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Friday Read An 1880 schoolhouse for Black children in Pittsylvania is still standing because of one former student
Annie Mosby sat at her desk inside the one-room schoolhouse where she was once a student before Pittsylvania County schools were integrated. Back when she was a student in the 1950s, a large potbelly stove used to warm the schoolhouse in the winters. But on a sunny Monday afternoon in June, Mosby didn’t miss the stove’s absence. At 79 years old, she still comes back to her hometown once a year for several weeks over the summer, flying from California where she lives now, to catch up with family and spend time in the schoolhouse that she and her husband fixed up.
Virginia is for … data centers? Residents are increasingly saying no
The two dozen or so nondescript gray, white and blue buildings lining Virginia State Route 625 could be large warehouses. But community activist Elena Schlossberg can identify them literally a mile away by their telltale rows of backup diesel generators. The buildings are data centers. ... All internet data goes through facilities like these: massive, sometimes multistoried warehouses filled with servers where every webpage and shred of data lives. Demand for these centers has skyrocketed in the last two years as artificial intelligence usage has gone mainstream. Virginia is a data hot spot. It has the world's highest concentration of data centers — nearly 600 facilities of varying sizes, including roughly 150 of the largest kind, known as hyperscale data centers. Not all residents are happy about that.
Virginia offers ‘historic’ funding for farm practices
Virginia cost-share programs intended to help farmers implement pollution prevention practices are getting a significant funding boost at the state level. The state Department of Conservation and Recreation said it will be funneling $223 million toward cost-share funding for fiscal year 2026, which began on July 1. This represents the highest level of funding in the history of the Virginia Agricultural Best Management Practices Cost-Share Program (VACS). The funding represents a $16 million increase over the fiscal year 2025 level, marking a fourth consecutive year of increases as the state strains to meet its pollution reduction goals on agricultural lands.
AI data centers require massive amounts of power. Is new infrastructure driving up energy costs for everyone?
It’s a staggering statistic: Around 70% of the world’s internet traffic flows through Virginia. The state’s data centers, some of which feature hallways nearly a mile long with thousands of thrumming servers on either side, make possible the billions of retail transactions, videos streams, and artificial intelligence queries that happen around the world each day. But as more data centers are built to accommodate AI and other data-intensive processes, energy demand is expected to skyrocket. A single hyperscale data center can use the same amount of energy as a large city, and the stress this is placing on local power grids is expected to drive up energy costs for residents in Virginia—and around the country.
How a parasitic worm could help revive the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population
If you catch a female blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay — and know where to look — there’s a good chance you might find a tiny, parasitic worm embedded in its spongelike egg mass. The worm, scientifically known as Carcinonemertes carcinophila, relies on crab eggs to grow and survive. “They have a really interesting symbiotic relationship, where the worm cannot reach sexual maturity without consuming the eggs of its host, which is the blue crab,” said Alex Schneider, who recently earned a doctoral degree in marine science from William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
‘Somebody needs to be fired’: Petersburg vice mayor sharply critical of vape-shop opening
Petersburg’s vice mayor, Darrin Hill, is not known for public outbursts of anger or frustration. So, when he dressed down the city staff during City Council’s July 15 meeting, many ears in the room pricked up. A high concentration of vape and tobacco shops in Petersburg prompted the planning department last year to recommend restricting them to neighborhood business, commercial and industrial districts. Council voted in July 2024 to limit them to industrial-zoned districts. Hill, who represents Ward 2, took planners to the mat after a vape shop opened on South Crater Road after he and his colleagues voted last April to deny a rezoning request that would have allowed it.
Spanberger extends financial advantage over Earle-Sears
Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, raised almost twice as much money in her campaign for governor in the last quarter as Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, her Republican opponent, and had $15.2 million in hand with less than four months to election day. Spanberger raised $10.7 million in the past three months, including almost $4.3 million between June 5 and the end of June. Earle-Sears raised $5.9 million, including $2.4 million since the last campaign finance reporting deadline, and finished June with $4.5 million in the bank.
Owner of former Virginia Intermont campus pays $605,000 in back taxes day after Bristol sought to take over property
Bristol City Manager Randy Eads said Tuesday that he’s tired of playing games with U.S. Magis, the company based in China that owns the blighted and burned-out property that was once Virginia Intermont College. One day after the city filed a lawsuit July 10 in circuit court to gain control of the 37-acre downtown property — trying to take advantage of a new law Eads successfully sought from the General Assembly — a lawyer for Magis paid off all the current and back taxes owed to the city. Eads then requested that the court nonsuit the lawsuit, which dismisses the action, he said.
Hopewell sewage spill highlights need for spending on wastewater. Will federal funds dry up?
The Hopewell Water Renewal wastewater treatment plant released over 1 million gallons of untreated sewage into the James River on Friday night following an electrical failure. The spill resulted in an advisory warning against swimming, fishing or otherwise coming into contact with the river from the Old City Waterfront Park to the Berkley Plantation. The advisory will likely be in place until Friday, giving the section of river time to flush or settle out the contaminants. In 2024, over two-thirds of the water treated by Hopewell Water Renewal came from industrial sources, which is contaminated with different chemicals than domestic sewage.
State police launch investigation of Richmond candidate’s campaign finance filings
Virginia State Police are investigating Tavares Floyd — the former 6th District City Council candidate whose campaign finance filings came into question last October after multiple alleged donors told The Times-Dispatch they made no such contributions. The Times-Dispatch on Monday submitted a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act for any and all interview notes related to state police’s probe into Floyd’s campaign. A state police FOIA officer responded by immediately invoking the seven-day extension to FOIA. But early Tuesday morning, the FOIA officer reached out again to mark the request closed.