Search
Boy Scouts love this scenic Va. river. Locals say they’re ruining it.
Anne McClung was tending horses in her 19th-century barn one day last summer when she noticed a change in the Maury River flowing swiftly nearby. She’s known the river all her 76 years, but it didn’t take a practiced eye to recognize clouds of silt in the normally clear waters. McClung could think of only one cause: The Boy Scouts. The National Capital Area Council of the Scouts, based in Bethesda, has maintained a campground and lake a few miles upstream from McClung’s home for almost six decades. In recent times, the Scouts have drained the lake every fall, causing sediment to pour into one of Virginia’s most iconic and well-loved rivers.
Loudoun schools scrap 2-hour delay proposal
Loudoun County Public Schools is no longer considering starting school two hours late on 16 days next year to accommodate state-mandated training for teachers. In a division-wide letter to parents on May 17, Superintendent Aaron Spence said LCPS received nearly 2,000 comments from parents after administrators first announced the proposal at a May 14 School Board meeting. Officials are now exploring alternatives, he said.
Dominion approved for 3 long-term battery storage pilots
Dominion Energy recently received state regulatory approval to use developing battery storage technologies that could have major implications for the commonwealth’s renewable energy transition. The projects include two battery systems at Darbytown Power Station, a natural gas plant in Henrico County. One will utilize an iron-air battery system; the other, a zinc-hybrid technology. An additional project to help power Virginia State University’s Multi-Purpose Center will use metal-hydrogen batteries. Battery storage is expected to double on the United States electric grid in 2024.
Yancey: Rural Virginia sees same population growth rate as Nashville. That growth just isn’t evenly distributed.
Nashville has grown so fast it’s no longer just Nashville. It’s now sometimes jokingly called Nashvegas. Far from being just a country music city, Nashville is now a corporate center, a health care center, home to teams in the National Football League, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer. It’s considered on the short list of cities to get a Major League Baseball team once the next round of expansion comes. Nashville is one of the hot cities in the country right now, economically speaking. The latest Census Bureau figures show that since 2000, the Nashville metro area has seen 50,532 more people move in than move out. That’s the equivalent of Nashville adding a county about the size of Virginia’s Henry County. It also works out to a net-migration growth rate of 3% since the last census headcount in 2000.
Youngkin vetoes bills on contraception access, skill games, Confederate heritage rollbacks
Last week, Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed 48 more bills passed by the Democratic-led General Assembly, blocking legislation aimed at preserving contraception access, ending state perks for Confederate heritage groups and legalizing slot machine lookalikes known as skill games. Friday was the governor’s deadline to act on a final batch of bills the General Assembly had returned to him in April. Most of the vetoes dealt with legislation Youngkin tried to amend in ways the legislature opposed.
Second lawsuit is filed against Luna Innovations, alleging securities fraud
A newly filed federal lawsuit seeking class-action status against Roanoke-based Luna Innovations Inc. is looking to expand the timeline of the company’s alleged securities fraud. Plaintiffs’ lawyers accuse the fiber-optic sensing company of issuing financial reports that illegally inflated Luna’s stock price. The suit — which identifies Luna, its former chief executive officer, Scott Graeff, and two former chief financial officers, Eugene J. Nestro and George Gomez-Quintero, as defendants — makes allegations similar to a case filed in April.
Loudoun Schools Abandon Delayed Start Training Plan Amid Parental Pushback
Just days after presenting a plan to the School Board to have 16 two-hour delayed school days to accommodate more than 36 hours of state-required teacher training, division administrators announced Friday they are changing course after receiving nearly 2,000 responses from the community. “After carefully reviewing the feedback and recognizing that the adjusted arrival schedule is not an ideal option for the majority of the families we heard from, we are reconsidering our approach,” according to the emailed announcement.
Who were the mysterious ‘men in black’ at the UVa encampment?
Who were the men in black? In the fallout since the University of Virginia’s controversial decision to have Virginia State Police break up a small encampment of anti-war protesters on May 4, UVa officials have cited a number of justifications. Among them is a claim that four mysterious men in black, wearing helmets and backpacks, joined the encampment the night before. “At least two of these [men] were known to law enforcement personnel as participating in violent acts elsewhere in the commonwealth,” UVa President Jim Ryan said in a "virtual town hall" days after the incident. “This became a safety and security issue, especially when the four men came in on Friday night.” Since then, the university has offered almost no further details on the mysterious quartet ...
Virginia’s Republican U.S. Senate candidates face off in Staunton ahead of primary
Four Republican candidates lobbed attacks at Democratic incumbents, Sen. Tim Kaine and President Joe Biden, and appeared to jockey for former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the Virginia Senate primary race during a candidate forum on Friday. Scott Parkinson, Johnathan Emord, Eddie Garcia, and Chuck Smith met each other on stage Friday morning in front of roughly 100 people at Victory Worship Center and World Outreach, a church on a hill that overlooked a cow pasture and I-64 in Staunton.
Under Glenn Youngkin, Parole in Virginia Has Nearly Vanished
In early April, Sarah Moore got the news she was dreading: Her husband, Dennis Jackson Moore, had been denied parole again. It was his fourth rejection in as many years. Dennis, who goes by Vega, is 45. He has spent more than half his life in prison in Virginia for a murder and armed robbery he committed as a teenager. At the time, his defense argued that he did not fully understand the charges against him and had been misled by a detective when he gave a recorded confession. Vega was tried in adult court.