Tag Archives: Pollution

Waste not, want not –Dr. Noll

Dr. Michael Noll advocated conservation and efficiency in the long-running Greening of America email discussion, responding to two messages by Valdosta City Council member James R. Wright. Dr. Noll cites our earliest American blogger. -jsq
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:55:16 -0400

Dear Councilman Wright.

Valid points and a great question to ponder. You may recall my quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Waste not, want not”.

Add to that a quote from the Sierra Club: “Energy use should be minimized through conservation and efficiency. In the near future, efficiency is the only “energy source” which does not incur some environmental damage and which is available immediately in generous supply. Sophisticated building construction, efficient appliances, recycling, modernized industrial processes, programmable thermostats, public transit supplemented by fuel-efficient cars, and many other innovative technologies can reduce energy use tremendously, while saving money.”

In other words, we are wasting enormous amounts of energy and money

Continue reading →

Lame-duck Lofton cranks the same old scratched wax cylinder

After he gave his goodbye speech, I wished him happiness in Myrtle Beach and thought maybe he’d make a graceful exit. Nope, he’s still cranking the Edison phonograph on the same old scratched wax cylinder. Here he is last week responding to James Wright and dozens of other people in the same thread to which I later posted It’s an opportunity. In Lofton’s case, he’s still fixated on the losing proposition of biomass fuels. -jsq
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:59:49 -0400

James:


© BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks so much for sharing this and for your continued strong support of our client’s green renewable energy project. In addition to assisting the country in reducing our consumption of middle eastern fuel and improving the environment, this project will provide a much needed economic impact for landowners of every race, and the Industrial Authority will assist in the efforts underway to assist local farmers. Google “benefits of biomass electricity,”

Continue reading →

Uncontrolled growth and water problems

Daniel Mayer, November 2006
Maybe growth, growth, growth alone isn’t any better than jobs, jobs jobs alone, and water remains one of the main issues. Kay Harris wrote in the VDT 17 Feb 2011 that Aging infrastructure, growth, and other issues contribute to city’s sewer woes:
Valdosta Utilities Director Henry … Hicks addressed the sewage spills, saying they are caused by excess rain which overloads the Withlacoochee River Water Pollution Control Plant. He said growth along the river and throughout the regional watershed area has contributed to the amount of excess water running into the river.

“When you have all this growth and you create more impervious surface area (through paving and development), more and more water is running into the Withlacoochee. On average, the plant handles six million gallons a day and is equipped to accommodate twice that, but in recent rain events, we’ve gotten upwards of 15 million gallons extra in stormwater runoff and the system can’t handle that,” Hicks said.

Some of the comments on the VDT page are also interesting. Guest remarked: Continue reading →

Inhaling a heart attack

You thought maybe Dr. Sammons was making this stuff up? In physorg.com from 2009, Inhaling a heart attack: How air pollution can cause heart disease:
Accumulating evidence indicates that an increase in particulate air pollution is associated with an increase in heart attacks and deaths. Research has begun in the relatively new field of environmental cardiology — a field that examines the relationship between air pollution and heart disease.
This link owed to Laura Wiggins Norris and NO COAL PLANT IN BEN HILL COUNTY!

-jsq

Stopping a ‘done deal’ -Jim Parker

This LTE appeared in the VDT today. -jsq
I’m just an older, working man that lives in our fair city of Valdosta. I have children and grandchildren that live, work and go to school in Lowndes County. After looking at the information available, and doing some research in my limited spare time, I’ve come to the conclusion that this proposed biomass facility that the Industrial Authority is trying to push through is a really bad idea. The pollution that will continuously pour from the plant will create cancers, heart and respiratory disease, as well as seriously aggravating chronic conditions such as asthma. Children are especially at risk, and there are two schools within a mile of the plant site, not to mention all the homes.

As a cancer survivor

Continue reading →

Dead fish in Cherry Creek

David Rodock wrote in the VDT on Sunday, Fish found dead following waste water discharge:
When the 27,000 gallons of untreated waste water was discharged at 4036 Bemiss Road on Tuesday, Jan. 20, local resident Dan Davis began to notice dead shiners over the next few days in the nearby Cherry Creek and Lake Cleve waters.

According to Davis, approximately fifty to sixty shiners — a small, silver-colored fish commonly used for bait by fishermen — were found dead in Cherry Creek over the last week. In addition to the fish, Davis also spotted a dead gray egret washed up underneath the bridge.

There’s more in the VDT.

-jsq

Brad Lofton wants you to see this (again and again)

You can hear him say he hopes I record it. This is what VLCIA considers “proof”: reciting a list of “authorities” without addressing the specific criticisms or directly debating critics. He still hasn’t produced the citations to scientific literature he’s been repeatedly asked for regarding health care, nor has he produced the wood sourcing study.

You can hear Lofton recite much the same laundry list in Continue reading →

Harrisburg, PA loses solvency and trust over incinerator

Michael Cooper wrote in the New York Times on 20 May 2010 about An Incinerator Becomes Harrisburg’s Money Pit:
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Officials here decided seven years ago to borrow $125 million to rebuild and expand the city’s enormous trash incinerator, which the federal government had shut down because of toxic air pollution.

But the incinerator burned through the money faster than the trash, leaving Harrisburg residents feeling like they were living through a sequel to the 1986 movie “The Money Pit.”

There were contractor troubles, delays, cost overruns and squabbles. The city borrowed tens of millions more, shoveling good money after bad into the job.

The Patriot-News Editorial Board wrote on 12 April 2010 about Harrisburg incinerator fiasco deserves an investigation to understand how it happened:
Over nearly a decade, officials at the Harrisburg Authority and City Hall made a series of decisions that sought to get the trash incinerator working and profitable, but which instead brought Pennsylvania’s capital to the brink of bankruptcy.

The 2003 deal that took on $125 million in debt to repair the incinerator neglected to include a performance bond.

Inexperienced firms were hired. Fees were paid for work poorly done. Loans were taken on disastrous terms.

Officials were aided, or rather misled, by the advice of numerous attorneys, bankers and engineers apparently far more interested in collecting handsome fees than they were in protecting the interests of taxpayers.

As a result, there is a deep distrust of the fundamental institutions that created this fiasco.

Something else sounds familiar about this situation:
While some of the seats have changed, many of the same people in government today had their fingerprints on these decisions.
It’s the same old boy network locally as approved Sterling Chemical, and the chair of the county commission at that time is now on the Industrial Authority. And the VLCIA has taken on what is reputed to be a $15 million bond issue.

How big is Harrisburg? 50,000 people, same as Valdosta. What is Harrisburg considering? Bankruptcy. Who profited anyway? Local developers.

What’s the moral?

All of the guarantees proved worthless.

All of the fail-safes failed.

What say we have the investigation now, before the fail-safes fail?

-jsq

What’s the Industrial Authority’s Plan?

Appended is my LTE in the VDT today. I’ve added links. -jsq

What is the Industrial Authority’s plan to bring in real clean jobs?

MAGE SOLAR is hiring for the first of 350 jobs in its photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing plant in Dublin, Georgia, with half the population of Valdosta, in Laurens County, with half the population of Lowndes County. They’ve parlayed their position between the Atlanta airport and the Savannah seaport for many new clean jobs.

Suniva of Norcross’s second PV plant with its 500 jobs went to Michigan. Saginaw Valley calls itself Solar Valley and collaborates with governments, academia, and industry, winning thousands of clean jobs in wind and solar manufacturing and generating plants.

The Saginaw News remarked (7 Nov 2010): Continue reading →

VLCIA biomass event Q&A

Here are videos that illustrate the VDT’s point today in What We Think:
While officials continue to downplay local citizen anger about current projects, citizens are organizing in a variety of ways to affect change the next election cycle. When Sterling Chemical came to Lowndes County in the 1990s, citizens were told the project was a “done deal,” and so it was. Sterling is still here, but those in office at the time aren’t, and the director of the Industrial Authority at the time is no longer here either.

As has been shown worldwide, citizens are tired of being told what’s best for them, having no say so in how their tax dollars are spent, and having their concerns ignored.

Until officials understand that it is coming from all directions and not just led by a few malcontents, the swell will continue to grow. And those who continue to ignore the anger and frustration do so at their own peril.

Maybe the VDT is referring to this kind of response from the VLCIA panel on 6 Dec 2010:
“these things do prop up the local economy, period, end of discussion.”
A previous questioner who had a job in Vietnam notes he was lied to about Agent Orange and asks “can you assure me that I won’t be affected by this?” Continue reading →