Category: Infrastructure
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Noooooooooo! Not another Cville Bypass!
State Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, has filed a resolution and budget amendment to study building an eastern bypass around U.S. 29 around Charlottesville, reports the Daily Progress. During the McDonnell administration, Charlottesville residents managed to kill a proposed $230 million western bypass around the city in favor of making extensive improvements to U.S. 29 itself.…
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Virginia’s Top 10 Stories (Told and Untold) of the Year
Phew! I finally made it through the all-consuming Christmas season, and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Christmas is a wonderful but grueling time of year for the Bacon family, marked by numerous feasts, expanding waistlines, excessive gift giving, shrinking bank accounts, and considerable out-of-town travel to distant relatives. But I’m back in the…
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Water Board Gives Atlantic Coast Pipeline Conditional Approval
In a 4 to 3 vote, the State Water Control Board gave a provisional water-quality certification for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline today, but added a big condition reports WHSV television: The permit won’t take effect until several additional studies are reviewed and approved by the Department of Environmental Quality. Dominion Energy, managing partner of the ACP, is…
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ACP Foes, Supporters Contend in ACP Environmental Hearing
After issuing a water-quality certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline last week, the State Water Control Board held a public hearing today to consider a comparable certification for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). Public comment this morning tended to focus on the question of whether new Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) rules designed to cover…
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Atlantic Coast Pipeline Inks Labor Contracts
Now that the State Water Control Board has approved water-quality permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), the odds look exceedingly good that the board will approve comparable permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) as well. Indeed, state regulatory approval looks like such a lock that the ACP has signed project labor agreements with four…
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Broadband Boondoggles in Southwest Virginia
Throughout the Central Appalachian region — Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky — community leaders have a keen understanding that they must find new industries to replace coal. And there is a near universal conviction that any hope to diversify local economies requires high-bandwidth connections to the outside world. This conviction has led to a series…
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Eco-Districts as Competitive Advantage for Edge Cities
Speaking at a TedxTysons conference, my friend Dan Slone describes his vision for eco-districts in edge cities. Eco-districts integrate urban farming, renewable energy, microgrids, water recycling and even wildlife habitat with a walkable, mixed-use built environment to create resiliency and business continuity in the face of natural disasters and social upheaval.
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Call Before You Friggin’ Dig!
What’s Dominion’s slogan? “Call before you dig.” Well, pay attention people, and call before you friggin’ dig! Some lame brain failed to call before he dug today, and he knocked out the power for much of my neighborhood, including me, for four hours. Thanks a lot, dude!
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How to Build Strong, Resilient Cities and Towns
Cities and counties across the United States are experiencing chronic fiscal stress, and the reason has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats and everything to do with what Chuck Marohn calls the “growth Ponzi scheme.” “Why are cities going broke?” he asked at a forum hosted by the Partnership for Smarter Growth, Coalition for…
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A 40-Year Lease on Life for Transmission Tower Foundations
In 1968 Dominion Energy Virginia erected a series of 18 towers across the James River to carry two transmission lines from south of the river to points in Newport News. The company built the tower foundations with marine-grade, corrosion-resistant steel that was billed to last for decades. By the 1990s, however, it was evident that…
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Building on Virginia’s Data-Center Boom
Data centers are the hottest trend in Virginia economic development these days. But the state is only beginning to think through the implications. Loudoun County, home to 75 facilities, has developed the largest cluster of data centers in the country (and perhaps the world), and next-door-neighbor Prince William County is rising fast. Rural Mecklenburg County…
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Retrofitting Alexandria: Another Office-to-Residential Conversion
Washington, D.C.-based Perseus Realty has contracted to acquire a six-acre site in Alexandria’s Hoffman Town Center with plans to convert an obsolete, 610,000-square-foot building into a residential-dominated mixed-use project. Reports the Washington Business Journal: The effort, if approved, will entail the addition of 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, conversion of two lower floors into…
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Dominion Sings New Tune, Embraces Solar
Dominion expects to install up to 5,200 megawatts of solar generating capacity by 2042 — about thirteen times its current commitment and enough to power 1.3 million homes — according to forecasts contained in its 2017 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). That represents a dramatic shift from forecasts in previous versions of the long-range planning document, which is filed…
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What’s Next for the Pipeline Controversies?
With the announcement last week that Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) would provide closer scrutiny of water-quality standards than legally required, battles over the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline shift from the federal level to the states. Foes of the natural gas pipelines have failed so far to block the projects in the…
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Virginia Tech OK’s Intelligent Infrastructure Initiative
The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors voted Monday to approve a $78 million plan to make the university a leader in “intelligent infrastructure.” The term encompasses everything from self-driving cars and drones to smart construction and energy systems — areas, in the words of President Tim Sands, that are “related to energy systems for the cities of the…