the blog of LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

Citizen dialog for transparent process

Environment

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Groundbreaking for solar power to save Dublin High 40%,
thus reducing teacher furloughs,
financed by municipal bonds,
made possible by cooperation among a wide range of
government officials, private companies, and individuals:
that was the groundbreaking story in Dublin, Laurens County, yesterday,
videod by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.

City leaders, please, no more of the blame game. The citizens of
this community are imploring you to just accept responsibility and
fix it.

Yet the VDT has
spent the last week blaming the city,
and has accepted no responsibility for its own role, or that of
its editor, Kay Harris, in the recent loss of the SPLOST referendum
that would have further funded wastewater work in Valdosta.

DALTON, Ga. — Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed
to lie below the hills of northwest Georgia have remained virtually
untouched and unwanted — until now.

Shale gas drilling is slowing across the country, but a handful of
companies are poking around this corner of the state looking for the
next natural gas "play." If they succeed, Georgia could join the
ranks of states reaping jobs, revenue and fears of environmental
damage from energy production, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has
learned....

In Alabama, the Conasauga shale field contains 625 trillion cubic
feet of gas, according to Bill Thomas, a geologist who taught at the
University of Kentucky and Georgia State. A similar amount could be
underground in Northwest Georgia, he added.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

Dublin gets the jump on the rest of Georgia again:
Dublin High School will get a megawatt of solar electricity
through a lease agreement with a private company
using local government bonds to get around Georgia's special financing problem.

Dublin High School of Dublin City Schools will soon implement
1 megawatt of solar energy.

The 4,000 panel solar power plant will be the largest in Central
Georgia and is expected to save the school 40 percent in energy
costs.

Dublin City Schools Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told 13WMAZ, "The
facility will be built and owned by private business and the school
system will lease the solar power plant, saving us money in energy
costs."

The original plan was developed more than 15-months ago by German
based MAGE SOLAR, which has a plant located in Laurens County.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami
that heavily damaged four of the six nuclear reactors at
Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan on 11 March 2011, also known as 3/11.
The broken reactors at Fukushima continue to leak radioactive substances into
groundwater, the sea, and the air, where it is carried across oceans
to the U.S. and elsewhere.
And it could still get much worse:
if the No. 4 reactor pool, still suspended in the air, collapses and causes
the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the other reactors there,
Tokyo, 200 miles away, will have to be evacuated.
Fukushima's GE reactors are the same GE Mark I design as Southern Company's
Plant Hatch 1 and 2 only 100 miles from here at Baxley, GA,
and about 200 miles from Atlanta and Charleston.
Hatch
is leaking radioactive tritium into our groundwater again.
Five more reactors
within 500 miles of here
are also GE Mark I.

Among the 311 or so facebook pages and websites about Fukushima
or against nuclear power is this concise one,
Unplug Nuclear Power,
which offers a simple action anyone can take tomorrow:

On 3/11, we will mark Fukushima day by using as little utility
supplied electricity as possible. This direct Action is designed to
punish the utility companies for continuing to push for nuclear
power even after the Fukushima disaster has proven that it is just
too dangerous. On that day, we will punish them in the only way that
they understand, by denying them our money. There will be four
levels of participation, go to the website,
www.unplugnuclearpower.com for a more complete description. Also, be
sure to join the Event. Finally, if you are in a group our
organization that can endorse this Action, please let us know.

Wednesday, 06 March 2013

The sinkhole that formed under a man's bed and pulled him in has
made a lot of news in Florida, plus another one a few miles away.
But the news seems to neglect why those sinkholes are forming.
Could it be the same reason sinkholes are forming in Lowndes County, Georgia?
And will the Lowndes County Commission do anything about that
before we see news about somebody here falling into a sinkhole?

Jeremy Bush just went to bed when he heard what sounded like a car
hitting the house. Then screams from his brother Jeffrey's bedroom.

"Help me! Help me!"

Someone flipped the lights. Jeremy, 36, threw the door open,
revealing a sight that defied belief: The earth had opened beneath
his brother's bedroom and was swallowing everything in it. The tip
of Jeffrey's mattress was the only thing left, and it was sinking
into a churning sinkhole.

The Tampa Bay Times has a long series on what happened afterwards,
rescue workers who didn't find him, the demolition of the house,
objects found, etc.
They never quite get around to saying why the sinkhole was there.
They first say
(Shelley Rossetter 2 March 2013),

Tuesday, 05 March 2013

The VDT had a small front page headline yesterday:
"Floridians warned about river contamination".
That story was also heard in Florida, in
Madison, Gainesville, and elsewhere,
emphasizing something that Valdosta didn't mention:
people live downstream of Valdosta's wastewater spill,
all the way down the Withlacoochee and the Suwannee Rivers
to the Gulf of Mexico.
The story also made the AJC.

TALLAHASSEE- The Florida Department of Health (DOH) today issued a
caution to residents in the counties surrounding the Withlacoochee
and Suwannee rivers. The Withlacoochee Water Pollution Control Plant
in Valdosta, GA has overflowed into the Withlacoochee River, which
flows south, connecting with the Suwannee River.

After days of torrential rain, the same rain that caused the rivers
to flood, the sewage pump has been overwhelmed in the Meadow Brook
Subdivison just off Gornto Road.

"You know how bad it smells in a bathroom when someone goes in and
uses a public restroom. Multiple that ten times," said Chad
Harrison, a local resident.

The whole area behind their houses is just covered in raw sewage.
Your boots sink down into it with every step. We're talking
everything from human waste, to toilet paper, to hygiene products
and a whole other list of things that are just too graphic to
mention.

"Probably about 12 to 14 inches of raw sewage," said Harrison. "It's
just everywhere. It's all up and down the creek. It's all behind
everybody's houses."

At approximately 1:30 p.m. today, March 3, the Withlacoochee
Wastewater Treatment Plant was brought online and returned to
normal operation, after a loss of function for only three days
compared to the nine days of complete loss of function experienced
in the flood of 2009. Today, the river receded to the point where
the temporary by-pass pumps could be connected to the existing
valves. The system was turned on, became fully operational and began
full treatment capabilities.

The installation of bypass pumps, pipes and valves to utilize in
the event of an emergency or act of God.

In 2009, the berm only protected the pump station, which did not
prevent flooding of the chemical building, the chlorine contact
building, the filters and the belt presses. The plant's
electrical system was destroyed in the flooded area and the filters
and belt presses were inoperable.

In this event, the electric system, chlorine cylinders, de-chlorination
system and all flooded areas were turned off to avoid the
damage that was experienced in 2009.

In this event, the biological, natural occurring bacteria that
are used in the treatment process were saved so that the system
could treat wastewater immediately when it was turned back on. In
2009, the natural occurring bacteria were washed out of the plant
as a result of the continuous pumping during the event.

In this event, the plant was fully operational in three days.
In 2009, the plant had a complete loss of function for nine days and
was not fully operational for over a month.