Category: Water-waste water
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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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Journalism’s Death Is Greatly Exaggerated
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in Business and Economy, 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, 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, Transportation, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka “Investigative reporting, R.I.P. In-depth reporting is dead. If not dead, it’s comatose. Reeling from declining revenue and eroding profit margins, print media enterprises continue to lay off staff and shrink column inches.” Err, maybe not. James A. Bacon Jr., meet Rachel Maddow. The quote comes from advertised “sponsorships” in which an outside…
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Smart Cities around the World Are Saving Money Now. How about Your Home Town?
by James A. Bacon Suggested reading for every elected official, senior administrator and department head in Virginia government: “Smart Cities Readiness Guide” published by the Smart Cities Council. This easy-to-read document walks government practitioners (and interested citizens) through the process of using sensor, communications and analytic technologies to collect, communicate and crunch data. Proven smart…
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Why McAuliffe Is Saying No to Uranium Mining
By Peter Galuszka Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe has made one of his first pronouncements and it is an important one: he will veto any law the General Assembly passes to lift the decades-long ban on mining uranium in Virginia. The bigger question is whether he was start disassembling the energy-industrial complex that outgoing Gov. Robert F.…
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Your Way, My Way and the “Virginia” Way
By Peter Galuszka As usual, I am constantly amazed at “the Virginia Way” which means a kind of parallel universe of political reality that keeps the stay back in the 18th century, at least when it comes to political thinking. This morning, the editorial section of the ever-other- worldly Richmond Times-Dispatch has a front-page piece…
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How to Cut Water Bills by Billions of Dollars
Leaky pipes lose an estimated 2.6 trillions gallons of drinking water every year, or about 17% of all water pumped in the United States. One reason the situation is so bad is that water utilities use corrosion-prone materials. Corrosion represents a $50.7 billion annual drain on the economy. So says a new study by the American…
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Stressed Out: Storm Water
by James A. Bacon Two years ago Clyde Cristman made a presentation to the Senate Finance Committee estimating how much it would cost to meet Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay watershed clean-up goals. Some of the costs were reasonably solid but others, he recalls, “were little better than a wild guess.” The total tab for state government,…
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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…
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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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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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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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The Wobbly World of Global Uranium Prices
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Highly controversial plans to mine and mill a rich tract of uranium in Pittsylvania County are before the General Assembly. Plenty of studies, lobbyists and scads of money are being thrown about on both sides of the argument. Yet a brief story on page B7 in today’s Wall Street Journal deals with…
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Here Comes Cooch-ageddon!
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in 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, 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, Transportation, Water-waste waterHard right conservative Kenneth T. Cuccinelli has a very good chance of becoming the next governor. At least that’s my view 11 months out. I disagree with Cuccinelli on almost everything and will spare my readers the list. But I do agree on one thing: he has proved to be a wily politician. He’s turned…
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New Life for Broken Streams
Rather than make developers install stormwater-control projects of marginal value, Henrico County pools resources to fund high-impact stream reclamations.