Category: Environment
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Solar Power and the Gentrification of the Countryside
Consider two mega-trends: (1) the push to renewable solar power and, (2) the changing economics of rural land that places an increasing value on pristine “viewsheds.” Both are powerful forces, and the two are coming into conflict here in Virginia. How the story ends, nobody yet knows. Hopefully, the two can be reconciled. The American…
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Has Momentum Shifted in Pipeline Battles?
The drums and whistles overpowered traffic noise at Eighth and Main this morning as a group of protesters opposing Virginia’s two natural gas pipeline projects moved away from Department of Environmental Quality headquarters, perhaps coming from a State Water Control Board hearing down the street. With both the Atlantic Coast (ACP) and Mountain Valley (MVP)…
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Bacon Bits, Your Tasty Morning Info Treat
More hidden deficit spending. Virginia devoted 33% less to capital spending on K-12 schools (inflation-adjusted) in 2016 than in 2008, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That compared to a 26% reduction nationally. The cuts, say CBPP, “mean less money to build new schools, renovate and expand facilities, and equip schools…
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I Want to Say Two Words to You: Plastic Reycling!
by Bill Tracy I want to say one word to you: plastics!” That’s the famous 1967 quote from “The Graduate,” which ranks #42 in the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 movie quotations. Evidently, it was good career advice, because it now seems like just about everything in our homes and vehicles is made from…
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A PETA-Free Zone for Tarheel Ponies
The Bacon family is vacationing in Emerald Isle again this summer, and today we took an excursion to Shackleford Banks near Beaufort, N.C. Shackleford Banks is a beautiful barrier island uninhabited except by a small herd of ponies. As with the famous swimming of the ponies from Assateague, Va., to Chincoteague, in which wild ponies…
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Goodbye and Good Riddance to Goodlatte
Carpetbagger. Bob Goodlatte is the 13-term congressman from Virginia’s 6th Congressional District who has blessedly chosen to retire this year. In my opinion he represents just about everything that is wrong with the GOP. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and educated at Bates College in Maine, Goodlatte somehow avoids the “carpetbagger” moniker so quickly put on Terry…
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A Mercifully Brief Coal-Ash Update
A year ago, Virginians couldn’t open up a newspaper without reading about Dominion Energy’s coal ash controversy. Then the issue disappeared from view. Months passed without news of any kind. Then earlier this week, I noticed a stray phrase in Dominion’s 2nd quarter 2018 financial results: The company had written off $81 million to reflect…
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The Cyber Threat to Utilities Just Got Scarier
Russian hackers have broken into the control rooms of U.S. utilities where they could cause blackouts, federal officials have told the Wall Street Journal. The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure “air gapped” or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative…
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AP’s Latest Hit Piece: Journalism or Polemic?
Here we go again. The Associated Press’ Alan Suderman has popped out another context-free article making an issue of Dominion Energy’s tenfold increase in lobbying expenses over the past year to more than $1 million. That spending, writes Suderman, “came during a period when the company successfully pushed through legislation that could lead to substantial increases…
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State Solicits Input from Solar, Wind Stakeholders
A nonprofit company specializing in addressing complex public policy issues has begun holding a series of meetings to solicit input from solar and wind energy stakeholders that will be used to formulate the Northam administration’s update to the Virginia Energy Plan. Discussion topics will address community solar, corporate procurement of clean energy, state/local barriers to…
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Eat My (Coal) Dust!
In a possible early-warning sign of what may be in store for Virginia electricity consumers, North Carolina regulators have decided that Duke Energy could charge their Tarheel rate payers the first $778 million chunk of an estimated $5 billion in coal-ash cleanup costs. The sum does not include $100 million in two mismanagement penalties for…
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Save the Honeybees
File this under the heading, “Environmental Problems that I do Worry About. The collapse of honeybee colonies in Virginia this past winter was devastating. Reports the Daily Press: Virginia lost 59.5 percent of its honeybee colonies last winter, nearly double the average rate for the past decade, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer…
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Virginia’s Political Class Isn’t Doing Much to Reduce CO2 Emissions — And It’s Working Out Just Fine
As faithful readers know well, I remain unpersuaded that the world is facing global-warming Armageddon or that we need to force a restructuring of the global energy economy to avert it. But as long as there’s even a remote chance that the emission of greenhouse gases (primarily CO2) might be driving cataclysmic climate change, I…
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Virginia’s Competitive Advantage in Green Power
Solar power is looking better and better by comparison to wind power, and that’s a good thing for Virginia. In Germany, a global pioneer of wind power, hundreds of wind turbines are experiencing metal fatigue and other issues as they pass their 20- to 25-year design lives — and they are literally falling apart. Turbines…