What is going on around here? #
Almost as a complete discovery on accident, we discovered that two very large solar power production facilities are planned to be placed in the middle of our community. Although both facilities are considered heavy industrial, they are able to by pass normal zoning sanctions due to a new law in the state of georgia that allow solar power plants to virtually occupy any area of that state that they are desired to be built. This means regardless of living in a agricultural / residential zone, an industrial facility can be installed next to your home and bring with it all the negative effects that industrial facilities that industrial facilities contain. One of these facilities is only a couple of feet from the city limit, and practically resides on the edge of town.
Residents were robbed of the right to voice their concerns. #
One of the reasons that the power plants were even approved by the county was due to the intentional blockage of public signage announcing the meeting times for the appeals meeting and the approval meetings. The public notices were only printed in the local newspaper twice and were printed two weeks before the meetings were to occur. Which is the bare minimum required by law, and in no way shape or form provides adequate information to the public to formulate a response. The approval meeting was obviously a sham as well, since all commissioner’s attending admitted to not paying attention during the approval meeting, and had made their decision before entering the room. One commissioner even responded that he approved the project out of political favours for another commissioner.
What does this mean for residents? #
For residents this means that they were not given a chance to choose whether they live next to a power plant or not. That the will of a solitary individual is prioritized over the desires of the community, regardless of the money that that other community members have invested in the neighborhood. What this means is that citizens no longer have the right to protect their personal property from devaluation and no longer have the ability to protect their personal investments from others.
What benefits will this bring? #
There are no community benefits that will be recieved from the installation of these facilities only negative after affects. These facilities will not lower the cost of electricity in the neighbourhood for multiple reasons that are discussed in the economics of this site.
What is there from preventing this from happening again? #
Absolutely nothing has been performed by the county commissioners in order from preventing another one of these power plants from being installed next to another residential area again. No preventative measures for prohibiting damage from befalling the community was incorporated into the approval. Which was an unrestrained license to deminish and destroy the quality of life that is experienced in our community.
What is it, again? #
What we know is actually very little, but the size of both facilities is going to be around fifty acres which makes it one of the larger facilities installed in a residential area in the state. As for the productivity, cost, and tax benefits recieved. We have noticed several discrepancies in the documentation and can no longer depend on it for viable information.
Taking a closer look at the lies #
The entire purpose of this website was to act as a response to the ludicris presentation given to the local County Board of Commissioners and to demonstrate the surmounting inaccuracy contained within the presentation. Charles Glass the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners stated that he could have cared less about whether the presentation was factual or not. Which should be concerning for all residents of Lamar County.
Just about every single point of information on this presentation was fabricated and not reflective of the actual facts. Do not let it foul you, it appears the specific presentation was created to dismiss risks and concerns involving solar installations, and it does not include the use of any documentation or references to backup it’s ridiculous claims.
We urge you to discover how many lies you can find in this presentation.
In this slide you can see that beltline is clearly not representing the truth, and appears to be more fabrication than facts. They repeat this theme of factual falsification throughout the entire presentation.
The hacker quarterly, “2600”, published an article several years ago on the recurring ease it was to hack industrial controllers and shut off major portions of the nation’s power grid. There is no doubt that these industrial controllers are to be incorporated in the proposed solar power plants. As any hacker would know, if it has an IP address it can be hacked, and something tells us that Beltline has not invested in the expensive infrastructure to prevent this.
On two of Beltline’s slides they claim that the solar installation will have no noise generation and will remain quiet. Yet, in the same presentation they admit that a single generator will produce 60 decibels which is equivocal to a very busy restraunt. So how can something be as loud as a packed restraunt during lunch time, but be free of all noise? It can’t.
As far as experiencing glare is concerned, anyone can experience blinding glare from a coke can if the angle is right. Everyone has experienced glare from glass windows at least once in their life. So the claim that the panels will not generate glare is factually incorrect when you consider they are made from glass.
There is zero possibility such a facility can provide a single benefit to a community. The only entities that benefit from the installation of such a toxic facility are the contractors and the property owners. The installation of an industrial facility in a residential area will lower the property value of all housing in the area. The electric companies are actually having to charge more for the use of these solar facilities, on the southern rivers website customers are asked to volunteer to use electricity generated from solar energy and will be charged an extra $4 for doing so. There is nothing preventing the electricity from being consumed somewhere else, since it is connected to the national grid. When brown outs occur due to cloudy days, this places strain on the national grid which must compensate for the inoperable solar power plants during the brown out.
Now this says next to nothing about the auditory levels of the actual installation itself, considering that only a single generator creates 70 decibels and there will be several generators installed on the property. Not to mention there is nothing included in this presentation about the auditory levels of the motor that will power the solar tracking system. But according to a local resident whom resided beside a solar installation, it is well within audible levels and will be heard from over a thousand feet away.
The installation planned for lamar county is the most intrusive form available, a motor powered single axis tracking system. The motors will all be audible from severl hundred feet away, and constantly must be maintained in order to prevent the tracking system from locking and getting stuck. Once they are stuck the tracking system will continually attempt to correct itself until the motors burn out. Because the large amount of weight required by the single axis to support, the poles for these installations are truly massive and must be planted in the ground several feet, in a minimum of over six feet, which means that these forms of installations are the most expensive and difficult to remove. Providing a higher probability of the facility being abandoned when the contract term is over. The abandonment of such a facility will absolutely demolish the valuation of all homes in the area.
When the proposed installation was approved Beltline Energy only consisted of two individuals. Yet they claim to have built nearly every solar power plant in the state of Georgia, and also claim to have generated 250 million dollars in capital. But since they are one of several solar power contractors in the state of Georgia, and they only have two people in the entire company you can see how these claims too are not representational of the facts.
Continuously while research Beltline energies we have discovered lie after lie, have come to see that there is no corporate accountability maintained by the company.