Category: Planning
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Back on Front Burner: Controlling Carbon
By Peter Galuszka On frosty mornings, Virginia’s single largest-contribution to global warming can be seen belting out dense steam clouds from its three smokestacks near Interstate 95’s interchange with Route 288. The 1,600 megawatt Chesterfield Power Station provides owner Dominion Virginia Power with enough electricity for four million customers and represents 12 percent of all…
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Is Virginia Uranium Quickly Running Out of Money?
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in Agriculture & forestry, Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just how financially viable is Virginia Uranium, which appears to be losing its battle to lift a 31-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia? Corporate documents filed with Canadian securities regulators state that as of last September, Virginia Energy Resources Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia-based parent of Virginia Uranium that wants to mine…
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Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life
Peter Galuszka After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission. State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there,…
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Here’s a Novel Idea: Base Billion-Dollar Investment Decisions on Latest Data, Not Decade-Old Data
by James A. Bacon In the 2000s, Loudoun County grew at a prodigious rate, averaging 6,000 housing starts yearly before the Great Recession. Construction took a dive during the recession and continues at only half the pace of a decade ago, contends Rob Whitfield with the Dulles Corridor Users Group and a long-time foe of…
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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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How Bleak Are Virginia’s Ports, Exactly?
By Peter Galuszka Is there something fishy about Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s push to privatize the Virginia Port Authority? For months, state Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, privatization-minded corporate executives and some consulting firms have been beating a drum about the supposedly bad if not fatal fiscal outlook for the VPA and Virginia International Terminals, a…
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Uranium Mining on Slate.com
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just in time for your weekend reading, here’s a piece I did for Slate on the uranium mining controversy.
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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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Sticking Southside With Uranium Mining
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in Business and Economy, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka If you are a resident of Pittsylvania County in Virginia’s Southside, you can be happy to know that some Richmond legislators and a few citizens want to restrict uranium mining exclusively to your county. Led by Republican State Sen. John Watkins of Powhatan, the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission voted 11-2 to…
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Another Hint that Virginia is Losing Its Mojo
Virginia has never been one of the fast-growth states, but it has long experienced steady domestic in-migration from other states. Bolstered by a relatively strong economic performance, we have consistently grown faster than the national average. Moderate growth is beneficial in many ways — it stimulates the economy without overloading the fiscal ability of state…
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Is 2013 the Year of Bill Bolling?
By Peter Galuszka It’s not even 2013 year and the maneuvering in the gubernatorial race is mystifying, showing disarray in both political parties. Mild-mannered, former GOP loyalist Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is showing new backbone that can only be taken to be mean he may well run as an independent now that he has abandoned…
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Rise of the Machines?
By Peter Galuszka Economic regions go through natural iterations of what makes money and creates jobs. But that “what” can be transitional if not ephemeral. Consider industries for Dutch tulips or New England ice. Ditto Virginia. It’s been through tobacco, apples, battleships, retailing, furniture, textiles and moonshine. A couple of decades ago, with proponents of…
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Is It Time to Get Rid of the MWAA?
By Peter Galuszka Many years ago, I started my first journalism job at a daily newspaper in a small town in North Carolina. It was a pleasant, sleepy place where the dominant clans were the Alligoods and the Woolards. If they married, they were known as “Wooligoods.” When you looked at the lists of employees…
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Has Road Privatization Gone Frankenstein?
By Peter Galuszka Since 1995, Virginia’s politicians have had a ready tool that they love to use as a ruse to build roads without raising taxes: the Public Privatization Transportation Act. Once considered a nation-beater and major step in the craze of putting private management methods and money in pubic transport projects, the PPTA was…
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Regulating Uranium Mining Would Be Huge Task
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & healthBy Peter Galuszka Virginia appears to be reaching a critical mass regarding uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County. Today, the Uranium Working Group issued its report outlining what steps would be needed if Virginia were to lift its 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining. Meanwhile, the powerful Virginia Farm Bureau joined a group of mining…