Category: Planning
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No Negative Coal Poetry, Please
By Peter Galuszka Meanwhile, over in West Virginia, the long arm of King Coal reaches over to a high school poetry reading. Grace Pitt, a Hurricane High School student, wanted to read a poem by Charleston poet Crystal Good about Richmond-based Massey Energy’s April 5, 2010, disaster at its Upper Big Branch mine that killed…
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Coal Giant Alpha Pays Biggest Water Fine Ever
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Alpha Natural Resources of Bristol, the coal giant that took over troubled Massey Energy of Richmond in 2011, has the dubious honor paying the highest fines ever of $27.5 million for water pollution violations at its coal mining operations in five Appalachian states, including Virginia. Massey Energy, the owner of the Upper…
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The Surreal Tensions With Russia
By Peter Galuszka Back in the 1950s, when I was a little kid living in North Carolina or the Washington area, our family would take a semi-annual trip to visit my father’s relatives in western Massachusetts. My grandparents lived in a nice two-story house with an old-style brick barbecue in the back but that wasn’t…
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Dominion Benefits As Renewables Struggle
By Peter Galuszka Dominion Virginia Power, as is its style, has achieved a quiet but far-reaching regulatory victory. The General Assembly has passed a complicated bill that would help Dominion write off costs for a new nuclear reactor while avoiding giving potential refunds or rate cuts to customers. The bill, which easily sailed through the…
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McAuliffe Peruses Tobacco Commission
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka What’s going on with the Tobacco Commission? Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants to know and is asking for a detailed accounting of its finances over the past five years. The Tobacco Indemnification and Revitalization Commission, created in 1999 with a $1 billion endowment from lawsuit settlements with four major tobacco companies, has been…
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Downtown Richmond Falls in Love with the Mid-Rise
by James A. Bacon Still need proof that the momentum of growth and development is shifting back to traditional downtowns? Consider this: Roughly 3,000 apartment units are under construction in the Richmond metropolitan region — and half of them are located downtown. That gem of a factoid was buried in a Times-Dispatch article about the construction…
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The Tragic Lessons of Kiev
By Peter Galuszka The news from Ukraine is frightening and familiar. At least 100 people have been killed in rioting in Kiev. Some were shot by Interior Ministry snipers after demanding that President Viktor Yanukovych allow new elections. The latest is that he may do just that. Like all former Soviet republics, Ukraine has been…
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Virginia’s Philosophical Crossroads
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Environment, Federal issues, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t OversightStanding before a trim, white, clapboard house off Lafayette Boulevard in Norfolk last week, friends and supporters of gay rights cheered loudly as two same sex couples approached a front-yard podium to celebrate their legal victory in having Virginia’s gay marriage ban overturned. The night before, U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen, citing Abraham Lincoln…
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Time for Better Scenario Planning
by James A. Bacon A century ago, developers set up street car lines to provide transportation access for inhabitants of the housing and commercial projects they were building. A new neighborhood wouldn’t sell if people couldn’t reach it. By necessity, transportation and land use planning went hand in hand. But when governments took over transportation responsibilities,…
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Tar Heel Grief Just Down the Road
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in Business and Economy, 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, 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, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka It’s sad to see two states to which I have personal ties – North Carolina and West Virginia — in such bad ways. The latest raw news comes from the Tar Heel state where we are seeing the handiwork of hard-right- Gov. Pat McCrory who has been on a tear for a…
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The House Proposes Overhaul in Allocation of Transportation Dollars
by James A. Bacon In September House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, gave a major policy speech to the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce declaring that money alone cannot solve Virginia’s transportation problems. He called for a “new way” to think about those problems that relies heavily upon new technology and prioritization of projects by…
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Richmond Needs an Innovation District, not a Baseball Stadium
Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has doubled down on his proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, suggesting that people opposing his plan are “anti-growth and anti-economic development,” according to the Times-Dispatch. I can’t speak for other skeptics of the plan, but I’m certainly not anti-growth or anti-economic development. To the…
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Big Box, Big Bollox
by James A. Bacon Lefty Smart Growthers loathe big box stores, none more so than Wal-Mart. The big boxes are ugly as sin, they (allegedly) oppress their workers, they perpetuate dysfunctional, auto-centric human settlement patterns and they drive small, independent merchants out of business. If only there were a way to legislate them out of…
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Lerner Aims to Complete Tysons Office Tower… Only Two Years Late
by James A. Bacon Well, well, well, what do you know? The commercial building boom in Tysons triggered by the imminent completion of Phase One of the Rail-to-Dulles project doesn’t seem to be running on schedule. A Washington Post article today highlights Lerner Enterprise’s lengthy delay in building an 18-story, 476,000-square-foot office building near one of…
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West Virginia’s Lessons on Fracking
By Peter Galuszka Tap water is now drinkable for most of the 300,000 residents in the environs of Charleston, the capital of Virginia’s sister state to the west, but the mess has ample warnings for future problems notably fracking for natural gas. The national newspapers are filled with interesting pieces this morning about the problems…