Category: Environment
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Virginia May Help Offshore Wind Power Up
By Peter Galuszka About 22 miles off Virginia Beach, at points too far to see with human eyes, Virginia’s first real effort to harness the wind for electricity is about to take shape. Richmond-based Dominion Virginia Power will begin work this year on erecting two wind turbines, each capable of producing 6 megawatts of electricity…
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Dissecting Obama’s “War on Coal”
By Peter Galuszka During elections a few months ago, headlines, blog sites and televisions screens were crowded with news about the “War on Coal” being waged by President Barack Obama and his EPA chief. Coal firms were laying off thousands of miners as their bottom lines took big hits. Virginia politicians including Kenneth Cuccinelli and…
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Sign of the Times… A Different Kind of “Gas” Station
If you pull up to the City of Richmond’s new gas station on Maury Street, bring your credit card — and a vehicle that runs on compressed natural gas (CNG). Not only does the new CNG station refuel the city’s fleet of CNG-powered garbage trucks, it is open to the public 24 hours per day.…
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Out: Sustainability. In: Resilience.
by James A. Bacon If you want to move green initiatives forward in the Richmond region, it’s best not to invoke “sustainability,” a word that quickly gets tangled in the controversy over global warming and inflames the anti-Agenda 21 element of the conservative movement. Instead, advises Daniel K. Slone, focus on concepts in which the…
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Fostering Regional Collaboration Case by Case
by James A. Bacon For reasons rooted in local identity and entrenched political interest, Virginians are unlikely to consolidate their local governments into units aligned with the metropolitan regions they serve. But it is not impossible to imagine governments partnering regionally on specific projects. A new study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission,…
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EPA Bows to Cuccinelli on Accotink Stink
Chalk up another victory for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his ongoing campaign against federal overreach. It looks like he has won his lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for attempting to regulate storm water flowing into Fairfax County’s Accotink Creek. In January, federal judge Liam O’Grady accepted Cuccinelli’s argument that the EPA had…
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Cuccinelli’s Strange Lesson in Federalism
By Peter Galuszka (Note: You’ve heard from Jim and Les on Ken Cuccinelli’s book. Here’s my review that runs in this week’s Style Weekly). Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia’s firebrand attorney general and Republican gubernatorial hopeful, is typically full of fire and vinegar that make him such a lively politician. But you’d never know it from his…
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The Lessons of the 2013 General Assembly
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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, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka If there’s any good news from the 2013 General Assembly session, it is that the hard right’s strange hold on taxation has been broken. Republicans can start acting like responsible adults once again instead of dogmatic shills or spoiled children. Gov. Robert F. Donnell and legislators found a way to raise badly…
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Reports of King Coal’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
By Peter Galuszka It seems such a short time ago. In the gnarled hills of Southwest Virginia’s coalfields, prominent Republicans Ken Cuccinelli, Robert F. McDonnell and others were on the stump for Mitt Romney. The key theme was how Barack Obama’s environmental rules were putting a stranglehold over the coal industry. A little farther north…
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Fixing Broken Streams and Broken Dreams
The Bellemeade Walkable Watershed project aims to reclaim a damaged creek, create a route for kids to walk to school, and boost community spirit in a gritty, inner-city Richmond neighborhood.
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Back on Front Burner: Controlling Carbon
By Peter Galuszka On frosty mornings, Virginia’s single largest-contribution to global warming can be seen belting out dense steam clouds from its three smokestacks near Interstate 95’s interchange with Route 288. The 1,600 megawatt Chesterfield Power Station provides owner Dominion Virginia Power with enough electricity for four million customers and represents 12 percent of all…
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Smart Growth for Everyone
by James A. Bacon I’m back from the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Kansas City, where I learned a lot, met some really bright people and, oh, by the way, gave a speech to the biggest audience of my career. As a bonus, I experienced a first — my speech was live-tweeted! You…
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“Jeopardy” for Budding World Statesmen
By Peter Galuszka At Richmond’s Hotel Jefferson, 10 teams of earnest-looking high school students, some in shirt sleeves, pore over notepads as they consider the questions put to them on a big screen, Jeopardy-style, in the Grand Ballroom. “What percentage of oil used by the United States actually comes from these Persian Gulf countries?” Other…
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Is Virginia Uranium Quickly Running Out of Money?
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in Agriculture & forestry, Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just how financially viable is Virginia Uranium, which appears to be losing its battle to lift a 31-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia? Corporate documents filed with Canadian securities regulators state that as of last September, Virginia Energy Resources Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia-based parent of Virginia Uranium that wants to mine…
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Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life
Peter Galuszka After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission. State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there,…