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Virginia releases final roadmap for cleaning up Chesapeake Bay by 2025
Another small step for Virginia, another leap forward for the Chesapeake Bay. On Friday, Virginia, along with other states, released its final Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan, the roadmap for meeting its 2025 water quality goals for the bay. The new version, which incorporates comments from the Environmental Protection Agency and local and state stakeholders, […]
Renewable energy providers win skirmish against Dominion, but larger war drags on
Two renewable energy providers whose attempts to sign up Dominion Energy customers were halted by the utility in July won a victory Wednesday when the State Corporation Commission ordered the company to begin processing the enrollments immediately. The order is the first decision by the commission in an ongoing battle between Dominion, Virginia’s largest regulated […]
In effort to ‘modernize’ agency, DEQ is hampered by lack of funding, outdated laws, report finds
Even as the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s scope of work has broadened to include such critical concerns as climate change and environmental justice, the agency has seen its funding cut and its programs hamstrung by outdated state regulations, a report by the Office of the Secretary of Natural Resources says. According to DEQ Director […]
In James City County, a water crisis by 2.83 million (gallon) cuts
JAMES CITY COUNTY — From Sandy Bay Bridge, a stone’s throw from Jamestown, an eye cast in any direction lands inevitably upon water. During the summer in this part of James City County, where the county seal shows three sails floating atop a blue wave, the Jamestown-Scotland ferry crosses the James River 86 times a […]
Wet weather prevented thousands of acres of crops from being planted last year in Virginia
Virginia’s amber waves of grain are short 40,000 acres this year thanks to an unusually wet past year. Compared to a record 19.4 million acres of land nationwide that couldn’t be planted due to weather or natural disaster, that’s a drop in the bucket. But it’s also about eight times higher than the 5,500 acres […]
Mountain Valley Pipeline voluntarily suspends construction that could harm endangered species
Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC has voluntarily suspended all construction activities that could negatively impact four endangered or threatened species, according to a letter the company submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday. The developer of the controversial pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia wrote that it had […]
Virginia joins coalition suing Trump administration over Clean Power Plan replacement
Virginia joined 21 other states, the District of Columbia and six major metro areas on Tuesday in suing the Trump administration over its “unlawful” repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the Obama-era plan’s replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, violates […]
Northern Virginia continues to dominate advanced energy jobs, report shows
Advanced energy jobs continue to be largely clustered in major metro areas in eastern Virginia, a report released this week by a national energy industry business group shows. According to data from Advanced Energy Economy, the largest number of advanced energy jobs in Virginia are found in Fairfax County, the state’s largest locality. Fairfax, population […]
Despite legislative blocks, one form of carbon cap-and-trade is alive and well in Virginia
Carbon cap-and-trade ended with a whimper in Richmond this past spring when Republican budget additions blocked the state from participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Gov. Ralph Northam declined to issue a veto. But in southwestern Virginia, it’s business as usual. In the Appalachian Mountains that surround the Clinch River Valley, vast forests […]
SCC partially approves Dominion rider that will increase bills
Electric bills will go up for Dominion customers after the State Corporation Commission on Monday approved the utility’s request to recoup some of the costs it sank into complying with new federal and state environmental regulations in 2015 — but maybe not as much as the company would have liked. The SCC’s decision allows Dominion […]
Federal court won’t give pipeline injunction to remove tree sitters
A federal court on Friday denied Mountain Valley Pipeline’s request for a preliminary injunction against two unnamed tree sitters who have been blocking the company from clearing land for construction for almost a year. The opinion by Judge Elizabeth Dillon in the U.S. District Court for the Western District in Virginia refuses to grant the […]
DEQ orders work stopped on Mountain Valley Pipeline section
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality on Friday issued a stop-work instruction for a two-mile section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Montgomery County after an inspection found that the company hasn’t been adequately controlling erosion. DEQ Director David Paylor said in a statement that the department was “appalled that construction priorities and deadline pressures […]