Category: Water-waste water
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Golf, Data Centers and the Water Crisis
From Rod D. Martin on X: US golf courses use 531 billion gallons of water per year. That’s down from 759 billion gallons per year in 2005 and is 0.5% of total annual water withdrawals in this country. And somehow, the country manages to not look like the Sahara Desert. Meanwhile, data centers – the…
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Amazon Data Centers Now Use Less Water
Plus, in Virginia they spawn tax cuts for homeowners. by Hans Bader Amazon’s data centers are using water more efficiently than in the past. A company report shows that “Amazon’s data centers used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of compute in 2025, about one-seventh of the industry average and less than half of Amazon’s rate…
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Data Centers Will Pay Same Tax on Solar Power as on Coal
by Steve Haner The new energy tax being imposed on Virginia’s data center industry effective July 1, assuming the new state budget conference report passes next week, is totally ecumenical. The same tax is imposed on electrons from a solar panel or wind turbine as is imposed on electrons from coal. A data center that…
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Dems Don’t Want To Talk About Their River Of Poop
by Kerry Dougherty In the past month Virginia’s two senators and governor have been busy on social medial. Mark Warner interrupted his relentless whining about President Trump long enough to demand that Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth be sacked and to blame Robert Kennedy for an outbreak of measles among adults. Tim Kaine constantly blamed…
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A Delinquent Water Bill Dashboard?
by Jon Baliles The City of Richmond put out a release last week touting the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) “Back on Track” program that offers any customer with an outstanding balance to sign up for a payment plan before March 31st. Both residential and commercial customers with delinquent balances can set up an interest-free…
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Sediment-Like Materials Spur Emergency
The only thing muddier than the water is the prose by Joe Fitzgerald When I declared a local emergency when a hurricane was threatening to come across the hill 22 years ago, the city manager had made it reasonably clear that a local emergency didn’t mean that much. Mostly buying up bottled water, he said,…
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Avula Engineers Transition in Richmond Waterworks Leadership
by James A. Bacon April Bingham, Richmond’s director of public works, has stepped down in what Mayor Danny Avula described as a voluntary and amicable parting of the ways. In the wake of the cutoff of water supplies to residents of Richmond and neighboring counties last week, Avula said, “there probably are other skills that…
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Political Blood in the Richmond Water Fiasco
by Paul Goldman But for former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney running for Lieutenant Governor, the RVA water fiasco would likely have been a far different political story. High profile for sure. But Mayor Danny Avula is new, and folks likely would have been willing to let him fix the issue, fire the public works director, and…
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The Hits Just Keep on Coming
by James A. Bacon Ordinarily, one would categorize a busted-water main story as routine news and forget about it the next day. But in the wake of the breakdown of the City of Richmond’s water treatment plant, which cut off water supplies for the better part of a week, the natural reaction is, what’s next?…
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Dry January Takes on a Whole New Meaning
by Jon Baliles The start of every New Year often comes with people making resolutions to do more exercise, choose better eating habits, and make changes to improve one’s life. One of the newer traditions in recent years has been Dry January, which started in England but has spread worldwide and challenges people to spend…
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Richmond’s Water-Gate Fiasco Will Be Investigated
by James A. Bacon Richmond Mayor Danny Avula committed himself yesterday to an “independent” investigation into the failure of Richmond’s water treatment facility, while Governor Glenn Youngkin said yesterday that the state would conduct its own inquiry. “We are absolutely outsourcing this. We’re going to bring in a third party to do that investigation,” Avula…
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Mayor Avula, Appoint an Independent Commission to Fix Richmond’s Infrastructure
by Paul Goldman Once again, Richmond city government is facing a crisis of competence. The current water treatment plant fiasco is symbolic of this long history. You can’t run a city by moving from crisis to crisis. That’s why I believe Mayor Danny Avula should create an independent committee to review the city’s well-documented infrastructure…
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Water-Gate Needs an Independent Investigation
by James A. Bacon Evidence continues to emerge of warning signs that the City of Richmond’s water-treatment and distribution system suffered from a failure to properly maintain, repair and upgrade its physical plant. WTVR-CBS reported yesterday that a 2022 Environmental Protection Agency alerted the city to corroded pipes and bacterial contamination. Today the Richmond Times-Dispatch…
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How About a Regional Solution to Richmond’s Water Woes? No Thanks.
by James A. Bacon In a myriad of small ways, the City of Richmond’s water woes have spilled into neighboring Henrico County where I live. The County is on water-boil alert, making cooking meals a hassle. One of my favorite restaurants, which is normally half full on Wednesday nights, was so jammed with diners when…