Search
By EMMA COLEMAN,
Roanoke Times
(Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)
Roanoke’s Gun Violence Prevention Commission welcomed three new members and a new chairperson at its meeting Tuesday, day 54 since the last shooting with injuries was reported in the city. Since Jan. 1, Roanoke has recorded two homicides. At least one of those, which killed 27-year-old Uhura Willis Feb. 17, was gun-related. As of Tuesday, seven other people have been shot but not killed in aggravated assault incidents. In the same time frame in 2023, 20 people were shot but not killed.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By JOSH JANNEY,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
Construction is expected to begin within the year on new docks and a seafood market at the city-owned Seafood Industrial Park.
Newport News recently secured state funding to begin construction work on the dock improvements. Last week, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that an $800,000 grant from the Port Host Communities Revitalization Fund would go to Newport News to redevelop the 39-acre Seafood Industrial Park dock.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By MATTHEW DALY AND LEAH WILLINGHAM,
Associated Press
Coal miners will be better protected from poisonous silica dust that has contributed to the premature deaths of thousands of mine workers from a respiratory ailment commonly known as black lung disease, the Labor Department said Tuesday as it issued a new federal rule on miners’ safety.
The final rule, announced by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, cuts by half the permissible exposure limit for crystalline silica for an eight-hour shift.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By ANTONIO OLIVO,
Washington Post
(Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
A helicopter hovers over the Gee family farm, the noisy rattle echoing inside their home in this rural part of West Virginia. It’s holding surveyors who are eyeing space for yet another power line next to the property — a line that will take electricity generated from coal plants in the state to address a drain on power driven by the world’s internet hub in Northern Virginia 35 miles away.
There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By DAVE RESS,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
Virginia could put some $50 million of taxpayer funds to better use by tighter oversight of overtime payments and trying a new approach at behavioral health facilities, the Office of the Inspector General said. It found that Virginia state agencies’ overtime payments for the 11 months that ended May 31, 2023, had increased by 90% since the 2010 decision to leave overtime pay decisions with individual state agencies instead of the state’s central personnel management office. That increase is not adjusted for the pay increases state employees have received over those dozen years.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By EMILY HEMPHILL,
Daily Progress
(Metered Paywall - 25 articles a month)
When it rains, it pours, and the storm is not letting up for the Greene County Water & Sewer Department. Since withdrawing from the Rapidan Service Authority less than a year ago, the county-run service has incurred more than $20 million in debt — and it has proposed initiatives that could increase that figure eightfold. Greene County residents have complained of paying “an outrageous amount of money,” often hundreds of dollars more than they previously paid under the Rapidan Service Authority, for water bills that arrive months late with inaccurate meter readings.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By HUNTER SAVERY,
Fauquier Times
Last week, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized strict new standards for “forever chemicals” in public drinking water, Fauquier County unveiled alarming new test results.
The new tests reveal that more than 15,000 Fauquier County residents use drinking water that would not meet the new national standards. Under the new EPA rules, Fauquier Water and Sanitation Authority, like other public waterworks, will have five years to address that problem.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By NORMAN K. STYER,
Loudoun Now
After a three-year stalemate, the Kuhn family is hoping to get White’s Ferry running again by donating it to Montgomery County, MD.
Chuck and Stacy Kuhn bought the ferry in early 2021 after it closed following a Loudoun County Circuit Court ruling that the longtime owners did not hold legal authority to use the ferry’s Virginia landing at Rockland Farm. At the time, the Kuhns hoped to quickly restart the operation that provided an important economic and commuter link since 1786. Today it is the only Potomac River crossing between Point of Rocks and the American Legion Bridge.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By JAHD KHALIL,
VPM
A day before legislators are set to return to Richmond, Democratic leadership in the General Assembly and Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin seemingly have not reached a budget agreement.
Lawmakers on Wednesday will consider Youngkin’s actions on legislation, after he amended 116 bills and vetoed a record 153 others. They’ll also consider his 242 recommendations on the budget, which center around maintaining current tax levels and funds Democrats’ priorities at a lower level than what they proposed.
VaNews April 17, 2024
By DAVID J. TOSCANO,
published in
Daily Progress
(Metered Paywall - 25 articles a month)
Virginia’s legislature and governor are embroiled in a “two scorpions in a bottle” fight over the new biennial budget, which must be passed by June 30 to fund the government. On Wednesday, both sides returned to Richmond for the “reconvened” or “veto” session. Budget battles in the commonwealth are not unusual, but this one is unique, both in the number of changes Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed to the bipartisan spending plan and the rhetoric that has accompanied the process.
Toscano, an attorney and former mayor of Charlottesville, served 14 years in the House of Delegates representing Charlottesville and Albemarle County, including seven as minority leader.
VaNews April 17, 2024