Category: Environment
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Holy Pig Slop! Chinese to Buy Smithfield
By Peter Galuszka For eons, the name “Smithfield” has conjured up rich, salty Virginia ham slices that fit right on Christmas rolls or in crab dishes and with eggs for breakfast. The company that has produced such food for 80 or so years is based (of course) in Smithfield, a quaint Tidewater town the Pagan…
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How Good Is Chmura’s Economics Data?
By Peter Galuszka In the 40 months since Robert F. McDonnell has been in office, the launch of many of the governor’s policy initiatives seems to be accompanied by a press release touting the supportive findings of a small, Richmond-based research firm named Chmura Economics & Analytics. When McDonnell was pushing his transportation plan to…
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McAuliffe’s Offshore Drilling Flip-Flop
By Peter Galuszka Terry McAuliffe’s flip-flop on opposing offshore oil drilling in Virginia is unsettling given that the last time the Democrat ran for governor in 2009, he seemed skeptical of drilling for oil although he thought searching for natural gas might be beneficial. He apparently changed his position because he’s been with fresh legislation…
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Botanical Barges
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has a new idea for saving the bay: Install floating, fertilizer-sipping wetlands in Virginia’s small lakes and storm water ponds. by James A. Bacon The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is well known in the Richmond region for its Fountain Garden, its Rose Garden, its East Asia Garden and its Wetlands Garden.…
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The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is. He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in…
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Ninety-Seven Percent, You Chowderheads!
By Peter Galuszka New Study: Climate Scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming Is Real and Our Fault!
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What the Clams Know: Warming Waters
By Peter Galuszka Are warming seas forcing fish to migrate to cooler waters? That’s the thrust of an intriguing report in Nature magazine as covered in this morning’s Post. The impacts on the seafood industry are already playing out. New England fishermen after cod and haddock report having to move farther north to catch them.…
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GiftGate: “If I Were a Rich Man . . .!”
By Peter Galuszka Richmond’s “Giftgate” scandal just gets worse. On Friday, Atty. Gen. and presumed GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli announced that he was amending his required disclosures of gifts to show that he took more goodies from Star Scientific plus previously undisclosed gifts of a $7,750 trip in 2010 to Southwest Virginia from coal…
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McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?
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in Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe. He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages…
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Sunnier Skies for Virginia Solar
Thanks to a new law making it easier for non-utilities to sell solar electricity, backers of solar power are viewing the future with cautious optimism. By Andrew Jenner Virginia gets enough sunshine, relative to other states, to give it better-than-average potential for solar energy development. A 2012 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated…
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No Reform Three Years After Massey Disaster
By Peter Galuszka Three years ago today, a tremendous blast caused by bad safety conditions at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., killed 29 miners. It was the worst coal mine disaster in this country in 40 years. But three years later, very little has been done to toughen mine safety regulations…
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The Remarkable Renaissance of Virginia Rail
By Peter Galuszka Many decades ago, Richmond was a major, and colorful, train hub. Crack passenger lines of all liveries, the purple and silver of the Atlantic Coast Line, the citrus colors of Seaboard, and the blue and yellow of the Chesapeake & Ohio, all went through town. Cars and aircraft reduced rail to dirty…
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Repairing Waterways One Subdivision at a Time
Virginia’s suburbs are hard on water quality and wildlife habitat. You can do something about it. Create a neighborhood preserve and get to work! by James A. Bacon If everyone swept their front stoop, the old saying goes, the whole world would be clean. With that philosophy in mind, two or three dozen volunteers with…
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First, Fix Virginia’s Roads
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s infrastructure rates a “D+” in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 report card on American infrastructure, released earlier this week. That’s a lousy rating in line with the national score of D+. The civil engineers have been accused of overstating the woes of American infrastructure in order to justify…