Category: Water-waste water
-
Goodbye and Good Riddance to Goodlatte
Carpetbagger. Bob Goodlatte is the 13-term congressman from Virginia’s 6th Congressional District who has blessedly chosen to retire this year. In my opinion he represents just about everything that is wrong with the GOP. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and educated at Bates College in Maine, Goodlatte somehow avoids the “carpetbagger” moniker so quickly put on Terry…
-
Eco-City Alexandria Kvetches about Accelerated Potomac Cleanup
The City of Alexandria bills itself as an “eco-city.” In 2007, it published a “green-ventory” of environmental plans, policies and programs. In 2008, the city adopted an “eco-charter.” Since then, the city has launched initiatives to tackle invasive plants, expand the regional BikeShare program, bolster transit bus service, weatherize apartments of low-income Alexandrians, design LEED-certified city…
-
The Saga of HB 1774 — Recurrent Flooding and Flooded Roads
by Carol J. Bova HB 1774 was written to address rural stormwater issues and amended to study stormwater management practices in rural Virginia highway ditches. Why, then, does the bill direct the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency, a group formed to help Virginia adapt to recurrent flooding and sea-level rise, to direct the study? The Commonwealth Center…
-
Virginia’s Infrastructure Deficit
I have often opined on Virginia’s hidden deficits — fiscal time bombs in the form of budgetary gimmicks, pension under-funding, and deferred infrastructure maintenance. These problems are national in scope, and Virginia has been somewhat less derelict in its duty than other states, but sooner or later the Old Dominion will have an ugly confrontation.…
-
The Saga of HB 1774 — Starting Over
By Carol J. Bova In the second part of this series, I described how the General Assembly recognized intrinsic problems in HB 1774, a bill designed to remedy deficiencies in stormwater legislation enacted in 2016 and scheduled to go into effect July 1 this year. But instead of killing the bill, legislators passed a substitute. That…
-
The Saga of HB 1774 — Rural Growth, Stormwater Credits
By Carol J. Bova Virginia’s part-time legislators saw 3,168 bills introduced in the 2017 General Assembly session according to the Richmond Sunlight website. Inundated with such a volume of legislation, overworked part-time lawmakers are hard-pressed to grind through complex issues. In such circumstances, speeding bills through the legislature can lead to bad law. And that appears to have…
-
The Saga of HB 1774 — Bills and Buzzwords
By Carol J. Bova Virginia legislation usually follows a logical pattern in which bills lay out what they intend to do and the means by which their goals will be accomplished. This series looks at one bill introduced in the 2017 General Assembly session that missed the mark, morphing into a substitute bill that passed…
-
Amidst Abundant Rain, Eastern Virginia Still Faces Water Shortages
by James A. Bacon After getting soaked with rain over the past two weeks, most Virginians would find it difficult to imagine that the Old Dominion could ever face a water shortage. But the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) has been thinking beyond next week’s weather forecast, and while there are no immediate threats to…
-
Petersburg’s Other Fiasco
by James A. Bacon Poor Petersburg. The economically depressed Southside city of 32,000 serves as a vivid warning of just about everything that can go wrong for a local government in Virginia. Not only is the city running a massive General Fund budget deficit, it is falling millions of dollars behind in the collection of revenues…
-
Bikes, Bees, Beauty
by James A. Bacon New York City has its High Line park built upon an abandoned, elevated freight rail line. The City of Richmond has its Low Line park, built underneath CSX Corp. railroad trestles. In the seven years since opening to great fanfare, Manhattan’s High Line has attracted millions of visitors and inspired the construction of nearly…
-
Maryland Drops Coal Ash Appeal
The state of Maryland has dropped its appeal of permits granted to Dominion Virginia Power for discharging treated water from its Possum Point Power Station coal ash ponds into Quantico Creek and the Potomac River. “Maryland is supportive of recent agreements in Virginia to increase wastewater treatment protections and monitoring protocols,” Ben Grumbles, Maryland’s secretary…
-
Eb Tide for Bay Pollution
Measures enacted since 2009 to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment have driven down the level of pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay, according to computer simulations by the Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership of federal and state agencies and not-for-profits dedicated to cleaning up the bay. The results between 2009 and 2015: nitrogen down 8%, phosphorus down…
-
Hysteria Level Rising over Coal Ash
The debate over coal ash disposal is reaching a hysterical pitch as leftist groups peddle gross inaccuracies in “education” sessions to ignorant audiences not equipped to sift fact from fiction. An example comes from a Tuesday “teach in” hosted by Divest U.Va. and the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, which was reported uncritically by the Cavalier Daily: “Coal ash…
-
Drinkable Water for Humans — or Fish?
by James A. Bacon State regulators have taken heat recently for permits they issued Dominion Virginia Power to release treated wastewater from coal-ash ponds into the James River and Quantico Creek. The controversy has played out in the news as the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed an appeal to contest the permit and as protesters organized by No…
-
More Questions than Answers on Coal-Ash Waste Water Discharges
by James A. Bacon A crowd estimated at 2oo strong by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (and 700 by the protesters themselves) gathered at the state Capitol grounds Saturday to denounce the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for granting Dominion Virginia Power permits to discharge treated coal-ash waste water into Quantico Creek and the James River. Chanting “Coal…