is not only
also ALEC,
Chance is
the other ALEC state Senator
who put both the charter school amendment
and the multi-year amendment on the ballot.
Is this leadership "change" improvement?
Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
Why must we get fooled again? When will the people of the state of Georgia get tired of government by astroturf and elect some legislators who will represent the people?
-jsq
A major source of the water for the sea level rise already affecting Savannah and Jacksonville is melting Arctic Ocean sea ice. WMO Press Release No. 966: 2012: Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Multiple Extremes and High Temperatures,
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.
“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records,” added Mr Jarraud.
15 September 1982 vs 16 September 2012
The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979—2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.
WMO noted other effects of climate change outside the arctic, including:
Continue readingSavannah and Jacksonville are among the east coast cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change, a study finds. Savannah, Georgia’s main seaport, with storm surges, hurricanes, and waves on top: what will that look like?
Suzanne Goldenberg wrote for the Guardian today, US coastal cities in danger as sea levels rise faster than expected, study warns: Satellite measurements show flooding from storms like Sandy will put low-lying population centres at risk sooner than projected,
A study published last March by Climate Central found sea-level rise due to global warming had already doubled the risk of extreme flood events — so-called once in a century floods — for dozens of locations up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
It singled out the California cities of Los Angeles and San Diego on the Pacific coast and Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, on the Atlantic, as the most vulnerable to historic flooding due to sea-level rise.
Sandy, which produced a 9ft storm surge at Battery Park in New York City, produced one example of the dangerous combination of storm surges and rising sea level. In New York, each additional foot of water puts up to 100,000 additional people at risk, according to a map published with the study.
That study projected 6 inches rise at Fort Pulaski by 2030 (minimum 3 inches) and 13 inches by 2050 (maximum 24 inches). But projections have gotten worse since then:
The latest research, published on Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, found global sea-levels rising at a rate of 3.2mm a year, compared to the best estimates by the IPCC of 2mm a year, or 60% faster.
So that would be more like 9 inches by 2030 and 20 inches by 2050.
Add to a higher base sea level bigger storms like Hurricane Sandy, and Savannah and Jacksonville have a problem. Sure, Savannah is Continue reading
Received today from Bryan Zulko of USDA. -jsq
Continue reading
Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program – Application deadline: Nov 28, 2012
Grants to plan or implement food projects designed to meet the needs of low-income individuals and increase community self-reliance concerning food and nutrition.Great American Main Street Awards (GAMSA) – Application deadline: Dec 3, 2012
Grants to recognize exemplary and innovative revitalization achievements in revitalization of historic and older neighborhood commercial districts using a community-driven, historic-preservation based approach.
In response to a very downbeat
diatribe by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone on the occasion
of the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference being some sound and less fury accomplishing
not much about stopping climate change,
[Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2012, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”]
Harvard student Chloe Maxmin
followed up McKibben’s problem statement with a plan for what to do:
divest from fossil fuel companies. [“In Honor of Kalamazoo: An Open Letter to Bill McKibben,” NextGenJournal, 25 July 2012, no longer online, referred to in a post the same day by Chloe Maxmin on First Here, Then Everywhere.]
Maxmin didn’t just wish, either,
she joined up with McKibben’s 350.org and helped organize
Harvard students to do something about it:
persuade Harvard to divest its shares of fossil fuel companies.
Students at the University of Georgia, or at Valdosta State University,
for that matter, could do the same.
Alli Welton wrote for 350.org 18 November 2012, 72% of Harvard Students Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels,
Last Friday night, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council announced that the student body had voted 72% in favor of Harvard University divesting its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.
Members of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future have been campaigning since September to divest Harvard’s endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel corporations that own the majority of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves.
Harvard actually already has divested its shares of one fossil fuel company due to public pressure. Continue reading
Why do I keep associating the anti-sustainability astroturf talking points with ALEC? Because ALEC's "our state legislators" were promoting them at Georgia's Capitol.
Two out of three of
the Georgia legislators Jim Galloway named in
Georgia's own 52-minute video on the ‘Agenda 21’ conspiracy,
namely
Chip Rogers and Barry Loudermilk,
are associated with ALEC.
Senate Majority Leader (now former) Chip Rogers (R-21) has been ALEC's State Chaimran for Georgia and received ALEC's 2011 State Chair of the year Award. Surely you remember him! Rogers sponsored both misleading amendment 1 ("charter schools") and misleading amendment 2 ("multi-year contracts") on this year's ballot.
Rep. Barry D. Loudermilk (R-14) is on ALEC's
Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force.
How convenient that Loudermilk is the
Secretary of the Georgia
Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee!
So there is at least a convergence of ALEC's "our state legislators" and those pushing this anti-sustainability agenda. This is not surprising, since ALEC is opposed to clean, sustainable energy, as confirmed by ALEC's own attempt to rebut that point. A rebuttal that brought to light ALEC's phrase "our state legislators".
I see Loudermilk is a sponsor of a bill called the Georgia Government Accountability Act,
Continue reading