Tag Archives: History

Ways to fix the trash problem

I commend Commissioner John Page for his op-ed in the VDT today, attempting to do what no other Commissioner has tried: to explain the trash issue. Indeed, like him, most of the people I talked to while campaigning for Gretchen were for keeping the waste collection centers open, and of those the vast majority were willing to pay more, which is the main reason the previous Commission made a big mistake in closing those centers. Unfortunately his letter seems to indicate nothing can be done. Well, here are some things that can be done.

Let the contract lapse.

Commissioner Joyce Evans insisted on the contract with the sole provider being only for one year. Let it lapse after that year!

Publish the contract.

What’s in the contract? How do we even know it’s for only one year? The new Commission already had to do over a decision of the previous Commission (remove license fee from Sunday alcohol sales) because the ordinance written up afterwards wasn’t what they thought they passed. Publish the contract and let everyone see!

Publish an accounting for the waste collection sites.

Commissioner Page wrote:
The county was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each year because the fees for the permits were not bringing in enough money to fully fund the sites.
How do we know that? Continue reading →

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer —Sierra Club

Sierra Club, one of the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental activist groups in the U.S., has been tentatively anti-nuke since 1974, observing now that none of its conditions of energy conservation, reactor safety, nuclear fuel disposal, weapons proliferation, or adequate regulation have ever been met, has come out unequivocably against nuclear power.

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy. Although nuclear plants have been in operation for less than 60 years, we now have seen three serious disasters.

Tragically, it took a horrific disaster in Japan to remind the world that none of the fundamental problems with nuclear power have ever been addressed.

Besides reactor safety, both nuclear proliferation and the required long-term storage of nuclear waste (which remains lethal for more than 100,000 years) make nuclear power a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity.

Plenty of links in that Sierra Club page.

Sierra Club is one of the first two of the 99 sponsors of the Forward on Climate rally, high noon Sunday 17 February 2013 on the National Mall in Washington D.C. I’ll be there. How about you?

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Duke Energy is closing Crystal River nuclear reactor

Finally! The reactor only 160 miles from here that nobody wanted to pay to fix is closing for good: Duke is closing Crystal River. After Kewaunee and Crystal River closing, which one is next? San Onofre? The never-opened Vogtle 3 and 4?

Ivan Penn wrote for Tampa Bay Times today, Duke Energy announces closing of Crystal River nuclear power plant,

Duke Energy announced early Tuesday it will permanently close the Crystal River nuclear plant that has been shut down since late 2009.

The company said it is reviewing alternatives, including building a new natural gas plant, to replace the power produced by the nuclear facility.

Duke's four coal-fired plants will remain in service at the same Citrus County complex where the nuclear plant, known as CR3, is located.

How about they build offshore wind farms and solar farms instead, like TEPCO is doing near Fukushima? Those can be built on time and on budget, use no fuel, and cause no pollution. And how about rooftop solar for jobs and energy independence?

There's more in the article, including this:

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Why must the small business owner be discarded? —Deep South Sanitation

Cary Scarborough, owner of a local sanitation business, previously asked the Commission not to grant a monopoly on waste collection. He was quoted in today’s VDT article, and he has elaborated on his company’s facebook page.

To the Commission, 13 November 2012:

Don’t do this to private enterprise, to an individual. If it’s done to me, it will get easier later down the road to do it to someone else.

In the VDT:

“I have not been told by the County that what I’m doing is illegal,” Scarborough said. “But I realize they’ve drawn up an ordinance, and they’re probably going to say that it’s illegal. If they come after me, I guess they have to come after me.”

Scarborough believes that if the citizens aren’t required to contract with Advanced Disposal, they are then allowed to choose.

“If the citizens can choose, why can’t they choose me?” he said.

On Deep South Sanitation’s public facebook page:

“REGARDING THE ISSUE OF THE TRASH ORDINANCE IN LOWNDES COUNTY”

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No choice on trash —”representatives from Lowndes County”

The VDT went deep under the Lowndes County government’s anonymous cover for an interview with “representatives” who confirmed that unincorporated residents have no choice for trash collection other than the monopoly the Commission granted to a company from New York City.

Jason Schaefer wrote on the front page of the VDT today, County trash ordinance goes into effect Friday: VDT has Q&A with county leadership about new law, burning,

VDT: Lowndes County has said residents aren’t required to sign a service contract with Advanced Disposal. What other services are there in the area, and do they include Deep South Sanitation in Valdosta?

LC: “According to the solid waste ordinance, Advanced Disposal will be the only residential hauler licensed to serve unincorporated Lowndes County. There’s been some confusion about trash collection service in the city. This ordinance is just for unincorporated Lowndes County, not for any of the cities.”

Maybe these were the same “representatives” who sent an unsigned letter saying there were 5,000 residents of unincorporated parts of Lowndes County who didn’t already have curbside service, and they have one choice now: the one-and-only county-appointed purveyor of waste bins. What could possibly go wrong?

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Get a job —Lowndes County to waste site workers

Continuing to ignore its responsibilities to protect public health, safety, and well-being, the Lowndes County government proceeded with its plan to trash rural residents’ waste collection sites, and told part time workers there to get a job.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT today, Trash centers dumped: Final week to make trips to county recycling centers,

The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners near the end of 2012 voted to approve a contract with Advanced Disposal to serve as the sole waste company to conduct curbside trash pick-up in unincorporated Lowndes County. Some citizens remain critical of the change in service, which will cost $12.80 per month, and many are trying to get their last loads to the collection/recycling centers before they close….

Full-time employees at the recycling stations, which are already employees of Public Works, said County Clerk Paige Dukes, will be moved to different positions within the department. Part-time employees will need to find new jobs.

Why might citizens be critical? Continue reading →

I-75 as the Governor Melvin Ernest Thompson Memorial Highway?

Did you know the legislature is likely to rename much of Interstate 75 through Lowndes County in honor of a former governor, and spend $4,500 for signs to do so?

The Valdosta Daily Times, Lowndes County

NOTICE OF ROAD FACILITY DEDICATION

Notice is given that there will be introduced at the regular 2013 session of the General Assembly of Georgia a resolution sponsored by Senator Tim Golden, 121 State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia 30334, (404) 656-7580, to dedicate the portion of Interstate 75 in Lowndes County from the West Hill Avenue exit to the North Valdosta Road exit as the Governor Melvin Ernest Thompson Memorial Highway in honor of his achievements, accomplishments, and contributions to Lowndes County and to the State of Georgia; and for other purposes. The estimated cost of such dedication is $4,500.00.

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1/19/13

And such a bill has been introduced in the Georgia House (not the Senate) as HR 47, Governor Melvin Ernest Thompson Memorial Highway; Lowndes County; dedicate, sponsored by (1) Shaw, Jason 176th, (2) Carter, Amy 175th, (3) Black, Ellis 174th, (4) Sharper, Dexter 177th, (5) Houston, Penny 170th.

Here's the part that ties Gov. Thompson to here:

WHEREAS, Governor Thompson was instrumental in the success of the City of Valdosta and Lowndes County, where his leadership as a founding member of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority spearheaded much of the urban development and planning for Valdosta and the surrounding areas, including the Azalea City Industrial Park; and

And establishing Industrial Parks was a cutting-edge idea: in the 1950s.

The bill adds:

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Rural AIDS: poverty the cause, solar power part of the solution

Director Lisa Biagiotti spent two years travelling around the South interviewing people about AIDS to make a film, deepsouth. She found rural AIDS is a bigger and faster-growing problem than AIDS in center cities, yet most health and prevention funding goes to urban areas. The root cause seemed clear to her: poverty. Here’s some deeper dirt (literally) on rural poverty in the U.S., and one thing we know can help with that: distributed solar power, for jobs, for reduced electrical bills, and for energy independence. What politician wouldn’t want jobs for their constituents?

The director said the screening at VSU at the end of November drew more people than the day before in Little Rock. There were clearly more than 150 in the audience in Valdosta. It’s a topic very relevant to here, as Dean Poling wrote in the VDT 26 November 2012,

Organizers note that Georgia is ranked sixth highest nationally for its cumulative number of AIDS cases reported through December 2009. More than 40,000 known HIV/AIDS cases were reported in Georgia as of 2010.

The South Health District’s 10 counties, which include Lowndes and surrounding counties, report 950 confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS, while many more are likely infected and risk becoming sick because they are not being treated. More specifically, there are about 460 reported cases in Lowndes County.

In reporting these numbers, HIV is the virus (HIV disease) and AIDS is the medical diagnosis made by a doctor of the symptoms, according to South Health District.

It’s a great movie and I highly recommend it. Director Biagiotti spent a substantial amount of her own money and two years to make this film, yet there are aspects she could only note in passing, such as incarceration. She can’t be expected to have researched every aspect; maybe somebody else can step up and help follow more threads.

The movie starts with some maps about poverty and AIDS in the South. It did not, however, look outside the South for poverty. Here are better poverty maps, from the CDC:

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How to get fast Internet service —Susan Crawford

Susan Crawford has a plan for getting us fast Internet access for jobs, community, education, and health care.

Susan Crawford wrote for Wired 2 October 2012, We Can’t All Be in Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth Race, about how the incumbent telephone and cable companies that provide our Internet access aren’t going to help:

They have no incentive to do so. Because they never enter one another’s territories, they don’t face the competition that might spur such expansion.

Instead, incumbent internet access providers such as Comcast and Time Warner (for wired access) and AT&T and Verizon (for complementary wireless access) are in “harvesting” mode. They’re raising average revenue per user through special pricing for planned “specialized services” and usage-based billing, which allows the incumbents to constrain demand. The ecosystem these companies have built is never under stress, because consumers do their best to avoid heavy charges for using more data than they’re supposed to. Where users have no expectation of abundance, there’s no need to build fiber on the wired side of the business or build small cells fed by fiber on the wireless side.

If the current internet access providers that dominate the American telecommunications landscape could get away with it, they’d sell nothing but specialized services and turn internet access into a dirt road.

So what is her plan?

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Captive cable audience —Susan Crawford

Affordable high-speed Internet access would bring us jobs, community, “online commerce and services, the ability to reach world markets, to invent and innovate, to learn and communicate” and “a wealth of economic activity and information” writes Susan Crawford, a very savvy and experienced communications law professor who has been recommended by many as a potential chair of the FCC, who also explains why we aren’t currently getting it.

The Diane Rehm Show 10 January 2013, Susan Crawford: “Captive Audience”, and that’s the title of her book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, excerpted here:

The sea change in policy that led to the current situation has been coordinated over the past twenty years by legions of lobbyists, hired-guneconomists, and credulous regulators. The cable companies have no incentive to upgrade their core network hardware to ensure that advanced fiberconnections are available to every home throughout the country. Communications companies describe globally competitive high-speed access as aluxury, just as the private electricity companies did a century ago.

Yet communications services are now as important as electricity. Today if you asked American mayors what technology they most want for their city, the majority would say, “affordable high-speed Internet access.” And they want these networks not simply for the jobs created to construct them but because the Internet brings the world to their community. High-speed Internet access gives towns and cities online commerce and services, the ability to reach world markets, to invent and innovate, to learn and communicate. It brings a wealth of economic activity and information. But despite these manifold benefits, Americans continue to treat such services as the exclusive domain of private monopolies and as luxuries obtainable only by the wealthy.

Not coincidentally, the United States has fallen from the forefront

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