The second in a series of public forums will be held Thursday night to discuss alternatives to an $88 million bond issue being considered by the Lafayette City-Parish Council to overhaul the aging Rodemacher 2 coal plant.
“We’re asking if this is a wise investment given that so many other places around the country are moving away from coal-fired power generation,” says Haywood Martin of the Sierra Club Acadian Group.
The first forum, held Sept. 12, featured Terry Huval, LUS utilities director, who presented reasons why Lafayette’s existing coal and natural gas plants will likely continue being the primary electricity sources for the area.
“We saw that as only one side of the story,” says Martin. “Terry (Huval) indicated LUS had never seriously considered renewable energy such as wind or solar, and was giving no thought to energy efficiency programs as a way to meet part of the anticipated future demand. So we want to talk publicly about other options and hopefully build a public consensus for cleaner energy for Lafayette.”
Thursday’s forum is being co-hosted by the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters of Lafayette, and will feature a presentation by Simon Mahan, a renewable energy manager with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Martin says Mahan’s presentation will include a possible plan for meeting all Lafayette’s future energy demands through a “combination” of alternative methods.
“What we are asking for is a City Parish sanctioned citizen study group to do detailed evaluation of the options that are available for powering Lafayette’s electrical future,” adds Martin. “We have had success with citizen study groups in the past and we can do it again.”
The forum is scheduled from 6:30-8 p.m., and will be held inside the Lafayette South Regional Library at 6101 Johnston St.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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