Ridgetop road to turbine sites. Photo: Eric Claunch
By SteveHaner
Virginia’s first (and so far, only) installation of onshore utility-scale wind turbines is in its early construction phase, with opponents hoping the Botetourt County project will draw the attention and opposition of the new Trump Administration. They are also complaining to regulators about soil running off the job site and fouling a nearby trout stream.
Apex Clean Energy’s proposed Rocky Forge Wind languished for years without a buyer for its energy output, but a power purchase agreement with Google finally brought it to life. The county approved construction in January.
Locator map from Rocky Forge Wind website.
Google is also planning a data center elsewhere in the county, just north of Roanoke, but the power from Rocky Forge won’t feed that directly. The wind energy when produced will become another asset in the PJM Interconnection energy marketplace. The financial details are not public, but presumably Google will share in any energy revenue, tax credits and the very marketable renewable energy certificates.
If the project is completed and connected to PJM next year as the developer intends, it will meet the amended deadline for tax credit eligibility created by the new federal omnibus tax legislation. The 13 planned turbines, each 655 feet tall, will produce about 75 megawatts of electricity when operating at peak efficiency. When there is no wind, there will be no power.
It’s been 21 days and counting since Jim Ryan resigned as president of the University of Virginia, and the Board of Visitors hasn’t announced a search committee to look for a successor. Indeed, it’s still soliciting “input” on who should serve as interim president.
Meanwhile, UVA has vacancies in other top positions: the provost (the chief academic officer) and the top three executives in the health-care division.
For god’s sake, man, somebody do something!
It may be summer break for students and professors, but it shouldn’t be for the men and women appointed to govern the university.
The news of the Dave Matthews Band (DMB) returning to Richmond for the first time since 1997 was big news this week but quickly overshadowed by the left hook out of nowhere that the city will close off parking and vehicular access to the city’s waterfront (including easy access to Belle Isle, Brown’s Island, and the Potterfield Bridge) on days bands perform at the new amphitheater.
It was recently reported the city will close the 60-space parking lot known as the “Belle Isle lot” as well as closing 5th Street, Tredegar Street and the 2nd Street Connector for the entire day on numerous dates to use as a staging area and for staff and VIP parking for amphitheater shows on those dates. This week, access was closed off for four days to accommodate the two DMB shows and the conventional wisdom from the city is apparently, since the roads are closed, it justifies closing the parking lot too since it is inaccessible.
It’s beyond a shame that in recent years it seems more and more like the city is moving away from ensuring access to the river is a priority. Especially since it is the one thing that binds the region together and is more of a DNA marker of Richmond than anything else (it’s not even close).
WHRO, the Norfolk-based public radio station, will lose $2 million in federal funding following a U.S. Senate vote to slash $9 billion in federal spending on public broadcasting and foreign aid. That amounts to 9% of the station’s $21 million budget, reports VPM News. WHRO serves the same media market as WTAR, which broadcasts The Kerry and Mike Show. — JAB
by Kerry Dougherty
Every weekday morning it’s the same: My alarm goes off at 4 a.m., I jump in the shower, throw on my clothes and head out the door. By 5 a.m. I’m in the studio, doing show prep and getting together drops for that day’s show.
At 6 a.m. we’re in our places, behind our microphones, headsets on when the red “ON AIR” light flashes and The Kerry and Mike Show goes live for the next three hours as Mike Imprevento and I try to entertain and inform our audience.
Yes, we’re conservative. And lots of companies are eager to market their products to our audience.
Our show is made possible by our sponsors who pay to advertise during our three hours. The Sinclair sales reps hustle all day selling our show to local and national businesses.
Meanwhile, 4.3 miles across town in the WHRO studios, some radio host — I have no idea who — is going through the same motions.
The big difference? His or her show is sponsored in part by taxpayers.
Being paid with my tax dollars. Meanwhile, over at the WTAR studios, we’re broadcasting on the commercial model. Why should I subsidize my competition? https://t.co/gyUMpJT8hi
When I ran Doug Wilder first historic statewide campaign, we initially didn’t take the “Wilder is pro-criminal” attacks very seriously. Doug was a war veteran. A long-time, well-known state senator. He had a solid mainstream record on criminal justice issues. Calling him pro-criminal was absurd. What reasonable person could possibly believe it? I was sure the Republicans would seem desperate. Eventually, I had to change my perspective — and our strategy to combat the attacks.
Accordingly, my old campaign-manager instincts perked up when reading the recent article in Bacon‘s Rebellion by Jacob Grandstaff about Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones. The article was entitled, “Jones a Woke Champion of Criminals,” with “Jones’ soft-on-crime, anti-police stances will undermine public safety in Virginia” the sub headline.
As the saying goes, the article went downhill from there. One quote should suffice: “Virginians deserve an attorney general who will prioritize public safety and uphold the rule of law—not someone who will make their state a magnet for criminals.” (Emphasis added).
Wow. But politics is a contact sport. Played at the hardball level when you’re running statewide. Rough back in the 1980s for sure. Especially since Doug was trying to rip down the “No Blacks Need Apply” sign hanging for hundreds of years on the door to statewide office.
We can debate whether it’s rougher or less so in the MAGA age.
The basic point being however: It will be rough enough in 2025 by any relative standard one may choose to adopt.
License-plate readers discriminate. Some readers might think that automated license-plate readers are a good thing: They help law-enforcement authorities capture lawbreakers. But if your priority is protecting illegal immigrants, that’s a big negative. License-plate readers, you see, were used to track down four people who escaped from an ICE detention center in Farmville. According to VPM News, federal authorities accessed Richmond’s license-plate reader system to catch the runaways. “If ATF had formally requested access for that purpose, I would have denied it,” said Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards a week ago. Virginia ACLU director Chris Kaiser finds the ICE’s use of the cameras disturbing, says VPM. “Even with the guardrails, the more likely it is they’re going to be used in a discriminatory manner or to target vulnerable communities, like immigrants.” Yes, ICE does tend to “target” immigrants. Illegal ones. They’re in the business of border enforcement!
Now for some actual discrimination… Some medical schools continue to discriminate on the basis of race in admissions, finds Do No Harm in a national survey of med-school admissions based on MCAT scores and admission rates. Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited racial preferences in college admissions, Old Dominion University’s Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) is one of the worst. At EVMS the admission rate at the same MCAT score for Black applicants is four times the rate for Asians, and significantly higher than that for Whites. At the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, by contrast, Asians were admitted at the highest rate, Whites at the lowest rate, and Blacks in between, although the differences between groups were much smaller. The University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University declined to participate in the voluntary survey, a likely sign that they have something to hide. “Overall, while schools aren’t admitting many students from the very bottom of the performance distribution,” the study says, “they are admitting students from the center at the expense of those at the top.”
Why does college cost so much? One reason is that it takes longer to graduate. And why does it take longer to graduate? Two things, according to Minding the Campus (MTC). First, degree requirements are bloated. States MTC: “A standard bachelor’s degree requires about 120 credit hours, but at least 25 percent of those are unrelated to the degree itself, and probably 10 percent are completely useless. … Categories like ‘Social & Cultural Diversity’ often translate to semesters spent in courses unmoored from academic rigor and laden with ideological messaging, which not only keeps students in college longer but also delays maturity.” Second: high schools suck. “An increasingly large number of students arrive for college seriously deficient in reading and writing ability,” says MTC’s Glenn Rickets, “and so they need to register for remedial courses simply to get up to speed.”
Jones’ soft-on-crime, anti-police stances will undermine public safety in Virginia
by Jacob Grandstaff
Virginia Democrat Attorney General candidate Jay Jones has persistently demonstrated a troubling pattern of leniency toward criminals through his legislative record and statements. Virginians deserve an attorney general who will prioritize public safety and uphold the rule of law—not someone who will make their state a magnet for criminals.
As a House Delegate, Jones developed a pattern of voting for lighter sentences for criminals and expanding their rights. His most dangerous position, however, centers on his leftist contempt for law enforcement. This raises serious concerns, as he is running to serve as Virginia’s top law enforcement officer.
Creating a safe haven for criminals
Since his election as a Virginia Delegate, Jones has consistently supported policies that make Virginia less safe. His record includes multiple examples of promoting leniency toward criminals and undermining deterrence.
State Senate Democrats announced yesterday a deal to pay off $36 million in toll debts accumulated by thousands of drivers using the Downtown and Midtown tunnels connecting Norfolk and Portsmouth.
Woo hoo! Free money for everybody! Well… free money for some! Image credit: Bing Image Creator
“I’m proud to announce because of our 2025 Appropriations Bill, the Virginia Department of Transportation and Elizabeth River Crossings have successfully completed negotiations and reached an agreement to wipe out all outstanding toll balances and fees from 2014 to December 31, 2023, for drivers in Portsmouth and Norfolk. That’s right, the toll debt is gone,” said House Speaker Don Scott, D-Scott, as reported by WVEC News.
“If you have been buried under toll tickets and those late fees have been holding you back, if you felt like no one in Richmond was listening, we heard you,” said Scott. “Nobody should be buried under hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines just because they are trying to get to work or take care of their kids.”
But not just anyone gets their debts wiped away. As WVEC makes clear: “The relief package is targeted specifically at Portsmouth and Norfolk drivers, recognizing that they have carried the brunt of Elizabeth River Tunnel toll costs since the fees were imposed.”
Hmmm. Don Scott’s district is Portsmouth. The district of his collaborator in this deal, Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas includes… Portsmouth.
Rendering of Chesterfield gas generation project from Dominion’s public website.
By Steve Haner
The State Corporation Commission has judged Dominion Energy Virginia’s latest integrated resource plan (IRP) – the one with controversial proposals for additional use of natural gas— to be merely “legally sufficient.” In its final order issued July 15, the commission applied the term “reasonable” to only a few elements of Dominion’s 15-year roadmap on how it would meet the growing energy demands of the Commonwealth.
Leaving no room for interpretation, the order emphasized that “such acceptance does not express approval in this Final Order of the magnitude or specifics of Dominion’s future spending plans, the costs of which will significantly impact millions of residential and business customers in the monthly bills they must pay for power.”
This at least is a slightly better outcome than the regulatory body’s rejection of Dominion’s previous integrated resource plan, but that was before the SCC had a full panel of three members approved by the General Assembly. If Dominion was hoping it could now get agreement from the SCC that natural gas is essential for future electricity reliability, as it argued in this IRP, it came away disappointed.
The SCC will not be able to dodge that all-important reliability question in another pending Dominion application, this one to build a new natural gas plant in Chesterfield County on the site of a retired coal plant. That case is still in its early stages but is drawing a crowd of participants and will soon see filed testimony from the SCC staff and various parties. The public hearing will be held September 23 (the height of the fall political season.)
The Jefferson Council calls for Board of Visitors to take action.
Melina Kibbe
Melina Kibbe, dean of the University of Virginia Medical School, has been offered a job at the University of Texas Health Center at Houston, and will be officially named president after a 21-day waiting period, reports the Daily Progress.
“I look forward to building on UTHealth Houston’s legacy of innovation and excellence to strengthen our communities across the state and nation,” she said in the UTHealth statement making the announcement.
Kibbe’s impending departure worsens the leadership void at the University of Virginia where the positions of president, provost, and CEO of the health system are also open. There is no sign that UVA is close to filling any of those key positions permanently — or even appointing an interim president to serve until the top office can be filled permanently. The search for a new provost, which began in February with the aim of filling the position by August, has been rebooted and may not be filled until a president is selected.
Additionally, Bacon’s Rebellion has learned from an informed source that another top executive, UVA Health Medical Center CEO Wendy Horton, has just accepted a job offer from the University of California-San Francisco.
“UVA is in a leadership crisis,” charges Joel Gardner, president of the Jefferson Council, an alumni group focused on governance issues at the University. “The board is doing nothing!”
“Rome is burning,” declares Bert Ellis, a former UVA board member who was fired by Governor Glenn Youngkin for his confrontational style demanding more forceful action and now serves on the executive committee of the Jefferson Council. “We need a board meeting.”
Several board members had planned Monday to call a special board meeting to address the leadership void, Bacon’s Rebellion has learned from multiple sources, but Governor Glenn Youngkin was informed of the initiative and scuttled it over the weekend. Normally, the rector schedules special meetings, but the board manual allows three or more regular members to call a meeting. All meetings must be published seven days in advance.
John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, stakes out a conservative issue on almost every important issue but one — gay marriage. As a gay man in a committed long-term relationship, he supports gay marriage. Yet he would vote against a constitutional amendment before the General Assembly as currently written because it might abrogate the rights of those who oppose gay marriage.
He worries that priests and other religious leaders who do not support gay marriage would be compelled to officiate them, opening Virginia up to lawsuits should a gay couple be turned away at a church door, he tells the Daily Progress. “I think there will be an aggressive effort to go after churches and try to strip them of their tax-exempt status, trying to make sure that they can’t engage in government programs,” he said.
Democrat Jay Jones’s record reveals a champion for large, well-connected entities at the expense of everyday citizens.
by Jacob Grandstaff
Virginia Democrat Attorney General candidate Jay Jones presents himself as a defender of the working poor, but his career and political history tell a different story—a lawyer and legislator who consistently prioritizes corporate giants over the individual and the underprivileged.
In an interview with the leftist environmentalist group Clean Virginia, Jones said, “Everything that I have done in my career, whether it be in the legislative space, in the public sector, or in the private sector has been focused on helping people and protecting people.”
His record, however, suggests he’ll help and protect the powerful and well-connected and leave the vulnerable behind. From high-powered law firms defending large corporations to legislative votes enabling the exploitation of the poor, Jones’s track record shows a clear allegiance to big business. Many in that world recognize this and have rewarded him with handsome campaign contributions.
OK, we locals don’t really loathe tourists. We actually hate some of them.
The ones who forget that when they park their cars on residential streets they’re in neighborhoods. Where people live. Where children play. And learn to ride their bikes.
We’re happy to share our beaches with visitors, but we’d like them better if they adopted the national parks motto: take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints.
I’ve lived near the oceanfront since 1984. I wish I could tell you that the dirty diaper I found on the street Sunday evening was the first left behind by a tourist. Or even the second. Truth is, I’ve lost track. At least this one was neatly secured, left behind by a thoughtful slob.
I’ve found beer bottles, condoms, broken beach chairs, and vomit on the streets near the ocean. I once found a Burger King bag in my front yard that seemed heavy. When I peeked inside I saw a man’s wallet in with the greasy remains of someone’s lunch. That leather wallet contained a $100 bill and identification. Continue reading.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.
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