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A Wythe County native who most recently worked in economic development there will be the next executive director of Virginia’s Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.

The 28-member state commission aims to grow and diversify the economies of 40 localities in Southside and Southwest Virginia that historically were heavily dependent on tobacco. Since its inception in 1999, it has awarded more than 2,000 grants totaling $1.1 billion.

David Manley, who recently served as the executive director of the Joint Industrial Development Authority of Wythe County, was appointed as the commission’s new executive director by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, according to a Monday news release from the governor’s office.

Manley is an “expert who knows the region, who is focused on delivering for these communities, and who is committed to executing a vision to deliver for economies across the region,” Spanberger said.

“He has vast experience in guiding impactful projects, and I am certain that his expertise will be an immense asset as we work together to create good jobs and opportunity in every corner of the Commonwealth,” she said.

Manley, 50, left the Wythe County IDA at the end of June, and Monday marked his first day on his new job in Richmond. He said in a phone interview that he looks forward to working with the commission and the localities it serves to “maximize prosperity and opportunity for everyone in Southern and Southwest Virginia.”

“For me, economic development has a tangible impact on the people, and being able to work with the tobacco commission and its commissioners and staff is an opportunity to make an impact on a broader scale,” Manley said. 

Parts of Southside and Southwest Virginia have struggled in recent decades with job losses from industry downturns in tobacco, mining, and the manufacturing of furniture and textiles. Local officials have also identified challenges including workforce shortages, infrastructure investment and the availability of business-ready sites. 

Manley said he believes his Southwest Virginia roots and his experience in economic development will give him a “special understanding and perspective” about the challenges faced by the commission’s service area.

“To serve the community and its neighbors where you were raised is an honor, and economic development builds prosperity not just for the immediate future but for the long term,” Manley said. 

Before he was with the Wythe County IDA, Manley founded and operated the West Wind Farm Vineyard & Winery in Max Meadows. He was president of the Virginia Economic Developers Association in 2022. He holds a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Virginia.

The tobacco commission was founded with money from the 1998 master settlement agreement between 46 states and four tobacco companies over claims associated with smoking-related illnesses. 

One example of a project that the commission supported is when it awarded an $835,000 grant to the glass manufacturer Press Glass in 2018 toward opening a facility in Henry County. The company has since grown with a major expansion announced in 2023.

Other examples include multiple grants supporting the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol and the Crooked Road, a 333-mile driving trail that connects dozens of music venues in Southwest Virginia. 

In May of this year, the tobacco commission awarded more than $1 million for four projects in Campbell County. It also launched a new nonprofit, the Foundation for Southern and Southwest Virginia, which has a goal of helping localities and organizations obtain project funding from federal and state grant programs.

The commission’s most recent previous executive directors were James Campos, who served from January 2023 to January 2026 and now is president of Red Post Energy Futures LLC, a division of the power generation developer Red Post Energy, and Evan Feinman, who served from May 2015 to January 2022 and now is principal at Feinman Strategic Network. Feinman also is a former director of the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program.

Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County and the chair of the tobacco commission, said in Spanberger’s news release on Monday that “it is critical that we have excellent leadership on staff to guide our efforts.”

“I am excited to work with David in the years ahead and extend my thanks to Governor Spanberger and her team for selecting an excellent leader and native of Southwest Virginia to serve as the Commission’s Executive Director,” Morefield said.

The post Wythe County native to lead state tobacco commission appeared first on Cardinal News.

With about 40% of the workers in Martinsville and Henry County choosing to live elsewhere, the county is taking a first step to incentivize housing by waiving residential building fees.

The move comes amid an economic development jumpstart, with projects bringing in 328 jobs, officials said. Over the past year, the county announced three major projects — Rural King, Fokuku Korea and Nathan Trotter — that will bring an estimated investment of $123.9 million.

“Economic development and job creation needs to go hand in hand with having adequate housing for those employees and their families,” said Lee Clark, the county’s director of planning, zoning and building inspections. “When you’ve got good jobs and … not enough desirable housing for people to live, that’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed.”

The board of supervisors voted in June to waive the fees until July 1, 2028, for any construction or renovation exceeding or equal to $100,000. Waiving the fees is a “quick and easy way” to incentivize residential construction because it doesn’t cost the county or taxpayers, Clark said.

“People around the world don’t wake up thinking about Henry County every day,” said County Administrator Dale Wagoner. “So we’ve got to do these things and make them notice.”

County officials and local housing leaders agree that waiving the fees might not directly increase construction because the fees are small in comparison to building a home.

“It’s more of a gesture to state publicly that Henry County is open for business and open for construction,” said Joy Wood, the president of the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association.

The residential fees were previously eight cents per square foot. That would cost a homebuilder a couple hundred dollars, Clark said. 

“It’s not substantial, but every dollar counts,” said Rives Coleman, the president of Rives S. Brown realty company. “The county’s not giving away a whole lot there but they’re saying, ‘hey, we’re friendly’ … and I think it’s a good move.”

However, dollars can add up quicker for developers who are building an apartment complex with nearly 50 units and have to install roads, water and sewer, Wagoner said, and the waived fees can make a much bigger difference.

Meanwhile, the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association was established last month to promote cooperation and find solutions to the housing demand. Wood spearheaded the creation of the region’s home builders association, which includes Martinsville, Henry County, Danville, Pittsylvania County and Halifax County. Wood said she hopes the county waiving residential fees will increase interest.

“If you’ve kind of been on the fence” about building a home, “now’s the time to do it,” Wood said.

Almost 10,000 workers in Martinsville and Henry County did not live in either locality, according to 2023 data, the most recent collected by the county. And, almost 11,000 Martinsville and Henry County residents commute somewhere else to work, including nearly 1,300 who travel to North Carolina, according to the 2023 data.

One problem is that workers who commute into Martinsville and Henry County don’t do a majority of their shopping there, Clark said.

“If we can get people who work here to live here, then they contribute back into the well-being of our community,” Wagoner said.

Textile departure results in lower housing stock

In the late 1980s, the Martinsville and Henry County area was considered the “Sweatshirt Capital of the World,” but when the textile industry moved overseas, it meant many employees had to leave, too.

“They moved with the jobs and moved out of the area,” said Coleman, of Rives Brown. “That’s where we lost a lot of people. I mean, I think at one point in the mid ’90s, early 2000s, there were 750 to 800 houses on the market. It’s crazy.”

Between 1990 and 2005, Martinsville and Henry County saw a population decrease of nearly 3,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. With a smaller population and an area going through a significant economic downturn, there was a lack of residential construction.

“It’s made the problem escalate because we haven’t been building them all along,” said Wagoner, the county administrator.

Since 2019, the population in Henry County has decreased by nearly 2,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. But it is expecting people to move to the area with the significant strides in economic development, Wagoner said.

“We have people moving back here and all we have is older stock of house or no stock at all,” Wagoner said.

 The younger generations aren’t interested in older homes, Coleman said.

“That’s not what they’re looking for anymore,” Coleman said. “They want new, clean … they don’t want to fool with an old home.”

Although the textile industry left the area about 25 years ago, the county still has low numbers of new home construction. Between July of 2024 and June of 2025, there were 40 building permits for new homes, according to county records. Up until the end of May, there had only been 13 for 2026.

The county is also making an effort to remove unsafe homes or buildings to open locations for new construction.

Henry County tore down 16 homes in the Villa Heights area in 2024 because it was unsafe and drug blighted, Wagoner said. They have built four houses back so far.

The next steps to address housing will be planned out over the next six to 12 months, Wagoner said. They will be more substantial than waiving residential building fees and will require investments and policy decisions by the board of supervisors, Clark said. 

The county is considering additional incentives such as tax rebates to people who build houses and assisting developers with building infrastructure, Wagoner said.

There’s plenty of land to build homes in Henry County, Coleman said, but it often requires putting in all the necessary infrastructure, like streets, curbing, water and sewer.

“To do all this, you know, you’re going to have to find money,” Coleman said.

The post Seeking ways to ‘make them notice,’ Henry County waives residential building fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

With about 40% of the workers in Martinsville and Henry County choosing to live elsewhere, the county is taking a first step to incentivize housing by waiving residential building fees.

The move comes amid an economic development jumpstart, with projects bringing in 328 jobs, officials said. Over the past year, the county announced three major projects — Rural King, Fokuku Korea and Nathan Trotter — that will bring in a total of $123.9 million and 328 jobs.

“Economic development and job creation needs to go hand in hand with having adequate housing for those employees and their families,” said Lee Clark, the county’s director of planning, zoning and building inspections. “When you’ve got good jobs and … not enough desirable housing for people to live, that’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed.”

The board of supervisors voted in June to waive the fees until July 1, 2028, for any construction or renovation exceeding or equal to $100,000. Waiving the fees is a “quick and easy way” to incentivize residential construction because it doesn’t cost the county or taxpayers, Clark said.

“People around the world don’t wake up thinking about Henry County every day,” said County Administrator Dale Wagoner. “So we’ve got to do these things and make them notice.”

County officials and local housing leaders agree that waiving the fees might not directly increase construction because the fees are small in comparison to building a home.

“It’s more of a gesture to state publicly that Henry County is open for business and open for construction,” said Joy Wood, the president of the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association.

The residential fees were previously eight cents per square foot. That would cost a homebuilder a couple hundred dollars, Clark said. 

“It’s not substantial, but every dollar counts,” said Rives Coleman, the president of Rives S. Brown realty company. “The county’s not giving away a whole lot there but they’re saying, ‘hey, we’re friendly’ … and I think it’s a good move.”

However, dollars can add up quicker for developers who are building an apartment complex with nearly 50 units and have to install roads, water and sewer, Wagoner said, and the waived fees can make a much bigger difference.

Meanwhile, the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association was established last month to promote cooperation and find solutions to the housing demand. Wood spearheaded the creation of the region’s home builders association, which includes Martinsville, Henry County, Danville, Pittsylvania County and Halifax County. Wood said she hopes the county waiving residential fees will increase interest.

“If you’ve kind of been on the fence” about building a home, “now’s the time to do it,” Wood said.

Almost 10,000 workers in Martinsville and Henry County did not live in either locality, according to 2023 data, the most recent collected by the county. And, almost 11,000 Martinsville and Henry County residents commute somewhere else to work, including nearly 1,300 who travel to North Carolina, according to the 2023 data.

One problem is that workers who commute into Martinsville and Henry County don’t do a majority of their shopping there, Clark said.

“If we can get people who work here to live here, then they contribute back into the well-being of our community,” Wagoner said.

Textile departure results in lower housing stock

In the late 1980s, the Martinsville and Henry County area was considered the “Sweatshirt Capital of the World,” but when the textile industry moved overseas, it meant many employees had to leave, too.

“They moved with the jobs and moved out of the area,” said Coleman, of Rives Brown. “That’s where we lost a lot of people. I mean, I think at one point in the mid ’90s, early 2000s, there were 750 to 800 houses on the market. It’s crazy.”

Between 1990 and 2005, Martinsville and Henry County saw a population decrease of nearly 3,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. With a smaller population and an area going through a significant economic downturn, there was a lack of residential construction.

“It’s made the problem escalate because we haven’t been building them all along,” said Wagoner, the county administrator.

Since 2019, the population in Henry County has decreased by nearly 2,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. But it is expecting people to move to the area with the significant strides in economic development, Wagoner said.

“We have people moving back here and all we have is older stock of house or no stock at all,” Wagoner said.

 The younger generations aren’t interested in older homes, Coleman said.

“That’s not what they’re looking for anymore,” Coleman said. “They want new, clean … they don’t want to fool with an old home.”

Although the textile industry left the area about 25 years ago, the county still has low numbers of new home construction. Between July of 2024 and June of 2025, there were 40 building permits for new homes, according to county records. Up until the end of May, there had only been 13 for 2026.

The county is also making an effort to remove unsafe homes or buildings to open locations for new construction.

Henry County tore down 16 homes in the Villa Heights area in 2024 because it was unsafe and drug blighted, Wagoner said. They have built four houses back so far.

The next steps to address housing will be planned out over the next six to 12 months, Wagoner said. They will be more substantial than waiving residential building fees and will require investments and policy decisions by the board of supervisors, Clark said. 

The county is considering additional incentives such as tax rebates to people who build houses and assisting developers with building infrastructure, Wagoner said.

There’s plenty of land to build homes in Henry County, Coleman said, but it often requires putting in all the necessary infrastructure, like streets, curbing, water and sewer.

“To do all this, you know, you’re going to have to find money,” Coleman said.

The post Seeking ways to ‘make them notice,’ Henry County waives residential building fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

With about 40% of the workers in Martinsville and Henry County choosing to live elsewhere, the county is taking a first step to incentivize housing by waiving residential building fees.

The move comes amid an economic development jumpstart, with projects bringing in 328 jobs, officials said. Over the past year, the county announced three major projects — Rural King, Fokuku Korea and Nathan Trotter — that will bring an estimated investment of $123.9 million.

“Economic development and job creation needs to go hand in hand with having adequate housing for those employees and their families,” said Lee Clark, the county’s director of planning, zoning and building inspections. “When you’ve got good jobs and … not enough desirable housing for people to live, that’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed.”

The board of supervisors voted in June to waive the fees until July 1, 2028, for any construction or renovation exceeding or equal to $100,000. Waiving the fees is a “quick and easy way” to incentivize residential construction because it doesn’t cost the county or taxpayers, Clark said.

“People around the world don’t wake up thinking about Henry County every day,” said County Administrator Dale Wagoner. “So we’ve got to do these things and make them notice.”

County officials and local housing leaders agree that waiving the fees might not directly increase construction because the fees are small in comparison to building a home.

“It’s more of a gesture to state publicly that Henry County is open for business and open for construction,” said Joy Wood, the president of the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association.

The residential fees were previously eight cents per square foot. That would cost a homebuilder a couple hundred dollars, Clark said. 

“It’s not substantial, but every dollar counts,” said Rives Coleman, the president of Rives S. Brown realty company. “The county’s not giving away a whole lot there but they’re saying, ‘hey, we’re friendly’ … and I think it’s a good move.”

However, dollars can add up quicker for developers who are building an apartment complex with nearly 50 units and have to install roads, water and sewer, Wagoner said, and the waived fees can make a much bigger difference.

Meanwhile, the South Central Virginia Home Builders Association was established last month to promote cooperation and find solutions to the housing demand. Wood spearheaded the creation of the region’s home builders association, which includes Martinsville, Henry County, Danville, Pittsylvania County and Halifax County. Wood said she hopes the county waiving residential fees will increase interest.

“If you’ve kind of been on the fence” about building a home, “now’s the time to do it,” Wood said.

Almost 10,000 workers in Martinsville and Henry County did not live in either locality, according to 2023 data, the most recent collected by the county. And, almost 11,000 Martinsville and Henry County residents commute somewhere else to work, including nearly 1,300 who travel to North Carolina, according to the 2023 data.

One problem is that workers who commute into Martinsville and Henry County don’t do a majority of their shopping there, Clark said.

“If we can get people who work here to live here, then they contribute back into the well-being of our community,” Wagoner said.

Textile departure results in lower housing stock

In the late 1980s, the Martinsville and Henry County area was considered the “Sweatshirt Capital of the World,” but when the textile industry moved overseas, it meant many employees had to leave, too.

“They moved with the jobs and moved out of the area,” said Coleman, of Rives Brown. “That’s where we lost a lot of people. I mean, I think at one point in the mid ’90s, early 2000s, there were 750 to 800 houses on the market. It’s crazy.”

Between 1990 and 2005, Martinsville and Henry County saw a population decrease of nearly 3,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. With a smaller population and an area going through a significant economic downturn, there was a lack of residential construction.

“It’s made the problem escalate because we haven’t been building them all along,” said Wagoner, the county administrator.

Since 2019, the population in Henry County has decreased by nearly 2,000 people, according to U.S. Census data. But it is expecting people to move to the area with the significant strides in economic development, Wagoner said.

“We have people moving back here and all we have is older stock of house or no stock at all,” Wagoner said.

 The younger generations aren’t interested in older homes, Coleman said.

“That’s not what they’re looking for anymore,” Coleman said. “They want new, clean … they don’t want to fool with an old home.”

Although the textile industry left the area about 25 years ago, the county still has low numbers of new home construction. Between July of 2024 and June of 2025, there were 40 building permits for new homes, according to county records. Up until the end of May, there had only been 13 for 2026.

The county is also making an effort to remove unsafe homes or buildings to open locations for new construction.

Henry County tore down 16 homes in the Villa Heights area in 2024 because it was unsafe and drug blighted, Wagoner said. They have built four houses back so far.

The next steps to address housing will be planned out over the next six to 12 months, Wagoner said. They will be more substantial than waiving residential building fees and will require investments and policy decisions by the board of supervisors, Clark said. 

The county is considering additional incentives such as tax rebates to people who build houses and assisting developers with building infrastructure, Wagoner said.

There’s plenty of land to build homes in Henry County, Coleman said, but it often requires putting in all the necessary infrastructure, like streets, curbing, water and sewer.

“To do all this, you know, you’re going to have to find money,” Coleman said.

The post Seeking ways to ‘make them notice,’ Henry County waives residential building fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Henry County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to act Tuesday on a measure that might be cheered at home but could set the county on a collision course with state government.

The supervisors will take up a measure to reduce the number of acres the county is willing to allocate to solar energy development — “solar farms” to some, “industrial solar” to others, depending on your point of view.

Three years ago, Henry County decided to cap the amount of land it would allow for solar development at 1% of the county’s land mass — about 2,445 acres.

“Since setting the cap, the Boards (both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors) have generally been less willing to allow solar development based on public input and other considerations related to land use, community character, and evolving local priorities,” county administrator Dale Wagoner said by email.

That has produced a proposal to lower Henry County’s solar cap to 1,754 acres. That’s a very precise figure that the county chose carefully — that’s exactly how much land the county has already granted approval for solar development on. Not all those projects have actually happened, though. “Those projects are at varying stages of development, with most making little progress since their initial approval,” Wagoner said. “If current projects do not come to fruition, it would open up acreage for other developers.” So far, only 633.9 of those allotted 1,754 acres have been developed, according to Brandon Martin, the county’s public information officer.

That means there could, and probably will, be more solar facilities built in Henry County. However, the 1,754-acre cap does constitute a ban on development above that amount — so if all the approved projects were to come to fruition, then no more solar would be allowed in the county.

Here’s where we start to run up against a new state law, and the politics start to get cloudy.

The General Assembly in 2020 passed the Clean Economy Act, which mandates the state’s largest utilities adopt a carbon-free energy grid by 2050. (Disclosure: One of those utilities is Dominion Energy, which is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can become a donor and have no say, too. Here’s how.) In theory, that can mean lots of different forms of energy, but in practice, it’s meant solar. Wind is slow to get permitted; Dominion’s offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach is just now starting to spin 13 years after the company acquired the rights. Virginia’s first on-shore commercial wind farm (in Botetourt County) is scheduled to start producing power later this year, 11 years after it was first proposed. There are two proposals for small nuclear reactors (nuclear isn’t renewable, but it is carbon-free), but nuclear has historically been even slower to build, and no one in North America has actually built any of those small modular reactors yet. There are other exotic forms of energy out there — geothermal, fusion — but we haven’t seen those developed yet, either. Solar has its problems (the main one is that the sun doesn’t always shine), but it is quick and relatively inexpensive to build. That’s why we’ve seen it proliferate across much of the southern part of the state (and elsewhere, too).

Solar has also sparked opposition in many rural areas. Solar is fascinating politically because it doesn’t always follow neat ideological lines. Some conservatives back it as a matter of property rights and the free market; some liberals will occasionally voice concern about environmental trade-offs with land development. What often seems to motivate many rural opponents is that solar just looks ugly to them, turning a rural vista into what they see as an industrial hellscape.

In response, many rural localities have banned solar outright or adopted such stringent rules on solar development that solar facilities are effectively banned. Earlier this year, Canary Media reported that about two-thirds of Virginia localities fell into this category.

That, of course, makes it harder for Virginia to meet its goal of a carbon-free energy grid. The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has put together a Solar Database to track solar projects across the state. Its data showed that in 2024, for the first time, localities turned down more megawatts of solar than they approved. We’ve seen that revert last year and so far this year to more megawatts being approved than denied, but there’s still concern among those who want to see an energy transition that Virginia is moving too slowly — and that local governments resistant to solar projects are to blame.

This year, the General Assembly passed, and the governor signed into law, a bill to “ban the bans.” That law says localities can no longer ban solar projects outright; they have to consider each one separately. They can still vote them down, if they wish, but they now have to tell the state why. (Pay attention to that last phrase.)

This has led many localities to start adopting new ordinances to come into compliance with the law. Pittsylvania County is now moving to repeal its cap of allowing no more than 2% of a single magisterial district to be developed for solar. Henry County, though, appears to be going the other way, by keeping its acreage cap — and lowering it. Joe Lerch, director of local government policy for the Virginia Association of Counties, says counties are still allowed to set caps, but even if they fill up their allotted solar acreage, they still need to accept solar applications. In that case, counties would need to tell the state they rejected the project because it was above their acreage cap. (Again, pay attention to that requirement.)

What might be popular in Henry County (limiting solar development) isn’t so popular in Richmond. One of the legislators who sponsored the new solar law worries that some local governments still aren’t very accepting of solar. (He’s right on that.)

“Legally, it might be possible,” state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, says of Henry’s revised acreage cap. “The spirit of the law, that’s a different question. It seems like this ordinance is not [in the spirit of the law]. I think it behooves localities to comply with the spirit of the law.”

What we have here is a clear difference of opinion on solar development. Let’s cut to the chase. The legislators who passed the Clean Economy Act that mandated an energy transition were almost exclusively Democrats who represent metropolitan areas, but the localities that are seeing the solar development are almost all rural, Republican-voting localities, who aren’t nearly as keen on seeing their landscapes transformed. The General Assembly this session passed legislation to encourage more solar development in urban areas — including so-called home “balcony solar” and allowing localities to mandate “parking lot solar” with solar panels over parking lots — but the reality is the only place to find large tracts of land for utility-scale solar is in rural areas.

VanValkenburg says he hopes that by requiring localities to consider solar projects one by one, rather than allowing a blanket ban, counties that have previously rejected solar will eventually come to see the value in some projects. “My hope is this bill will change the conversation,” he said in an interview. “By having to consider projects one at a time, it should be a less ideological conversation and more an economic, property rights conversation.” He adds: “I didn’t think we’d see change July 1; it will take time to suss this out. The Henry County example is a discouraging one but we’ll see how it plays out. They’re sending a signal to the General Assembly.” Rural areas might well agree they’re sending a signal, but legislators might take that signal differently than what localities intend.

While the entry point for this column is Henry County, it should be noted that Henry County already has more solar than most Virginia counties. The Solar Database measures by megawatts that have been approved. It’s possible that some of those megawatts haven’t been built yet. In any case, Brunswick County has approved the most (2,082 megawatts over 11 projects), followed by Charlotte County (1,648 megawatts over 11 projects) and Pittsylvania County (1,099 megawatts over 24 projects). For comparison purposes, the Tenaska gas plant in Nelson County is rated at 1,011 megawatts; its proposed expansion would take it up to 2,550 megawatts. Henry County is tied for 14^th in the state out of 133 localities for the number of megawatts it’s approved: 303 megawatts over 13 projects. Henry County also has one of the higher approval rates for solar projects in the state: 76%, according to the Solar Database. At what point can a county say, “No, we’ve done enough. It’s somebody else’s turn”?

The difficulty is that for all the solar we’ve approved, solar still accounts for just 11.96% of the power that Virginia is producing, according to the site Choose Energy, which has compiled federal records. More than half of the power Virginia produces in-state still comes from carbon-based sources — 50.73% from natural gas, 0.73% from coal. That’s a lot of power that needs to be replaced if we’re going to truly go carbon-free (and that doesn’t count what Virginia imports from other states, which brings in more carbon-based power). Even just looking at our in-state production, to replace carbon-based energy basically means building 4.5 times as much solar (and related storage, a subject we’ll shortly get to). And that computation assumes — incorrectly, of course — that we won’t see demand for electricity increase. We know it will, not just because of data centers, either, but because we’re electrifying so many other things in our lives — but data centers are a prime culprit. In reality, we will need to build a lot more solar than that (plus wind and other things) to replace gas. However, we’re already running up against political limits in rural Virginia to how much land communities are willing to see go to solar energy production.

Some see rural Virginia being turned into a “sacrifice zone” for energy development and resent that they often see as having to produce energy for Northern Virginia (no matter that Northern Virginia supplies the tax revenue that subsidizes their schools). On the other hand, there are those property rights issues: “Private property rights have long been one of Virginia’s most tried and true values,” says Jack Wilson of the conservative, pro-renewables group Energy Right that emphasize those property rights. “While acreage caps may seem like a simple planning tool, they can have unintended consequences for private property owners. Setting an arbitrary threshold effectively tells landowners that, regardless of whether their property is well-suited for solar or whether a project meets every local standard, they can no longer pursue that use once the threshold is reached.”

The most notable county with no utility-scale solar is Bedford County, which has none, even though it’s the fourth-largest county by physical size in the state. Another notable county without solar is Northumberland County, which has rejected every solar project to come before it (five). Fauquier County has rejected six of eight projects; Essex County has rejected three of four. Those are imprecise measures because some projects may get withdrawn before a formal vote when it’s clear they won’t get approved. That was the case recently in Botetourt County, which saw two solar proposals inspire a countywide campaign that proclaimed: “No industrial solar: Keep Botetourt green.” The larger of the two proposals was withdrawn, the smaller one voted down. It seemed clear that Botetourt supervisors were in no mood to accept solar anywhere in the county. The irony of the “Keep Botetourt green” slogan is that both projects are in growth sectors of the county; the land in question may be green now, but it’s unlikely to stay that way. The choice might be a solar project now or a housing development later.

Solar power’s cousin is battery storage, which helps overcome solar’s main problem: It can’t produce energy at night. Battery storage stores up solar power during the day, then releases it onto the grid at night. Some counties are also moving to restrict where it can go. Culpeper County recently voted to ban battery storage on agricultural land and instead limit it to parcels zoned industrial. That vote came over the opposition of some farmers who said they needed the extra income that leasing land to a battery storage company would bring; that’s an argument we see some farmers make in favor of solar, too. “You got to let people make a living,” farmer Joe Gray told the supervisors. “This is the land of opportunity.” 

On the other side, Supervisor Paul Bates warned that opening the door to battery storage could bring a repeat of what’s happened with solar: “Any type of supplemental income is great to try to preserve the family farm, but what’s happened as soon as we cracked that door, was no stopping it,” he said. Culpeper now has about 1,000 acres approved for solar. “This was land zoned for farming,” he said. “Once we destroy our land, we’re done.”

This is a microcosm of the debate over energy sites, be they for solar or battery storage, across rural Virginia. VanValkenburg warns that if counties continue to reject solar projects, the state might move to take away their power over solar siting. “I think local governments should comply with the spirit of the law if they don’t want to give us reasons to engage more on this issue,” he said. “If local governments are not going to greenlight energy projects, we’ll have to take a heavier hand.”

That’s the kind of talk that makes local governments shudder. “I can’t speak for every locality, but I think it’s fair to say that local governments generally place a high value on maintaining local land use authority because it is one of our most fundamental responsibilities,” said Martin, the Henry County spokesman. “Comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, and capital investments are all built around a community’s vision for its future. If we lose the ability to make meaningful land use decisions, it becomes much more difficult to plan for economic development, preserve land for future housing, protect agricultural and forest resources, and make long-term infrastructure investments.”

Lerch, with the Virginia Association of Counties, agrees that these fears are a real concern: “We are very concerned regarding proposed legislation preempting local authority on the siting of solar facilities, battery storage, and other alternative energy sources.”

That could be what’s coming, though.

Remember the part about how localities will now have to explain to the state why they rejected energy projects? Those could be the trigger for that “heavier hand” VanValkenburg warned about.

“A lot of people are going to have eyeballs on all these reports,” VanValkenburg said. “If the General Assembly thinks these reporting mechanisms show that local governments continue to play games, I think there will be an appetite.”

Want more political news and analysis? We have it every Friday in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter.

The post Henry County feels it’s done enough solar power. General Assembly might feel differently. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Henry County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to act Tuesday on a measure that might be cheered at home but could set the county on a collision course with state government.

The supervisors will take up a measure to reduce the number of acres the county is willing to allocate to solar energy development — “solar farms” to some, “industrial solar” to others, depending on your point of view.

Three years ago, Henry County decided to cap the amount of land it would allow for solar development at 1% of the county’s land mass — about 2,445 acres.

“Since setting the cap, the Boards (both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors) have generally been less willing to allow solar development based on public input and other considerations related to land use, community character, and evolving local priorities,” county administrator Dale Wagoner said by email.

That has produced a proposal to lower Henry County’s solar cap to 1,754 acres. That’s a very precise figure that the county chose carefully — that’s exactly how much land the county has already granted approval for solar development on. Not all those projects have actually happened, though. “Those projects are at varying stages of development, with most making little progress since their initial approval,” Wagoner said. “If current projects do not come to fruition, it would open up acreage for other developers.” So far, only 633.9 of those allotted 1,754 acres have been developed, according to Brandon Martin, the county’s public information officer.

That means there could, and probably will, be more solar facilities built in Henry County. However, the 1,754-acre cap does constitute a ban on development above that amount — so if all the approved projects were to come to fruition, then no more solar would be allowed in the county.

Here’s where we start to run up against a new state law, and the politics start to get cloudy.

The General Assembly in 2020 passed the Clean Economy Act, which mandates the state’s largest utilities adopt a carbon-free energy grid by 2050. (Disclosure: One of those utilities is Dominion Energy, which is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can become a donor and have no say, too. Here’s how.) In theory, that can mean lots of different forms of energy, but in practice, it’s meant solar. Wind is slow to get permitted; Dominion’s offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach is just now starting to spin 13 years after the company acquired the rights. Virginia’s first on-shore commercial wind farm (in Botetourt County) is scheduled to start producing power later this year, 11 years after it was first proposed. There are two proposals for small nuclear reactors (nuclear isn’t renewable, but it is carbon-free), but nuclear has historically been even slower to build, and no one in North America has actually built any of those small modular reactors yet. There are other exotic forms of energy out there — geothermal, fusion — but we haven’t seen those developed yet, either. Solar has its problems (the main one is that the sun doesn’t always shine), but it is quick and relatively inexpensive to build. That’s why we’ve seen it proliferate across much of the southern part of the state (and elsewhere, too).

Solar has also sparked opposition in many rural areas. Solar is fascinating politically because it doesn’t always follow neat ideological lines. Some conservatives back it as a matter of property rights and the free market; some liberals will occasionally voice concern about environmental trade-offs with land development. What often seems to motivate many rural opponents is that solar just looks ugly to them, turning a rural vista into what they see as an industrial hellscape.

In response, many rural localities have banned solar outright or adopted such stringent rules on solar development that solar facilities are effectively banned. Earlier this year, Canary Media reported that about two-thirds of Virginia localities fell into this category.

That, of course, makes it harder for Virginia to meet its goal of a carbon-free energy grid. The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has put together a Solar Database to track solar projects across the state. Its data showed that in 2024, for the first time, localities turned down more megawatts of solar than they approved. We’ve seen that revert last year and so far this year to more megawatts being approved than denied, but there’s still concern among those who want to see an energy transition that Virginia is moving too slowly — and that local governments resistant to solar projects are to blame.

This year, the General Assembly passed, and the governor signed into law, a bill to “ban the bans.” That law says localities can no longer ban solar projects outright; they have to consider each one separately. They can still vote them down, if they wish, but they now have to tell the state why. (Pay attention to that last phrase.)

This has led many localities to start adopting new ordinances to come into compliance with the law. Pittsylvania County is now moving to repeal its cap of allowing no more than 2% of a single magisterial district to be developed for solar. Henry County, though, appears to be going the other way, by keeping its acreage cap — and lowering it. Joe Lerch, director of local government policy for the Virginia Association of Counties, says counties are still allowed to set caps, but even if they fill up their allotted solar acreage, they still need to accept solar applications. In that case, counties would need to tell the state they rejected the project because it was above their acreage cap. (Again, pay attention to that requirement.)

What might be popular in Henry County (limiting solar development) isn’t so popular in Richmond. One of the legislators who sponsored the new solar law worries that some local governments still aren’t very accepting of solar. (He’s right on that.)

“Legally, it might be possible,” state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, says of Henry’s revised acreage cap. “The spirit of the law, that’s a different question. It seems like this ordinance is not [in the spirit of the law]. I think it behooves localities to comply with the spirit of the law.”

What we have here is a clear difference of opinion on solar development. Let’s cut to the chase. The legislators who passed the Clean Economy Act that mandated an energy transition were almost exclusively Democrats who represent metropolitan areas, but the localities that are seeing the solar development are almost all rural, Republican-voting localities, who aren’t nearly as keen on seeing their landscapes transformed. The General Assembly this session passed legislation to encourage more solar development in urban areas — including so-called home “balcony solar” and allowing localities to mandate “parking lot solar” with solar panels over parking lots — but the reality is the only place to find large tracts of land for utility-scale solar is in rural areas.

VanValkenburg says he hopes that by requiring localities to consider solar projects one by one, rather than allowing a blanket ban, counties that have previously rejected solar will eventually come to see the value in some projects. “My hope is this bill will change the conversation,” he said in an interview. “By having to consider projects one at a time, it should be a less ideological conversation and more an economic, property rights conversation.” He adds: “I didn’t think we’d see change July 1; it will take time to suss this out. The Henry County example is a discouraging one but we’ll see how it plays out. They’re sending a signal to the General Assembly.” Rural areas might well agree they’re sending a signal, but legislators might take that signal differently than what localities intend.

While the entry point for this column is Henry County, it should be noted that Henry County already has more solar than most Virginia counties. The Solar Database measures by megawatts that have been approved. It’s possible that some of those megawatts haven’t been built yet. In any case, Brunswick County has approved the most (2,082 megawatts over 11 projects), followed by Charlotte County (1,648 megawatts over 11 projects) and Pittsylvania County (1,099 megawatts over 24 projects). For comparison purposes, the Tenaska gas plant in Nelson County is rated at 1,011 megawatts; its proposed expansion would take it up to 2,550 megawatts. Henry County is tied for 14^th in the state out of 133 localities for the number of megawatts it’s approved: 303 megawatts over 13 projects. Henry County also has one of the higher approval rates for solar projects in the state: 76%, according to the Solar Database. At what point can a county say, “No, we’ve done enough. It’s somebody else’s turn”?

The difficulty is that for all the solar we’ve approved, solar still accounts for just 11.96% of the power that Virginia is producing, according to the site Choose Energy, which has compiled federal records. More than half of the power Virginia produces in-state still comes from carbon-based sources — 50.73% from natural gas, 0.73% from coal. That’s a lot of power that needs to be replaced if we’re going to truly go carbon-free (and that doesn’t count what Virginia imports from other states, which brings in more carbon-based power). Even just looking at our in-state production, to replace carbon-based energy basically means building 4.5 times as much solar (and related storage, a subject we’ll shortly get to). And that computation assumes — incorrectly, of course — that we won’t see demand for electricity increase. We know it will, not just because of data centers, either, but because we’re electrifying so many other things in our lives — but data centers are a prime culprit. In reality, we will need to build a lot more solar than that (plus wind and other things) to replace gas. However, we’re already running up against political limits in rural Virginia to how much land communities are willing to see go to solar energy production.

Some see rural Virginia being turned into a “sacrifice zone” for energy development and resent that they often see as having to produce energy for Northern Virginia (no matter that Northern Virginia supplies the tax revenue that subsidizes their schools). On the other hand, there are those property rights issues: “Private property rights have long been one of Virginia’s most tried and true values,” says Jack Wilson of the conservative, pro-renewables group Energy Right that emphasize those property rights. “While acreage caps may seem like a simple planning tool, they can have unintended consequences for private property owners. Setting an arbitrary threshold effectively tells landowners that, regardless of whether their property is well-suited for solar or whether a project meets every local standard, they can no longer pursue that use once the threshold is reached.”

The most notable county with no utility-scale solar is Bedford County, which has none, even though it’s the fourth-largest county by physical size in the state. Another notable county without solar is Northumberland County, which has rejected every solar project to come before it (five). Fauquier County has rejected six of eight projects; Essex County has rejected three of four. Those are imprecise measures because some projects may get withdrawn before a formal vote when it’s clear they won’t get approved. That was the case recently in Botetourt County, which saw two solar proposals inspire a countywide campaign that proclaimed: “No industrial solar: Keep Botetourt green.” The larger of the two proposals was withdrawn, the smaller one voted down. It seemed clear that Botetourt supervisors were in no mood to accept solar anywhere in the county. The irony of the “Keep Botetourt green” slogan is that both projects are in growth sectors of the county; the land in question may be green now, but it’s unlikely to stay that way. The choice might be a solar project now or a housing development later.

Solar power’s cousin is battery storage, which helps overcome solar’s main problem: It can’t produce energy at night. Battery storage stores up solar power during the day, then releases it onto the grid at night. Some counties are also moving to restrict where it can go. Culpeper County recently voted to ban battery storage on agricultural land and instead limit it to parcels zoned industrial. That vote came over the opposition of some farmers who said they needed the extra income that leasing land to a battery storage company would bring; that’s an argument we see some farmers make in favor of solar, too. “You got to let people make a living,” farmer Joe Gray told the supervisors. “This is the land of opportunity.” 

On the other side, Supervisor Paul Bates warned that opening the door to battery storage could bring a repeat of what’s happened with solar: “Any type of supplemental income is great to try to preserve the family farm, but what’s happened as soon as we cracked that door, was no stopping it,” he said. Culpeper now has about 1,000 acres approved for solar. “This was land zoned for farming,” he said. “Once we destroy our land, we’re done.”

This is a microcosm of the debate over energy sites, be they for solar or battery storage, across rural Virginia. VanValkenburg warns that if counties continue to reject solar projects, the state might move to take away their power over solar siting. “I think local governments should comply with the spirit of the law if they don’t want to give us reasons to engage more on this issue,” he said. “If local governments are not going to greenlight energy projects, we’ll have to take a heavier hand.”

That’s the kind of talk that makes local governments shudder. “I can’t speak for every locality, but I think it’s fair to say that local governments generally place a high value on maintaining local land use authority because it is one of our most fundamental responsibilities,” said Martin, the Henry County spokesman. “Comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, and capital investments are all built around a community’s vision for its future. If we lose the ability to make meaningful land use decisions, it becomes much more difficult to plan for economic development, preserve land for future housing, protect agricultural and forest resources, and make long-term infrastructure investments.”

Lerch, with the Virginia Association of Counties, agrees that these fears are a real concern: “We are very concerned regarding proposed legislation preempting local authority on the siting of solar facilities, battery storage, and other alternative energy sources.”

That could be what’s coming, though.

Remember the part about how localities will now have to explain to the state why they rejected energy projects? Those could be the trigger for that “heavier hand” VanValkenburg warned about.

“A lot of people are going to have eyeballs on all these reports,” VanValkenburg said. “If the General Assembly thinks these reporting mechanisms show that local governments continue to play games, I think there will be an appetite.”

Want more political news and analysis? We have it every Friday in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter.

The post Henry County feels it’s done enough solar power. General Assembly might feel differently. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Henry County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to act Tuesday on a measure that might be cheered at home but could set the county on a collision course with state government.

The supervisors will take up a measure to reduce the number of acres the county is willing to allocate to solar energy development — “solar farms” to some, “industrial solar” to others, depending on your point of view.

Three years ago, Henry County decided to cap the amount of land it would allow for solar development at 1% of the county’s land mass — about 2,445 acres.

“Since setting the cap, the Boards (both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors) have generally been less willing to allow solar development based on public input and other considerations related to land use, community character, and evolving local priorities,” county administrator Dale Wagoner said by email.

That has produced a proposal to lower Henry County’s solar cap to 1,754 acres. That’s a very precise figure that the county chose carefully — that’s exactly how much land the county has already granted approval for solar development on. Not all those projects have actually happened, though. “Those projects are at varying stages of development, with most making little progress since their initial approval,” Wagoner said. “If current projects do not come to fruition, it would open up acreage for other developers.” So far, only 633.9 of those allotted 1,754 acres have been developed, according to Brandon Martin, the county’s public information officer.

That means there could, and probably will, be more solar facilities built in Henry County. However, the 1,754-acre cap does constitute a ban on development above that amount — so if all the approved projects were to come to fruition, then no more solar would be allowed in the county.

Here’s where we start to run up against a new state law, and the politics start to get cloudy.

The General Assembly in 2020 passed the Clean Economy Act, which mandates the state’s largest utilities adopt a carbon-free energy grid by 2050. (Disclosure: One of those utilities is Dominion Energy, which is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can become a donor and have no say, too. Here’s how.) In theory, that can mean lots of different forms of energy, but in practice, it’s meant solar. Wind is slow to get permitted; Dominion’s offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach is just now starting to spin 13 years after the company acquired the rights. Virginia’s first on-shore commercial wind farm (in Botetourt County) is scheduled to start producing power later this year, 11 years after it was first proposed. There are two proposals for small nuclear reactors (nuclear isn’t renewable, but it is carbon-free), but nuclear has historically been even slower to build, and no one in North America has actually built any of those small modular reactors yet. There are other exotic forms of energy out there — geothermal, fusion — but we haven’t seen those developed yet, either. Solar has its problems (the main one is that the sun doesn’t always shine), but it is quick and relatively inexpensive to build. That’s why we’ve seen it proliferate across much of the southern part of the state (and elsewhere, too).

Solar has also sparked opposition in many rural areas. Solar is fascinating politically because it doesn’t always follow neat ideological lines. Some conservatives back it as a matter of property rights and the free market; some liberals will occasionally voice concern about environmental trade-offs with land development. What often seems to motivate many rural opponents is that solar just looks ugly to them, turning a rural vista into what they see as an industrial hellscape.

In response, many rural localities have banned solar outright or adopted such stringent rules on solar development that solar facilities are effectively banned. Earlier this year, Canary Media reported that about two-thirds of Virginia localities fell into this category.

That, of course, makes it harder for Virginia to meet its goal of a carbon-free energy grid. The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has put together a Solar Database to track solar projects across the state. Its data showed that in 2024, for the first time, localities turned down more megawatts of solar than they approved. We’ve seen that revert last year and so far this year to more megawatts being approved than denied, but there’s still concern among those who want to see an energy transition that Virginia is moving too slowly — and that local governments resistant to solar projects are to blame.

This year, the General Assembly passed, and the governor signed into law, a bill to “ban the bans.” That law says localities can no longer ban solar projects outright; they have to consider each one separately. They can still vote them down, if they wish, but they now have to tell the state why. (Pay attention to that last phrase.)

This has led many localities to start adopting new ordinances to come into compliance with the law. Pittsylvania County is now moving to repeal its cap of allowing no more than 2% of a single magisterial district to be developed for solar. Henry County, though, appears to be going the other way, by keeping its acreage cap — and lowering it. Joe Lerch, director of local government policy for the Virginia Association of Counties, says counties are still allowed to set caps, but even if they fill up their allotted solar acreage, they still need to accept solar applications. In that case, counties would need to tell the state they rejected the project because it was above their acreage cap. (Again, pay attention to that requirement.)

What might be popular in Henry County (limiting solar development) isn’t so popular in Richmond. One of the legislators who sponsored the new solar law worries that some local governments still aren’t very accepting of solar. (He’s right on that.)

“Legally, it might be possible,” state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, says of Henry’s revised acreage cap. “The spirit of the law, that’s a different question. It seems like this ordinance is not [in the spirit of the law]. I think it behooves localities to comply with the spirit of the law.”

What we have here is a clear difference of opinion on solar development. Let’s cut to the chase. The legislators who passed the Clean Economy Act that mandated an energy transition were almost exclusively Democrats who represent metropolitan areas, but the localities that are seeing the solar development are almost all rural, Republican-voting localities, who aren’t nearly as keen on seeing their landscapes transformed. The General Assembly this session passed legislation to encourage more solar development in urban areas — including so-called home “balcony solar” and allowing localities to mandate “parking lot solar” with solar panels over parking lots — but the reality is the only place to find large tracts of land for utility-scale solar is in rural areas.

VanValkenburg says he hopes that by requiring localities to consider solar projects one by one, rather than allowing a blanket ban, counties that have previously rejected solar will eventually come to see the value in some projects. “My hope is this bill will change the conversation,” he said in an interview. “By having to consider projects one at a time, it should be a less ideological conversation and more an economic, property rights conversation.” He adds: “I didn’t think we’d see change July 1; it will take time to suss this out. The Henry County example is a discouraging one but we’ll see how it plays out. They’re sending a signal to the General Assembly.” Rural areas might well agree they’re sending a signal, but legislators might take that signal differently than what localities intend.

While the entry point for this column is Henry County, it should be noted that Henry County already has more solar than most Virginia counties. The Solar Database measures by megawatts that have been approved. It’s possible that some of those megawatts haven’t been built yet. In any case, Brunswick County has approved the most (2,082 megawatts over 11 projects), followed by Charlotte County (1,648 megawatts over 11 projects) and Pittsylvania County (1,099 megawatts over 24 projects). For comparison purposes, the Tenaska gas plant in Nelson County is rated at 1,011 megawatts; its proposed expansion would take it up to 2,550 megawatts. Henry County is tied for 14^th in the state out of 133 localities for the number of megawatts it’s approved: 303 megawatts over 13 projects. Henry County also has one of the higher approval rates for solar projects in the state: 76%, according to the Solar Database. At what point can a county say, “No, we’ve done enough. It’s somebody else’s turn”?

The difficulty is that for all the solar we’ve approved, solar still accounts for just 11.96% of the power that Virginia is producing, according to the site Choose Energy, which has compiled federal records. More than half of the power Virginia produces in-state still comes from carbon-based sources — 50.73% from natural gas, 0.73% from coal. That’s a lot of power that needs to be replaced if we’re going to truly go carbon-free (and that doesn’t count what Virginia imports from other states, which brings in more carbon-based power). Even just looking at our in-state production, to replace carbon-based energy basically means building 4.5 times as much solar (and related storage, a subject we’ll shortly get to). And that computation assumes — incorrectly, of course — that we won’t see demand for electricity increase. We know it will, not just because of data centers, either, but because we’re electrifying so many other things in our lives — but data centers are a prime culprit. In reality, we will need to build a lot more solar than that (plus wind and other things) to replace gas. However, we’re already running up against political limits in rural Virginia to how much land communities are willing to see go to solar energy production.

Some see rural Virginia being turned into a “sacrifice zone” for energy development and resent that they often see as having to produce energy for Northern Virginia (no matter that Northern Virginia supplies the tax revenue that subsidizes their schools). On the other hand, there are those property rights issues: “Private property rights have long been one of Virginia’s most tried and true values,” says Jack Wilson of the conservative, pro-renewables group Energy Right that emphasize those property rights. “While acreage caps may seem like a simple planning tool, they can have unintended consequences for private property owners. Setting an arbitrary threshold effectively tells landowners that, regardless of whether their property is well-suited for solar or whether a project meets every local standard, they can no longer pursue that use once the threshold is reached.”

The most notable county with no utility-scale solar is Bedford County, which has none, even though it’s the fourth-largest county by physical size in the state. Another notable county without solar is Northumberland County, which has rejected every solar project to come before it (five). Fauquier County has rejected six of eight projects; Essex County has rejected three of four. Those are imprecise measures because some projects may get withdrawn before a formal vote when it’s clear they won’t get approved. That was the case recently in Botetourt County, which saw two solar proposals inspire a countywide campaign that proclaimed: “No industrial solar: Keep Botetourt green.” The larger of the two proposals was withdrawn, the smaller one voted down. It seemed clear that Botetourt supervisors were in no mood to accept solar anywhere in the county. The irony of the “Keep Botetourt green” slogan is that both projects are in growth sectors of the county; the land in question may be green now, but it’s unlikely to stay that way. The choice might be a solar project now or a housing development later.

Solar power’s cousin is battery storage, which helps overcome solar’s main problem: It can’t produce energy at night. Battery storage stores up solar power during the day, then releases it onto the grid at night. Some counties are also moving to restrict where it can go. Culpeper County recently voted to ban battery storage on agricultural land and instead limit it to parcels zoned industrial. That vote came over the opposition of some farmers who said they needed the extra income that leasing land to a battery storage company would bring; that’s an argument we see some farmers make in favor of solar, too. “You got to let people make a living,” farmer Joe Gray told the supervisors. “This is the land of opportunity.” 

On the other side, Supervisor Paul Bates warned that opening the door to battery storage could bring a repeat of what’s happened with solar: “Any type of supplemental income is great to try to preserve the family farm, but what’s happened as soon as we cracked that door, was no stopping it,” he said. Culpeper now has about 1,000 acres approved for solar. “This was land zoned for farming,” he said. “Once we destroy our land, we’re done.”

This is a microcosm of the debate over energy sites, be they for solar or battery storage, across rural Virginia. VanValkenburg warns that if counties continue to reject solar projects, the state might move to take away their power over solar siting. “I think local governments should comply with the spirit of the law if they don’t want to give us reasons to engage more on this issue,” he said. “If local governments are not going to greenlight energy projects, we’ll have to take a heavier hand.”

That’s the kind of talk that makes local governments shudder. “I can’t speak for every locality, but I think it’s fair to say that local governments generally place a high value on maintaining local land use authority because it is one of our most fundamental responsibilities,” said Martin, the Henry County spokesman. “Comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, and capital investments are all built around a community’s vision for its future. If we lose the ability to make meaningful land use decisions, it becomes much more difficult to plan for economic development, preserve land for future housing, protect agricultural and forest resources, and make long-term infrastructure investments.”

Lerch, with the Virginia Association of Counties, agrees that these fears are a real concern: “We are very concerned regarding proposed legislation preempting local authority on the siting of solar facilities, battery storage, and other alternative energy sources.”

That could be what’s coming, though.

Remember the part about how localities will now have to explain to the state why they rejected energy projects? Those could be the trigger for that “heavier hand” VanValkenburg warned about.

“A lot of people are going to have eyeballs on all these reports,” VanValkenburg said. “If the General Assembly thinks these reporting mechanisms show that local governments continue to play games, I think there will be an appetite.”

Want more political news and analysis? We have it every Friday in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter.

The post Henry County feels it’s done enough solar power. General Assembly might feel differently. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Welcome back to Extra Credit, a weekly roundup of education-related news from across Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Have a story idea, tip or think there’s something I missed? Email me at meghan@cardinalnews.org.

Thanks for reading!

Sweet Briar raises record $14 million as it celebrates milestone

Just a little more than a decade after Sweet Briar College almost closed due to “insurmountable financial challenge,” according to an announcement at the time, the small school is celebrating its 125th anniversary in a big way.

When school officials closed the books for its 2025-26 fiscal year on June 30, the college had raised more than $14 million from alumni, friends, corporations and foundations.

“These gifts make a difference to Sweet Briar’s current generation of women leaders in myriad ways, including their academic careers, the opportunities to take advantage of the college’s Grants for Engaged Learning (GELs), academic program enhancements and professional opportunities for faculty, and more,” according to a news release.

Alumni, students, faculty and other donors have been the backbone of the small private women’s college’s fundraising efforts since the 2015 attempted closure.

Supporters ultimately organized the “Saving Sweet Briar” effort and raised $12 million by June 2015 to keep the school’s doors open.

Now, more than a decade later, supporters continue to champion the school through fundraising for capital and endowment funds and other campaigns.

Of the $14 million raised this year, Sweet Briar had set a goal to raise $5.5 million for the Sweet Briar Fund, its unrestricted annual giving program, according to the release. It raised $6.14 million instead.

Another $5.1 million was given to capital and endowment funds to help pay for the school’s Honors Program and an electrical system upgrade, and to support future projects including the renovation of Gray Hall and Guion Science Center, according to the release.

“I am always amazed at the continued support from all members of the Sweet Briar community through financial contributions, tireless volunteerism, and celebrating our 125th Anniversary,” President Mary Pope Hutson said in a statement. “Our alumni network and our friends and supporters demonstrate a treasured commitment to our college, helping us to raise our profile and attract the next generation of women leaders. We are eager to welcome our new and returning students in August and begin another great academic year!”

In May, the school graduated 106 of its newest alumni.

Virginia Tech discusses potential president candidates, shrinks search committee

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors discussed potential candidates for the university’s next president during a nearly four-hour closed session last Tuesday.

The university’s presidential search committee met in Blacksburg and briefly discussed results from recent listening sessions and a survey it launched last month to garner feedback from the community before moving into the closed session.

The board is seeking to replace President Tim Sands, who announced in April that he would step down. Sands has said he would stay on, though, until his successor is found.

“We are looking for someone with a very specific skill set. While they may be successful in their current position, they may not be the best fit as a president for Virginia Tech. We are looking for proven leaders, experienced, crisis-tested, with understanding of a large, complex land-grant university,” committee chair and board member Nancy Dye said. 

“It is essential that Virginia Tech continues on its forward trajectory without pausing long-term strategic initiatives and capital campaigns, that is our goal as we work together today.”

What happened during the closed session wasn’t public, but Dye did remind attendees that “things [could] move very quickly”.



“We’re conducting a vigorous national search,” Dye said. “For those of you who have been following the Clemson and Michigan search, the University of Florida, and Northeastern University, you already know that we must be nimble as a committee, as candidates we identify may very well be involved in other searches or being pursued by other universities.”

As the search committee identifies candidates, Dye said she and new Rector Jim Miller had decided to appoint a smaller subcommittee to participate in interviews with candidates and make recommendations to the full board.

The members of this new committee will include Dye, Miller, Starlette Johnson, Chris Ramos, Robert Moser and Justin Lemkul, the university’s faculty senate president and faculty representative on the board of visitors.

Greg Esposito of Isaacson Miller, the search firm contracted to lead the search, also provided a high-level summary of what the committee has heard from more than two dozen listening sessions so far. 

Recurring themes from these conversations, Esposito said, was that the Virginia Tech community as a whole is most interested in a potential candidate’s commitment to a “student-centered land grant identify for Virginia Tech;” the leadership characteristics of the next president, including commitment to shared governance and supporting campus morale; and commitments to research, health sciences, regional partnerships, town-gown relationships, relationships with the state, and the reputation and branding of the university.

Esposito also reported that the survey has received more than 2,000 responses so far. About 77% of responses so far have come from alumni, and about 92% are “Blacksburg-centered,” he said.

“The survey found strong consensus that the next president should demonstrate integrity, sound judgment, transparent leadership and a commitment to student success, while prioritizing faculty and staff retention, financial sustainability, affordability, and the land grant mission,” Esposito said.

Radford University receives state funding to launch third group of teacher apprentices

Radford University recently received state funding to expand its teacher apprenticeship program.

The program is a partnership between the university and local school divisions to expand access to the teaching profession and fill critical staffing gaps.

Radford’s College of Education and Human Development was awarded more than $130,000 from the Virginia Department of Education to launch its third cohort of teacher apprentices this August. The funding is designed to help reduce financial barriers for students by covering tuition, fees and other costs during their first year of the two-year program.

Program participants gain hands-on experience working full time under the mentorship of master teachers in school divisions across the New River and Roanoke valleys while completing their coursework. 

“This investment allows us to continue building innovative, accessible pathways into the teaching profession while directly responding to the needs of our region’s schools,” Tamara Wallace, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, said in a statement.

“Our Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program reflects the very best of Radford University — strong partnerships, meaningful hands-on learning and a deep commitment to preparing educators who will make a lasting difference in their communities.” 

Roanoke College launches 3-year degrees in public administration, cannabis studies

Want to understand government policy around weed or find success in the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry? Roanoke College might have a degree program for you.

The school recently announced that enrollment is open for a new three-year degree program in cannabis studies. It’s also launching an accelerated degree in public administration, though it’s not weed-related.

The programs are completely online and are designed for working professionals, according to a news release.

“These programs are part of our commitment to ensuring higher education is accessible and aligned with the needs of the modern workforce,” Lisa Stoneman, assistant vice president and head of Roanoke College-Roanoke Valley, a workforce development initiative, said in a statement. 

“For many professionals, a degree is part of unlocking the next stage of their career. Our goal is to help them shorten the distance between where they are and where they want to be, all while providing the same high-quality education that defines a Roanoke College degree.”

Roanoke College’s three-year degree programs come as many institutions of higher education across the state and country are exploring options for more flexible, faster degree programs.

These programs are a “direct response to job market demand,” according to the release.

The abridged bachelor of science in public administration program includes courses in team management, public policy and data analysis, and the abridged cannabis studies program is launching as 40 states have approved some form of marijuana legalization and Virginia is poised to establish a recreational marijuana market next year.

Roanoke College launched the state’s first four-year degree program in cannabis studies in 2024.

To learn more about either program, visit roanoke.edu/onlinedegrees.

State Education Department celebrates top CTE programs

The Virginia Department of Education recently recognized 19 career and technical, or CTE, programs and partnerships across the state.

The VDOE and the Virginia Community College System honored secondary and postsecondary programs. 

The secondary awards included:

• Advisory Committee Award: Chesterfield County’s Career and Technical Center – Courthouse Campus
• Business and Industry Partnership Award: SparkForce, the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association Foundation, nominated by Salem Public Schools
• Exemplary CTE Program Award: Henrico County’s Welding for the 3Es program at the Advanced Career Education Center at Virginia Randolph Education Center

The postsecondary awards included:

• Advisory Committee Award: Tidewater Community College’s Paralegal Associate of Applied Science Program Advisory Committee
• Business and Industry Partnership Award: Norfolk Naval Shipyard Apprenticeship program, nominated by Tidewater Community College
• Exemplary Program Award: Data Center Operations, Associate of Applied Science and Career Studies Certificate program at Northern Virginia Community College

The post Extra Credit: Sweet Briar College raises $1 million, surpassing 125th anniversary fundraising goal appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hello and welcome back to Danville Field Notes, a short list of recent and upcoming news in Southside. 

There’s a lot going on this upcoming weekend, from historic marker unveilings to school supplies giveaway events as Danville and Pittsylvania anticipate the start of the school year. 

Also, Homeward Trails Danville, an animal welfare nonprofit, recently shared an update on their work after two years in the city. 

Read below for more details and be sure to check in next Monday for the latest installment of Danville Field Notes. As always, if there’s something you think I should write about, let me know at grace@cardinalnews.org. 

Gilbert’s Restaurant, which served locals and famous faces in Chatham, to receive historic marker

A few years ago, Robert Gilbert was considering tearing down the Chatham restaurant that his father owned, which was once a safe haven for Black travelers. Then he learned about Virginia’s historic designations. 

Gilbert’s Restaurant was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places last year. It was also approved for a historic marker from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in June 2025. 

A marker unveiling will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. outside the restaurant, at 401 N. Main St. in Chatham. 

Gilbert’s father, the Rev. Robert Gregory Gilbert, opened the restaurant in 1945 to provide a space for Black locals and travelers alike. 

Though it was never included in the “Negro Motorist Green Book,” an annual guide that listed businesses and amenities where Black travelers would be safe and welcomed during the Jim Crow era, the restaurant gained popularity through word of mouth, Gilbert said in a 2025 interview. 

Famous faces like Fats Domino, James Earl Jones and Lloyd Price passed through the restaurant in its heyday, Gilbert said, and sometimes they even boarded at the Gilbert family home next door, which eventually became a tourist home with added rooms to accommodate all of the travelers.  

Gilbert’s restaurant operated until 1999, not only as an eatery, but also as a selling spot for farming supplies, animal feed, motoring products, gasoline, produce and canned goods at different times over its lifespan. 

Since then, the building has fallen into disrepair, and Gilbert has been working with local historian Ina Dixon and local nonprofit Chatham First to pursue funding to stabilize the building. 

The unveiling ceremony, hosted by Chatham First and the Pittsylvania Historical Society, will include remarks from members of both organizations, the town of Chatham and the Gilbert family. 

Homeward Trails Danville shares 2-year update on animal welfare services

A Northern Virginia-based animal rescue group, Homeward Trails, opened a Danville location about two years ago. 

Homeward Trails operates volunteer foster, diversion and adoption programs in Danville, runs a pet pantry, and provides free and subsidized spay and neuter services for cats and dogs. 

It’s not a shelter operation, though it transfers animals from the Danville Area Humane Society to foster homes. 

Since it opened, Homeward Trails has provided free sterilization, vaccines and microchips to 898 community and owned cats, according to a news release. It has taken in more than 1,000 dogs and cats from the community and from the Danville Area Humane Society, found foster homes for 164 animals and supplied over 14,000 pounds of pet food, the release states. 

Homeward Trails also continues to work with the Danville shelter “to provide support, guidance and resources for needed improvements to better serve the animals of Danville,” the release said. 

The release said that the organization’s foster and volunteer program is growing slowly. 

“We desperately need people to step up and help us, whether it’s fostering, driving, volunteering at the pet pantry and donating,” said Director Robin Young in the release. “We need it all if we are going to keep going.” 

Young also called for continued improvements at the Danville shelter in the release, including growing its foster program and offering more transparency to the community. 

“We are happy that our current partnership has resulted in many lives saved, but we remain committed to seeing a drastic reduction in euthanasia at the shelter and will continue to push for it,” Young said. 

Volunteers are needed immediately, according to the release. If you’re interested in providing transportation, short- or long-term fostering, care for neonatal kittens or helping with food pantry events, contact danville@homewardtrails.org. 

Local businesses donate school supplies as start of the year approaches

Several local businesses and organizations are giving away school supplies before Danville and Pittsylvania County public schools open for the year. 

The first day of school for Danville Public Schools is Aug. 5, and the first day for Pittsylvania County Schools is the following week on Aug. 13. 

Below is a list of school supplies giveaway events:

Saturday, Aug. 1:

• Emmanuel Church of the Brethren is hosting a back-to-school festival from 9 a.m. to noon. The church is located at 1530 Westover Drive in Danville.
• Children’s Clothes Closet is having a free yard sale with school supplies from 9-11 a.m. at Countyline Christian Church, 12711 Chatham Road in Axton.
• Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church is giving away school supplies from 9:30 a.m. to noon. The church is located at 13602 Martinsville Highway in Cascade. Those wishing to participate must register by July 29 by contacting the church at (434) 250-1024. Students must be present to receive supplies. 
• Soul Serve Community Kitchen will give away school supplies from noon to 3 p.m. and there will be food and games. It will be held at the Redemption Center Church at 625 Shelton St. in Danville.

Friday, Aug. 7:

• Radical Faith Ministries is hosting a youth rave event from 6-8 p.m. with free school supplies. The church is located at 3720 U.S. 29 in Danville.

Saturday, Aug. 8:

• Brosville United Methodist Church is having a breakfast with free school supplies at 9 a.m. The church is located at 121 Long Circle in Cascade. 

The post Danville Field Notes: Gilbert’s Restaurant in Chatham, once a safe haven for Black travelers, is receiving a historic marker appeared first on Cardinal News.

Welcome back to Extra Credit, a weekly roundup of education-related news from across Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Have a story idea, tip or think there’s something I missed? Email me at meghan@cardinalnews.org.

Thanks for reading!

Sweet Briar raises record $14 million as it celebrates milestone

Just a little more than a decade after Sweet Briar College almost closed due to “insurmountable financial challenge,” according to an announcement at the time, the small school is celebrating its 125th anniversary in a big way.

When school officials closed the books for its 2025-26 fiscal year on June 30, the college had raised more than $14 million from alumni, friends, corporations and foundations.

“These gifts make a difference to Sweet Briar’s current generation of women leaders in myriad ways, including their academic careers, the opportunities to take advantage of the college’s Grants for Engaged Learning (GELs), academic program enhancements and professional opportunities for faculty, and more,” according to a news release.

Alumni, students, faculty and other donors have been the backbone of the small private women’s college’s fundraising efforts since the 2015 attempted closure.

Supporters ultimately organized the “Saving Sweet Briar” effort and raised $12 million by June 2015 to keep the school’s doors open.

Now, more than a decade later, supporters continue to champion the school through fundraising for capital and endowment funds and other campaigns.

Of the $14 million raised this year, Sweet Briar had set a goal to raise $5.5 million for the Sweet Briar Fund, its unrestricted annual giving program, according to the release. It raised $6.14 million instead.

Another $5.1 million was given to capital and endowment funds to help pay for the school’s Honors Program and an electrical system upgrade, and to support future projects including the renovation of Gray Hall and Guion Science Center, according to the release.

“I am always amazed at the continued support from all members of the Sweet Briar community through financial contributions, tireless volunteerism, and celebrating our 125th Anniversary,” President Mary Pope Hutson said in a statement. “Our alumni network and our friends and supporters demonstrate a treasured commitment to our college, helping us to raise our profile and attract the next generation of women leaders. We are eager to welcome our new and returning students in August and begin another great academic year!”

In May, the school graduated 106 of its newest alumni.

Virginia Tech discusses potential president candidates, shrinks search committee

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors discussed potential candidates for the university’s next president during a nearly four-hour closed session last Tuesday.

The university’s presidential search committee met in Blacksburg and briefly discussed results from recent listening sessions and a survey it launched last month to garner feedback from the community before moving into the closed session.

The board is seeking to replace President Tim Sands, who announced in April that he would step down. Sands has said he would stay on, though, until his successor is found.

“We are looking for someone with a very specific skill set. While they may be successful in their current position, they may not be the best fit as a president for Virginia Tech. We are looking for proven leaders, experienced, crisis-tested, with understanding of a large, complex land-grant university,” committee chair and board member Nancy Dye said. 

“It is essential that Virginia Tech continues on its forward trajectory without pausing long-term strategic initiatives and capital campaigns, that is our goal as we work together today.”

What happened during the closed session wasn’t public, but Dye did remind attendees that “things [could] move very quickly”.



“We’re conducting a vigorous national search,” Dye said. “For those of you who have been following the Clemson and Michigan search, the University of Florida, and Northeastern University, you already know that we must be nimble as a committee, as candidates we identify may very well be involved in other searches or being pursued by other universities.”

As the search committee identifies candidates, Dye said she and new Rector Jim Miller had decided to appoint a smaller subcommittee to participate in interviews with candidates and make recommendations to the full board.

The members of this new committee will include Dye, Miller, Starlette Johnson, Chris Ramos, Robert Moser and Justin Lemkul, the university’s faculty senate president and faculty representative on the board of visitors.

Greg Esposito of Isaacson Miller, the search firm contracted to lead the search, also provided a high-level summary of what the committee has heard from more than two dozen listening sessions so far. 

Recurring themes from these conversations, Esposito said, was that the Virginia Tech community as a whole is most interested in a potential candidate’s commitment to a “student-centered land grant identify for Virginia Tech;” the leadership characteristics of the next president, including commitment to shared governance and supporting campus morale; and commitments to research, health sciences, regional partnerships, town-gown relationships, relationships with the state, and the reputation and branding of the university.

Esposito also reported that the survey has received more than 2,000 responses so far. About 77% of responses so far have come from alumni, and about 92% are “Blacksburg-centered,” he said.

“The survey found strong consensus that the next president should demonstrate integrity, sound judgment, transparent leadership and a commitment to student success, while prioritizing faculty and staff retention, financial sustainability, affordability, and the land grant mission,” Esposito said.

Radford University receives state funding to launch third group of teacher apprentices

Radford University recently received state funding to expand its teacher apprenticeship program.

The program is a partnership between the university and local school divisions to expand access to the teaching profession and fill critical staffing gaps.

Radford’s College of Education and Human Development was awarded more than $130,000 from the Virginia Department of Education to launch its third cohort of teacher apprentices this August. The funding is designed to help reduce financial barriers for students by covering tuition, fees and other costs during their first year of the two-year program.

Program participants gain hands-on experience working full time under the mentorship of master teachers in school divisions across the New River and Roanoke valleys while completing their coursework. 

“This investment allows us to continue building innovative, accessible pathways into the teaching profession while directly responding to the needs of our region’s schools,” Tamara Wallace, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, said in a statement.

“Our Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program reflects the very best of Radford University — strong partnerships, meaningful hands-on learning and a deep commitment to preparing educators who will make a lasting difference in their communities.” 

Roanoke College launches 3-year degrees in public administration, cannabis studies

Want to understand government policy around weed or find success in the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry? Roanoke College might have a degree program for you.

The school recently announced that enrollment is open for a new three-year degree program in cannabis studies. It’s also launching an accelerated degree in public administration, though it’s not weed-related.

The programs are completely online and are designed for working professionals, according to a news release.

“These programs are part of our commitment to ensuring higher education is accessible and aligned with the needs of the modern workforce,” Lisa Stoneman, assistant vice president and head of Roanoke College-Roanoke Valley, a workforce development initiative, said in a statement. 

“For many professionals, a degree is part of unlocking the next stage of their career. Our goal is to help them shorten the distance between where they are and where they want to be, all while providing the same high-quality education that defines a Roanoke College degree.”

Roanoke College’s three-year degree programs come as many institutions of higher education across the state and country are exploring options for more flexible, faster degree programs.

These programs are a “direct response to job market demand,” according to the release.

The abridged bachelor of science in public administration program includes courses in team management, public policy and data analysis, and the abridged cannabis studies program is launching as 40 states have approved some form of marijuana legalization and Virginia is poised to establish a recreational marijuana market next year.

Roanoke College launched the state’s first four-year degree program in cannabis studies in 2024.

To learn more about either program, visit roanoke.edu/onlinedegrees.

State Education Department celebrates top CTE programs

The Virginia Department of Education recently recognized 19 career and technical, or CTE, programs and partnerships across the state.

The VDOE and the Virginia Community College System honored secondary and postsecondary programs. 

The secondary awards included:

• Advisory Committee Award: Chesterfield County’s Career and Technical Center – Courthouse Campus
• Business and Industry Partnership Award: SparkForce, the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association Foundation, nominated by Salem Public Schools
• Exemplary CTE Program Award: Henrico County’s Welding for the 3Es program at the Advanced Career Education Center at Virginia Randolph Education Center

The postsecondary awards included:

• Advisory Committee Award: Tidewater Community College’s Paralegal Associate of Applied Science Program Advisory Committee
• Business and Industry Partnership Award: Norfolk Naval Shipyard Apprenticeship program, nominated by Tidewater Community College
• Exemplary Program Award: Data Center Operations, Associate of Applied Science and Career Studies Certificate program at Northern Virginia Community College

___________________

Correction 9:42 a.m. July 27: Sweet Briar College has raised $14 million this year. The amount was incorrect in an earlier version of the headline.

The post Extra Credit: Sweet Briar College raises $14 million, surpassing 125th anniversary fundraising goal appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia has taken an important step toward the future of transportation in the commonwealth.

The federal government’s new Advanced Air Mobility pilot program in Charlottesville is more than a test of new aircraft. It is a step toward a future in which electric aircraft, drones and increasingly autonomous aviation systems become part of everyday life in Virginia.

Other states — including Florida, Texas, California, Ohio and North Carolina — have spent years investing in this emerging industry. Virginia is now building on its own strengths with a thoughtful, practical approach that can serve communities across the commonwealth, especially in rural regions.

This transformation will not happen overnight. It will happen one careful step at a time.

More than a decade ago, Wise County became the site of one of America’s pioneering demonstrations of drones flying safely beyond a pilot’s direct line of sight. That work helped show how unmanned aircraft could eventually support healthcare, emergency response, infrastructure inspection and business operations in rural America.

Today’s Advanced Air Mobility initiative is the next logical step from that work.

The Virginia Department of Aviation is coordinating partnerships among the Federal Aviation Administration, universities, local governments, airports and private industry. Together, they are laying the groundwork for technologies expected to mature through the remainder of this decade and become increasingly common during the 2030s.

For many Virginians, the greatest benefits may not come from urban air taxis. Instead, they may come from improving life in rural communities.

Imagine an electric aircraft carrying a trauma team to the scene of a serious highway accident in Southwest Virginia. Picture blood products or lifesaving medications arriving at a rural hospital in minutes rather than hours. Think about faster transportation for specialized medical care, business travel, engineering services or time-sensitive cargo.

Those possibilities become much more realistic when Virginia’s existing regional airports are integrated into a connected statewide transportation network.

Airports such as Virginia Highlands Airport in Abingdon, Lonesome Pine Airport in Wise, Mountain Empire Airport near Marion and Wytheville, New River Valley Airport in Dublin and Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Martinsville already serve their communities well. During the coming decade, they could evolve into gateways for electric aircraft connecting rural Virginia with larger transportation hubs near Roanoke, Charlottesville, Richmond, Washington Dulles and beyond.

Digital infrastructure will be just as important as the aircraft themselves.

Modern satellite communications systems, including Starlink, are helping eliminate connectivity gaps in rural Virginia. As these technologies become integrated into certified aviation systems where appropriate, they can enhance communications, weather information, aircraft tracking and operational logistics. Combined with FAA air traffic control and emerging low-altitude traffic management systems, they will help support the safe and efficient operation of growing numbers of drones and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

The General Assembly has demonstrated foresight by creating an Advanced Air Mobility program within the Virginia Department of Aviation, providing $1 million to establish an Advanced Air Mobility test site in partnership with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority, and later approving an additional $500,000 to continue its development.

Looking ahead, Virginians hope to see additional industry leaders — including BETA Technologies, Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation and Eve Air Mobility — demonstrate these aircraft throughout the commonwealth. Charlottesville is an excellent place to begin, and expanding demonstrations to regional airports across western and Southwest Virginia could help ensure that rural communities share fully in the benefits of this new era of flight.

Virginia’s progress reflects leadership at multiple levels. Chairman Randall Burdette and the members of the Virginia Aviation Board, together with Greg Campbell, director of the Virginia Department of Aviation, deserve recognition for helping position the commonwealth for the next generation of aviation. Their steady, incremental approach balances innovation with safety while encouraging partnerships that can strengthen healthcare, emergency response, economic development and transportation across Virginia.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story is how it connects Virginia’s past with its future. Thomas Jefferson spent much of his life imagining how transportation, science and exploration could unite the growing commonwealth. Daniel Boone became one of the great pioneers who helped open the lands beyond the Blue Ridge and into Kentucky. It is fascinating to imagine Jefferson departing Charlottesville aboard a quiet electric aircraft and arriving in Wise County in less than an hour to see the mountains and frontier that once required days of arduous travel. The route that once depended on horseback, wagons and rough trails could someday be linked by clean, electric flight.

History reminds us that every transportation revolution changes more than travel. Better roads expanded commerce. Railroads transformed economies. Aviation connected continents. Advanced Air Mobility can do something similar on a regional scale by making healthcare more accessible, emergency response faster, businesses more competitive, and rural communities better connected.

Charlottesville is not the finish line. It is the beginning of Virginia’s next aviation chapter. If the commonwealth continues its thoughtful approach, the foundation being laid today could connect Virginians in ways Thomas Jefferson could scarcely have imagined while fulfilling the spirit of progress he championed.

Jack Kennedy is a former Virginia Aviation Board member and former officer of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority. He serves on the National Space Society Board and is a Space Force Museum docent. Jack@JackKennedy.net

The post Kennedy: Virginia’s next aviation chapter begins in Charlottesville appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Politics:

Sen. Louise Lucas used $300,000 in campaign funds for legal defense, records show. — The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot (paywall).

Environment:

DEQ asks Virginians how to best engage environmental justice communities during permitting process. — Virginia Mercury.

Economy:

Virginia transportation board OKs stricter oversight for economic development fund. — Virginia Mercury.

Workers comp rates set to decline again. — Richmond Times-Dispatch (paywall).

Local:

Pulaski Town Council member arrested on child pornography charges. — The Roanoke Times (paywall).

Fifty years later, Givens Books begins its next chapter. — The (Lynchburg) News & Advance (paywall).

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: Sen. Louise Lucas used $300,000 in campaign funds for legal defense, records show; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

I hope you enjoy my latest column, a collection of weekly short news updates and future events to look out for, and arriving to your inbox as part of our NRV newsletter on Mondays. 

As your New River Valley reporter, I primarily cover Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Montgomery County and Radford, but aim to expand my reach throughout the rest of a bustling valley. 

I aim to inform and meet people where they are at, but the valley is vast. So if you have thoughts on a developing story or ideas on how I can get to know your community better, you can reach me at erick@cardinalnews.org. 

Radford Arsenal incinerator completion delayed to 2027

The Radford Army Ammunition Plant has again delayed completion of an incinerator at the site, pushing the project into 2027. 

Commonly known as the Arsenal, the plant began construction of a $145 million energetic waste incinerator project in 2023, which it says would virtually eliminate the need to open burn materials used to make gun and rocket propellants, thus reducing air pollution. According to the U.S. Army Munitions Command, construction was originally expected to be completed by the summer of 2025 before being delayed to June 2026. The Army now says the project will not be finished until September 2027.

“The extensive safety and quality control reviews required of a unique facility like this one led to unplanned changes in the design and construction schedules,” said Mark W. Haviland, a spokesman for the Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which is coordinating the project. 

Multiple reports and investigations have looked into the plant’s disposal of hazardous materials. In 2017, researchers conducted an air quality test over the open burning site with a drone and found higher-than-expected levels of lead and arsenic, among other pollutants. More recently, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality identified BAE Systems as the state’s largest on-site emitter of Toxic Release Inventory chemicals to the air in 2023, according to its 2025 Toxics Release Inventory report.

When asked if he was confident that the incinerator project will address concerns about toxic chemicals released into the air from previous burning at this site Haviland said, “Yes, this facility will nearly eliminate the use of the open burning ground with a first-of-its-kind Contained Burn Chamber (CBC) and air pollution control system to thermally treat energetic waste streams.”

Democratic candidates respond to Griffith’s birthright citizenship bill

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith last week introduced the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, which would reserve birthright citizenship for those born in the country’s territories only if they are born to parents who are already U.S. citizens.

The bill is a direct response to the Trump vs. Barbara case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship for nearly every child born on American soil.

“I am leading a bill to crack down on birthright citizenship in the territories and combat foreign nationals who are exploiting loopholes in our citizenship laws to take advantage of U.S. generosity,” Griffith said in a statement. “This way, you have to be born to a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident to have American citizenship in the territories!”

Democratic candidates running in a primary to challenge Griffith voiced their disapproval.

Joy Powers said Griffith’s bill is not a concern for voters. 

“I have spent the last few months talking to thousands of people all across the Ninth District, and not a single time has a single constituent of Morgan Griffith ever brought up to me that they had a concern about birthright citizenship or birth tourism in our U.S. territories,” Powers said., “This is absolutely not important to the constituents in the Ninth District.” 

Adam Murphy also questioned the bill’s necessity — “I don’t really see this bill as a needed bill. It’s literally three pages long, so I know he didn’t spend a lot of time writing it up.” 

If elected, he says he would vote against any such measure and would be open discussion to reconsider the country’s territories to become states. 

Currently, four of the five inhabited U.S. territories — Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — have been granted U.S. citizenship through acts of Congress. People born in American Samoa are considered American nationals but are not automatically granted citizenship status. 

Powers and Murphy, as well as candidate Douglas Crockett — who did not respond for comment prior to publication — will first face each other in the Aug. 4 primary election before facing Griffith in November. 

Crocket did not respond to a message left for him last week.

‘What the Flock’ forum set for tonight

Adam Murphy, the congressional candidate, will be one of two Democratic office seekers who will be part of a topic getting much regional attention in recent weeks — surveillance and Flock cameras.

Murphy and Ed Hertling, who is running for Montgomery County sheriff, will speak at the forum, titled “What the Flock,” which will be held tonight, July 27, at the Bull & Bones Brewhaus & Grill from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in Blacksburg.

According to the Virginia Crime Commission, 159 Virginia law enforcement agencies use some form of an Automatic License Plate Recognition surveillance network, giving officers access to large amounts of vehicle tracking data during active investigations, including data collected by Flock Safety cameras.

Law enforcement agencies must provide substantial information for the use of this surveillance technology, according to a Virginia law passed in 2025 but an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO found that several agencies offer vague or inconsistent justifications for their searches. Cardinal News detailed the issue in its State of Surveillance report.

Murphy is one of three Democratic candidates running in an Aug. 4 primary, along with Joy Powers and Douglas Crockett. The winner will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. 

Hertling will face Christiansburg police Lt. Tim Brown and former county sheriff’s office Lt. Greg Warden in the primary. The winner will face interim Sheriff Robert Page, who won the Republican “firehouse” primary in June. 

“In about two years that I used the Flock cameras, it never really helped me file the case,” said Hertling, who formerly served as county sheriff’s captain. 

“I looked at the number of cases that we have used that system successfully, and you weigh that against the overwhelming public sentiment against them, and, uh, and that’s how I keep up my decision” — referring to his announcement on Facebook to remove all Flock cameras in the county if elected. 

The post New River Valley Field Notes: Radford Arsenal incinerator completion now set for 2027 appeared first on Cardinal News.

I hope you enjoy my latest column, a collection of weekly short news updates and future events to look out for, and arriving to your inbox as part of our NRV newsletter on Mondays. 

As your New River Valley reporter, I primarily cover Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Montgomery County and Radford, but aim to expand my reach throughout the rest of a bustling valley. 

I aim to inform and meet people where they are at, but the valley is vast. So if you have thoughts on a developing story or ideas on how I can get to know your community better, you can reach me at erick@cardinalnews.org. 

Radford Arsenal incinerator completion delayed to 2027

The Radford Army Ammunition Plant has again delayed completion of an incinerator at the site, pushing the project into 2027. 

Commonly known as the Arsenal, the plant began construction of a $145 million energetic waste incinerator project in 2023, which it says would virtually eliminate the need to open burn materials used to make gun and rocket propellants, thus reducing air pollution. According to the U.S. Army Munitions Command, construction was originally expected to be completed by the summer of 2025 before being delayed to June 2026. The Army now says the project will not be finished until September 2027.

“The extensive safety and quality control reviews required of a unique facility like this one led to unplanned changes in the design and construction schedules,” said Mark W. Haviland, a spokesman for the Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which is coordinating the project. 

Multiple reports and investigations have looked into the plant’s disposal of hazardous materials. In 2017, researchers conducted an air quality test over the open burning site with a drone and found higher-than-expected levels of lead and arsenic, among other pollutants. More recently, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality identified BAE Systems as the state’s largest on-site emitter of Toxic Release Inventory chemicals to the air in 2023, according to its 2025 Toxics Release Inventory report.

When asked if he was confident that the incinerator project will address concerns about toxic chemicals released into the air from previous burning at this site Haviland said, “Yes, this facility will nearly eliminate the use of the open burning ground with a first-of-its-kind Contained Burn Chamber (CBC) and air pollution control system to thermally treat energetic waste streams.”

Democratic candidates respond to Griffith’s birthright citizenship bill

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith last week introduced the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, which would reserve birthright citizenship for those born in the country’s territories only if they are born to parents who are already U.S. citizens.

The bill is a direct response to the Trump vs. Barbara case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship for nearly every child born on American soil.

“I am leading a bill to crack down on birthright citizenship in the territories and combat foreign nationals who are exploiting loopholes in our citizenship laws to take advantage of U.S. generosity,” Griffith said in a statement. “This way, you have to be born to a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident to have American citizenship in the territories!”

Democratic candidates running in a primary to challenge Griffith voiced their disapproval.

Joy Powers said Griffith’s bill is not a concern for voters. 

“I have spent the last few months talking to thousands of people all across the Ninth District, and not a single time has a single constituent of Morgan Griffith ever brought up to me that they had a concern about birthright citizenship or birth tourism in our U.S. territories,” Powers said., “This is absolutely not important to the constituents in the Ninth District.” 

Adam Murphy also questioned the bill’s necessity — “I don’t really see this bill as a needed bill. It’s literally three pages long, so I know he didn’t spend a lot of time writing it up.” 

If elected, he says he would vote against any such measure and would be open discussion to reconsider the country’s territories to become states. 

Currently, four of the five inhabited U.S. territories — Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — have been granted U.S. citizenship through acts of Congress. People born in American Samoa are considered American nationals but are not automatically granted citizenship status. 

Powers and Murphy, as well as candidate Douglas Crockett — who did not respond for comment prior to publication — will first face each other in the Aug. 4 primary election before facing Griffith in November. 

Crocket did not respond to a message left for him last week.

‘What the Flock’ forum set for tonight

Adam Murphy, the congressional candidate, will be one of two Democratic office seekers who will be part of a topic getting much regional attention in recent weeks — surveillance and Flock cameras.

Murphy and Ed Hertling, who is running for Montgomery County sheriff, will speak at the forum, titled “What the Flock,” which will be held tonight, July 27, at the Bull & Bones Brewhaus & Grill from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in Blacksburg.

According to the Virginia Crime Commission, 159 Virginia law enforcement agencies use some form of an Automatic License Plate Recognition surveillance network, giving officers access to large amounts of vehicle tracking data during active investigations, including data collected by Flock Safety cameras.

Law enforcement agencies must provide substantial information for the use of this surveillance technology, according to a Virginia law passed in 2025 but an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO found that several agencies offer vague or inconsistent justifications for their searches. Cardinal News detailed the issue in its State of Surveillance report.

Murphy is one of three Democratic candidates running in an Aug. 4 primary, along with Joy Powers and Douglas Crockett. The winner will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. 

Hertling will face Christiansburg police Lt. Tim Brown and former county sheriff’s office Lt. Greg Warden in the primary. The winner will face interim Sheriff Robert Page, who won the Republican “firehouse” primary in June. 

“In about two years that I used the Flock cameras, it never really helped me file the case,” said Hertling, who formerly served as county sheriff’s captain. 

“I looked at the number of cases that we have used that system successfully, and you weigh that against the overwhelming public sentiment against them, and, uh, and that’s how I keep up my decision” — referring to his announcement on Facebook to remove all Flock cameras in the county if elected. 

The post New River Valley Field Notes: Radford Arsenal incinerator completion now set for 2027 appeared first on Cardinal News.

I hope you enjoy my latest column, a collection of weekly short news updates and future events to look out for, and arriving to your inbox as part of our NRV newsletter on Mondays. 

As your New River Valley reporter, I primarily cover Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Montgomery County and Radford, but aim to expand my reach throughout the rest of a bustling valley. 

I aim to inform and meet people where they are at, but the valley is vast. So if you have thoughts on a developing story or ideas on how I can get to know your community better, you can reach me at erick@cardinalnews.org. 

Radford Arsenal incinerator completion delayed to 2027

The Radford Army Ammunition Plant has again delayed completion of an incinerator at the site, pushing the project into 2027. 

Commonly known as the Arsenal, the plant began construction of a $145 million energetic waste incinerator project in 2023, which it says would virtually eliminate the need to open burn materials used to make gun and rocket propellants, thus reducing air pollution. According to the U.S. Army Munitions Command, construction was originally expected to be completed by the summer of 2025 before being delayed to June 2026. The Army now says the project will not be finished until September 2027.

“The extensive safety and quality control reviews required of a unique facility like this one led to unplanned changes in the design and construction schedules,” said Mark W. Haviland, a spokesman for the Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which is coordinating the project. 

Multiple reports and investigations have looked into the plant’s disposal of hazardous materials. In 2017, researchers conducted an air quality test over the open burning site with a drone and found higher-than-expected levels of lead and arsenic, among other pollutants. More recently, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality identified BAE Systems as the state’s largest on-site emitter of Toxic Release Inventory chemicals to the air in 2023, according to its 2025 Toxics Release Inventory report.

When asked if he was confident that the incinerator project will address concerns about toxic chemicals released into the air from previous burning at this site Haviland said, “Yes, this facility will nearly eliminate the use of the open burning ground with a first-of-its-kind Contained Burn Chamber (CBC) and air pollution control system to thermally treat energetic waste streams.”

Democratic candidates respond to Griffith’s birthright citizenship bill

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith last week introduced the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, which would reserve birthright citizenship for those born in the country’s territories only if they are born to parents who are already U.S. citizens.

The bill is a direct response to the Trump vs. Barbara case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship for nearly every child born on American soil.

“I am leading a bill to crack down on birthright citizenship in the territories and combat foreign nationals who are exploiting loopholes in our citizenship laws to take advantage of U.S. generosity,” Griffith said in a statement. “This way, you have to be born to a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident to have American citizenship in the territories!”

Democratic candidates running in a primary to challenge Griffith voiced their disapproval.

Joy Powers said Griffith’s bill is not a concern for voters. 

“I have spent the last few months talking to thousands of people all across the Ninth District, and not a single time has a single constituent of Morgan Griffith ever brought up to me that they had a concern about birthright citizenship or birth tourism in our U.S. territories,” Powers said., “This is absolutely not important to the constituents in the Ninth District.” 

Adam Murphy also questioned the bill’s necessity — “I don’t really see this bill as a needed bill. It’s literally three pages long, so I know he didn’t spend a lot of time writing it up.” 

If elected, he says he would vote against any such measure and would be open discussion to reconsider the country’s territories to become states. 

Currently, four of the five inhabited U.S. territories — Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — have been granted U.S. citizenship through acts of Congress. People born in American Samoa are considered American nationals but are not automatically granted citizenship status. 

Powers and Murphy, as well as candidate Douglas Crockett — who did not respond for comment prior to publication — will first face each other in the Aug. 4 primary election before facing Griffith in November. 

Crockett did not respond to a message left for him last week.

‘What the Flock’ forum set for tonight

Adam Murphy, the congressional candidate, will be one of two Democratic office seekers who will be part of a topic getting much regional attention in recent weeks — surveillance and Flock cameras.

Murphy and Ed Hertling, who is running for Montgomery County sheriff, will speak at the forum, titled “What the Flock,” which will be held tonight, July 27, at the Bull & Bones Brewhaus & Grill from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in Blacksburg.

According to the Virginia Crime Commission, 159 Virginia law enforcement agencies use some form of an Automatic License Plate Recognition surveillance network, giving officers access to large amounts of vehicle tracking data during active investigations, including data collected by Flock Safety cameras.

Law enforcement agencies must provide substantial information for the use of this surveillance technology, according to a Virginia law passed in 2025 but an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO found that several agencies offer vague or inconsistent justifications for their searches. Cardinal News detailed the issue in its State of Surveillance report.

Murphy is one of three Democratic candidates running in an Aug. 4 primary, along with Joy Powers and Douglas Crockett. The winner will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. 

Hertling will face Christiansburg police Lt. Tim Brown and former county sheriff’s office Lt. Greg Warden in the primary. The winner will face interim Sheriff Robert Page, who won the Republican “firehouse” primary in June. 

“In about two years that I used the Flock cameras, it never really helped me file the case,” said Hertling, who formerly served as county sheriff’s captain. 

“I looked at the number of cases that we have used that system successfully, and you weigh that against the overwhelming public sentiment against them, and, uh, and that’s how I keep up my decision” — referring to his announcement on Facebook to remove all Flock cameras in the county if elected. 

The post New River Valley Field Notes: Radford Arsenal incinerator completion now set for 2027 appeared first on Cardinal News.

Buchanan County Public Schools were recently targeted by a scam that misdirected a payment intended for a contractor working on the county’s new high school, the school division announced Friday.

The school division immediately contacted local law enforcement, who engaged federal authorities, according to a news release sent to reporters by Superintendent Sherry Fletcher.

Multiple investigations are underway, including by the FBI and the Buchanan County School Board, according to the release. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment. 

Friday’s announcement said that through “swift response, the scheme was largely thwarted and most of the targeted funds are being returned.” 

The news release did not say how much money had been stolen or how much had been recovered, and Fletcher declined to provide more information. The local weekly newspaper, The Voice, reported this week that the school system initially lost $4.6 million. 

None of the Buchanan County School Board’s seven members have responded to emails requesting comment about the incident.

Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, who represents Buchanan County, said he also had not heard from county or school officials.

The announcement also said the school division has engaged outside legal counsel as well as cybersecurity experts to guide response and remediation efforts. Attorneys Benjamin Sweet of Grundy, Kellam Parks of Parks Zeigler law firm of Virginia Beach and John Danyluk of Gentry Locke were copied on Friday’s announcement, though Fletcher did not clarify their role.

Danyluk, who is described as “an expert in data privacy and cybersecurity” on his firm’s website, was also listed as the media contact on the news release. He did not immediately respond to questions sent via email and a call Friday.

The division has notified the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has contributed more than $92 million to construction of Southern Gap High School.

The school, set to open next month following its July 2024 groundbreaking, is meant to replace the county’s four older high schools and consolidate students in a modern 200,000-square-foot facility. 

Though it’s not clear precisely what happened in Buchanan County, school divisions nationwide have increasingly become vulnerable to scammers.

An Arkansas school district lost more than $3.2 million through a cybersecurity hack earlier this year, after district officials processed a wire transfer for what was believed to be a legitimate vendor as part of the Pine Bluff School District’s ongoing construction projects, KATV reported.

In California, a “phony construction vendor” was accused of stealing more than $900,000 for two school projects from the Riverside Unified School District in 2024, The Press Enterprise reported. 

In some instances, law enforcement is available to recover lost funds, or school division insurance covers the loss. Often, local agencies face calls for improved control and updated fraud training.

The post Buchanan County schools targeted by school construction scam appeared first on Cardinal News.

Buchanan County Public Schools were recently targeted by a scam that misdirected a payment intended for a contractor working on the county’s new high school, the school division announced Friday.

The school division immediately contacted local law enforcement, who engaged federal authorities, according to a news release sent to reporters by Superintendent Sherry Fletcher.

Multiple investigations are underway, including by the FBI and the Buchanan County School Board, according to the release. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment. 

Friday’s announcement said that through “swift response, the scheme was largely thwarted and most of the targeted funds are being returned.” 

The news release did not say how much money had been stolen or how much had been recovered, and Fletcher declined to provide more information. The local weekly newspaper, The Voice, reported this week that the school system initially lost $4.6 million. 

None of the Buchanan County School Board’s seven members have responded to emails requesting comment about the incident.

Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, who represents Buchanan County, said he also had not heard from county or school officials.

The announcement also said the school division has engaged outside legal counsel as well as cybersecurity experts to guide response and remediation efforts. Attorneys Benjamin Sweet of Grundy, Kellam Parks of Parks Zeigler law firm of Virginia Beach and John Danyluk of Gentry Locke were copied on Friday’s announcement, though Fletcher did not clarify their role.

Danyluk, who is described as “an expert in data privacy and cybersecurity” on his firm’s website, was also listed as the media contact on the news release. He did not immediately respond to questions sent via email and a call Friday.

The division has notified the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has contributed more than $92 million to construction of Southern Gap High School.

The school, set to open next month following its July 2024 groundbreaking, is meant to replace the county’s four older high schools and consolidate students in a modern 200,000-square-foot facility. 

Though it’s not clear precisely what happened in Buchanan County, school divisions nationwide have increasingly become vulnerable to scammers.

An Arkansas school district lost more than $3.2 million through a cybersecurity hack earlier this year, after district officials processed a wire transfer for what was believed to be a legitimate vendor as part of the Pine Bluff School District’s ongoing construction projects, KATV reported.

In California, a “phony construction vendor” was accused of stealing more than $900,000 for two school projects from the Riverside Unified School District in 2024, The Press Enterprise reported. 

In some instances, law enforcement is available to recover lost funds, or school division insurance covers the loss. Often, local agencies face calls for improved control and updated fraud training.

The post Buchanan County schools targeted by school construction scam appeared first on Cardinal News.

Most Danville and Pittsylvania residents spoke against data centers at a Thursday evening event that was part of a listening tour hosted by state Sens. Louise Lucas and Mamie Locke. 

The Democratic lawmakers have been traveling around the state to gather local perspectives on data centers. This was the first stop on the tour outside of Virginia’s urban crescent.

The industry is increasingly interested in Southside Virginia, as Northern Virginia, which has more data centers than anywhere else in the world, runs out of land and electric grid capacity to support them. 

Pittsylvania is anticipating a massive AI data center project at its Berry Hill megasite, a 3,528-acre industrial park. 

There has been no formal announcement of the project yet, but according to figures from a local performance agreement, it could be the largest economic development announcement in Southside history. 

Stack Infrastructure, a Colorado-based data center developer, plans to bring $100 billion in investment and more than 2,500 jobs with salaries of around $80,000 to Southside through this project, according to the document.

Residents at the meeting mostly expressed concerns about the environmental impacts of data centers, transparency around local decision-making, and costs being passed on to ratepayers.

“I don’t want anybody to paint a rosy picture and tell me that we’re going to get $100 billion and just sail into the blue heaven,” said Beverly Richardson. “I care about what happens to my neighbor. I care that my neighbors are able to pay their bills and get healthcare, to buy insurance and to buy groceries.”

Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Locke, D-Newport News, both serve on the joint subcommittee for tax policy, which evaluates income, sales and use taxes in the state. 

“We’re here to be informed of how the community is feeling about this, so that when we get in that room, we can begin to discuss how we’re going to address this issue to the benefit of the citizens of the commonwealth, and not the benefit of a data center owner,” Locke said at the event. 

Data center tax exemptions were a hot topic during this year’s General Assembly session, and the main hold-up in passing a state budget. During the session, Lucas was a staunch opponent of data center tax exemptions, pushing them to end next year instead of the original end date of 2035. 

Data centers that meet certain criteria in Virginia, like investing at least $150 million and creating at least 50 jobs, are exempt from paying state retail sales and use tax on computers and other equipment. In economically distressed localities, the criteria are at least $70 million in investment and at least 10 jobs. 

The data center tax exemption costs Virginia about $1.9 billion a year, Locke said. 

“If we’re going to continue to let $1.9 billion simply flow into the hands of a data center, what you’re not getting is the payment for core services,” she said. “If we had $1.9 billion more, we could cover more investments in K-12 education, higher education, childcare, Medicaid, healthcare, transportation, safer communities, housing, all of these things.”

In an interview before the event, Lucas said data centers, like all other businesses in Virginia, should “pay their fair share.”

“There’s about to be a $100 billion facility here? Yeah, they can pay their taxes,” she said. 

The state budget was finally passed in June, after months of debate, and kept tax exemptions in place for data centers. 

This allowed the Stack project at Berry Hill to move forward. Kevin Hughes, chief external affairs officer of Stack Americas, said ending the tax exemptions early would have jeopardized the project. 

A letter sent to Lucas from local officials said that the Stack project is the “product of years of deliberate local planning about how and where our region grows.”

The letter said that local governments should retain the ability to make decisions about data center development, and that statewide mandates or restrictions put rural localities at a disadvantage. 

The data center tax exemption is an “effective and consistent policy,” said the letter, which was signed by Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones, chair of the Regional Industrial Facility Authority Vic Ingram and chairman of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors Robert Tucker. 

“We encourage you and your fellow legislators to avoid a binary discussion about whether or not Virginia should allow data center investment, and to instead work towards a set of policies that encourage smart, thoughtful, high-quality investment like that which we are pursuing in the Southern Virginia Megasite,” the letter states. 

Lucas and Locke listened to more than 20 residents speak at the two-hour event before offering responses at the end. 

“We’re trying to make sure … that the people who are voting on how these issues are addressed in terms of regulation going forward, they hear your voices,” Lucas said. “We’re here to make sure that we take your voices back to that committee and let them know that whatever they’re selling, we ain’t buying.”

The post Residents share data center concerns with state senators during listening tour stop in Danville  appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is a traditional military cadence used as a marching song that has gained recent viral popularity in the age of social media.

 It is called “I Left My Home” and it mostly goes like this:

“Your daddy was home when you left (you’re right)
Your mama was home when you left (you’re right)
Your sister was home when you left (you’re right)
Your brother was home when you left (you’re right)
The dog was home when you left (you’re right)
The cat was home when you left (you’re right)
The fish was home when you left (you’re right)
Your daddy, your mama, your brother, your sister,
The dog, the cat, the fish was home when you left (you’re right)
And that’s reason you left (you’re right)
I left my home (I left my home)
To join the arm—-y (to join the arm—-y)
I left my home (I left my home)
To join the arm—-y (to join the arm—-y)
The day I left (the day I left)
My mama cried (my mama cried)
She thought that I (she thought that I)
Would surely die (would surely die)”

Selfless service

Claude Albert Dewberry left his family farm in Central Virginia in 1940 at the age of 25 to join the U.S. Army.

He never made it home.

Until now.

Dewberry survived the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines and endured two more torturous years as a prisoner of war before he was killed aboard a Japanese ship in 1945 eight months short of the end of World War II in the Pacific Theater.

Saturday, 81 years after he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, the remains of PFC Dewberry will be laid to rest in a family plot in a small cemetery in the Pittsylvania County community of Hurt.

On what would have been his 111th birthday.

Claude was born July 25, 1915, in Pittsburgh, the second of nine children blessed to Albert Sidney Dewberry and Katie Bell Wilkinson. His father was a bridge builder, eventually moving back to Virginia and setting up a permanent homestead in Hurt, just south of the Pittsylvania-Campbell county line.

Dewberry attended Hill Grove Elementary School and Gretna High School but did not graduate, instead choosing to enter the workforce at Burlington Mills across the Roanoke River in the nearby town of Altavista.

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe and subsequent expansion of hostilities by Axis powers permeating the American consciousness, he enlisted in the Army in 1940 at the age of 25.

His family would never see him again.

Duty

PFC Dewberry was stationed in the Philippines in 1942 when he was wounded in battle. A short convalescence sent him back into the combat.

On April 9, 1942, while serving with the medical detachment of the 194th Tank Battalion on the Bataan Peninsula, Dewberry was among a U.S. force completely overrun by a devastating Japanese attack. The result was the largest force in American military history to surrender, some 12,000 soldiers along with approximately 66,000 Filipino troops.

Already lacking sufficient food, water, medicine, munitions and sleep — and shellshocked by a stunning military defeat — Dewberry and the other prisoners were forced to march through mud and the jungle approximately 65 miles from the southern tip of the peninsula to the village of San Fernando.

The conditions were a living hell. It is estimated that more than 10,000 men — mostly Filipinos  — died on the march of malaria, thirst, starvation, dysentery from drinking filthy water, exhaustion from what was known as the “sun treatment” or inhumane cruelty at the hands of the Japanese guards who sometimes shot prisoners for getting out of marching formation.

One month after the Bataan surrender, Dewberry’s mother received a letter from the Army stating that all personnel serving in the Philippines would be considered “missing in action” for a period 12 months from the surrender of Corregidor on May 7, 1942, unless other information came to light.

The POWs were taken to Camp O’Donnell on Luzon Island, where it is estimated that 20,000 men died in the first two months of their imprisonment. Camp O’Donnell closed in January 1943 and most of the Americans were transferred to Cabanatuan POW camp, where thousands more died of starvation and disease.

On Feb. 21, 1943, the Army sent another message to Dewberry’s mother that her son “is now a prisoner of war of the Japanese Government in the Philippine Islands.”

Dewberry was transferred to Bilibid Prison in Manila in October 1944.

World War II was 11 months from concluding, but he would not see the end of the conflict.

Personal courage

When the tide turned in the Pacific Theater toward the American side and U.S. forces advanced on the Philippines, the Japanese in late 1944 decided to transfer POWs by ship to Japan or other territories.

The POWs called them “Hell ships.”

Dewberry boarded the Oryoku Maru. But unaware that 1,619 POWs were crammed into the cargo holds of the vessel, bombers from a nearby U.S. aircraft carrier attacked the ship on Dec. 15 and it sank in Subic Bay.

A chaplain on the sinking ship offered the following prayer:

“Father forgive them. They know not what they do.”

The Japanese government reported that 942 POWs aboard the Oryoku Maru were killed, and Dewberry mistakenly was listed among the dead. As a result, the Army sent the following telegram to his mother in Virginia on July 23, 1945:

“THE SECRETARY OF WAR DEEPLY REGRETA [sic] TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON PFC DEWBERRY CLAUDE A. WAS KILLED IN ACTION IN PACIFIC AREA 15 DEC 44 WHILE BEING TRANSPORTED ABOARD A JAPANESE VESSEL CONFIRMING LETTER FOLLOWS.”

The following day, the Army issued a letter to Dewberry’s mother that provided little more clarity:

“Nine hundred and forty-two of the prisoners of war, among them your son, are officially reported by the Japanese to have lost their lives at the time. … I regret that the known circumstances and reports received offer no hope that your son survived this catastrophe. He will be carried on the records of the War Department as killed in action 15 December 1944.”

However, the information was incorrect. Dewberry was aboard the Oryoku Maru, but he survived and had been transferred to a steamship called the Enoura Maru.

The Enoura Maru suffered the same fate. Allied planes destroyed the vessel on Jan. 9, 1945, at Takao Harbor in Formosa (now Taiwan) and Dewberry was killed.

His mother received another dispatch more than one year later on Sept. 27, 1946, this time from Brigadier Gen. H.B. Lewis, the acting adjutant general of the Army:

“Additional information has now been received in the War Department which states that your son had been transferred from the prisoner of war ship ‘Oryoku Maru’ after bombing of that ship on 15 December 1944, to the Japanese prisoner of war steamship ‘Enoura Maru’ which was subsequently bombed and sunk by allied planes on 9 January 1945 in Takao Harbor, Takao, Formosa. Therefore, on the basis of the additional information which has been received, the records of the War Department have been amended to show that he was killed in action on 9 January 1945.

“The added confusion caused by the conflicting reports is deeply regretted, however, I am sure you will understand that reports furnishes [sic] by the enemy government involve many difficulties and require intensive investigation by the War Department.”

By this time Katie Bell Dewberry was a single mother. Her husband, Albert, died in 1937 at age 50 when the oldest Dewberry child was 23 and the youngest was 4. The couple lost a young daughter, Phyllis, at the age of 5.

She remained the matriarch of the Dewberry family for 48 years after Albert’s death.

Saturday, PFC Dewberry’s remains will be buried in the family plot alongside his father, mother, younger sisters Phyllis (1917-22) and Betty (1931-2017) and younger brother Earl (1923-2012).

And it is happening largely because of a family that never completely gave up hope.

Honor

Dewberry’s younger brother, Sid, was widely known as a founding partner of the Dewberry corporation, a civil engineering, surveying and planning business that now has more than 50 offices nationwide.

Engineering might have been Sid Dewberry’s life’s work, but he had another life mission. A U.S. Army veteran who served from 1945-47, he spent his later years consumed with claiming the remains of his older brother.

Because Claude was unmarried and had no children, a geneticist needed DNA from a known living male relative such as a brother, a paternal uncle or paternal nephew in order to match a Y chromosome.

Sid Dewberry died in 2022 at the age of 94 but not before he supplied DNA samples to the Army. So did PFC Dewberry’s nephew Raymond Dewberry Jr., whose father, Ray Sr., was born in 1920.

Thirteen months ago, the science provided a hit.

On June 11, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced it had identified a skull, part of a femur and metatarsal bones as belonging to PFC Claude Dewberry.

He finally would be coming home.

“Eighty-one years in the making … I just can’t describe how it felt,” said Carolyn Boyd, one of Dewberry’s nieces who lives in the Altavista area. “It was the last thing on my mind. You never give up hope, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Just out of the blue. I can’t believe how it’s all coming together. It amazes me.”

How on earth did DNA from the East Coast of the United States get matched to a fallen soldier half a world away?

Information posted at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond shows that “in May 1946 an American Graves Registration Command Search and Recovery Team exhumed a mass grave on a beach at Takao, Formosa and recovered 311 bodies.”

The unknown remains could not be identified and were reburied in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Sometime between October 2022 and July 2023 the DPAA disinterred the remains and sent them to a laboratory for further analysis. According to the War Memorial display, “the laboratory analysis and the total circumstantial evidence available identified one set of the remains as those of Dewberry.”

DPAA protocol calls for notification to be made to the oldest living relative. That honor fell to Bill Dewberry Jr., whose father Willis was the oldest of the nine Dewberry children.

Now 88 and living in Newark, Delaware, Bill Dewberry said the hair stood up on the back of his neck when he opened the letter, which resulted in a subsequent telephone call with DPAA personnel.

“I was extremely pleased because Sid had spent so much time and effort trying to track down our uncle,” Bill Dewberry said.

The 88-year-old is the only living relative who had any contact with the fallen soldier although he was too young to recall it.

“I’m sorry I can’t remember being held by him,” Bill Dewberry said. “I was [2] when he was still around in the Hurt area, so I’m sure he held me in his arms.”

The DPAA held a thorough, 90-minute Zoom call with family members in April when they were able to view photographs of PFC Dewberry’s remains. The family also was briefed on aspects of the recovery and the protocol for the return of the remains to Virginia.

One week ago, on July 17, Dewberry’s remains were flown to Raleigh, North Carolina, the same city where at age 25 he enlisted in the U.S. Army on Jan. 10, 1940. As the American Airlines commercial flight approached the gate on the tarmac at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, it was hailed with a water salute, a traditional symbolic gesture used to convey respect, honor and celebration.

Dewberry’s great-nephew, Rob Dewberry, who lives in Raleigh, witnessed the solemn ceremony.

“There were several veterans there who met us and shook our hands,” he said. “There was an honor guard. There were nine active service members who escorted us to the gate. At the gate where the plane was arriving they made an announcement to all the people in that part of the airport just to give a summary about Claude, the time he served and what happened to him.

“The honor guard marched to where the casket was. It was a very formal thing where they were in formation and on command. They picked up the casket and went over to the hearse and put it in in a very formal way and saluted. We were all there with our hands over our hearts.”

Rob Dewberry was joined at the airport by his wife and their 7-year-old son, Sid.

“Claude had a brother named Sid, and his dad went by Sid,” he said. “We didn’t name our son after this necessarily, but it was still neat that there was a Sid Dewberry there to receive Claude.”

PFC Dewberry then began the final leg of his historic journey as a hearse transported him across the state line to Finch & Finch Funeral & Crematory Service in Altavista. Virginia State Police, flanked by members of the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle team, escorted the vehicle on the final 50 miles of the trip, arriving in Campbell County at close to 11 p.m.

“We didn’t stop at one stoplight,” Finch & Finch director Trey Finch said.

Official estimates indicate approximately 1,000 of the 10,000 to 12,000 American servicemen who participated in the Bataan Death March died or were killed along the route. It is estimated that roughly 3,500 who survived the long march also survived the war.

Among the survivors was Harold K. Johnson, who not only survived the Bataan Death March but also made it alive off the Enoura Maru, the same Enoura Maru where Dewberry was killed. Johnson later achieved the rank of four-star general and eventually served as the Army chief of staff under President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War from 1964-68.

Johnson, who died in 1983 at age 71, has a direct family connection to Central Virginia.

He was the father of the late Bob Johnson, who served as the men’s head basketball coach at Emory & Henry University in Washington County for 27 seasons and also was the school’s athletic director.

Bob Johnson’s son, Casey, has been a high school basketball coach at a variety of stops in Virginia.

Currently, Casey Johnson is the head coach at, yes, Altavista High School, which sits 1 mile up the hill from the funeral home where PFC Dewberry’s remains have awaited final victory.

It is indeed a small, small world.

Respect

Saturday services for Dewberry at New Prospect Baptist Church in Hurt will begin with a 10 a.m. flag ceremony conducted by soldiers from Fort Lee. New Prospect pastor Brady Willis will officiate an 11 a.m. funeral service, followed by the internment of the remains along with a replica of Dewberry’s Army uniform and its adornments.

His niece, Boyd, will make the short drive to the church, carrying mixed emotions.

“We’re happy that he’s coming home. It’s sad, but it’s a happy occasion,” she said.

For service and bravery, the Army posthumously awarded Dewberry the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star and POW Medal; and he also is remembered as a World War II Gold Star Veteran. The extended family plans to put all Dewberry’s medals and commendations on display at the Dewberry firm’s corporate headquarters in Fairfax.

Finch, a fifth-generation owner of the Altavista mortuary, thinks Saturday’s service might not be the first held for PFC Dewberry, whose mother had a grave marker installed in the family plot not long after the Army informed her of Claude’s death.

“I don’t have records back that far, but I would assume we did a funeral for him in 1945,” Finch said.

Katie, who died in 1985, is buried at the church alongside her husband.

Perhaps she believed that one day they would be reunited with their beloved son.

Or perhaps “believed” is not a strong enough word.

“She knew,” Boyd said.

PFC Dewberry’s mama and daddy have been home awaiting his return.

Welcome back.

The post He survived the Bataan Death March, only to be killed by mistake near war’s end. Now he’s coming home to Pittsylvania County. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hollywood has done what generations of English teachers could not: Get people interested in the classics. Take director Christopher Nolan, add in a star-studded cast that starts with Matt Damon, and next thing you know translations of Homer’s ancient Greek text “The Odyssey” are topping best-seller lists again. The movie version isn’t doing so badly, either, grossing $264.1 million on its opening weekend.

I would be practically derelict in my duties if I did not try to find some way to tie “The Odyssey” to what’s happening here in Virginia.

This would be easier if we were covering upstate New York: We could simply trace the route from Troy to Ithaca — the New York cities, that is, not the ones that Odysseus spent 10 years trying to traverse. We’re not in New York, though; we’re in Virginia. Fortunately, we have a Troy, too — a small community in Fluvanna County. Alas, no one has bothered to name a community here Ithaca. However, there is an estate in Henry County that is known as Ithaca, although some know it simply as the R.L. Stone House, after its original owner, one of the founders of Bassett Furniture. For our purposes, this will do — we will take a metaphorical trip from our Troy to our Ithaca and see what challenges we find along the way.

Odysseus had to deal with drugged-out lotus eaters, an ill-tempered cyclops, sirens who tempted him to sail to his doom and many other dangers. To my knowledge, we won’t encounter any of those things here in Virginia, but we will encounter challenges of other sorts. Spoiler alert: They mostly deal with energy and data centers, which some may think are just as difficult to deal with as the creatures Odysseus had to work his way past.

So, let’s begin. Of course, if we really had an Odysseus here in Virginia, he’d likely go by the nickname Odie. You remember good ol’ Odie. Whatever happened to him anyway? Always kept a good hound dog around.

Fluvanna County: How do we replace natural gas?

Our Odie wants to take the quickest way home, so from Troy he ought to get on Interstate 64 at Zion Crossroads, go west to Charlottesville, then south on U.S. 29. Odie, though, is not just in a hurry; he’s a proud man, and his hubris often gets the better of him, both in the original telling and ours. Odie thinks he can outsmart everyone else, so he’s going to try to take a shortcut, and we all know how shortcuts work out. 

This one through Fluvanna County will take him near Scottsville — and the Tenaska natural gas plant that’s on the Fluvanna side of the James River at Scottsville. That plant has been in the news lately because Tenaska wants to build a second natural gas plant there, and to say that’s been controversial is like saying the sirens can keep a tune. It’s stirred up exactly the kind of opposition you’d expect to such a thing: complaints about carbon emissions. Despite that opposition, the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors has voted 4-1 to approve the project, which now awaits regulatory approval.

This is more than just some local controversy. It’s part of a statewide, even nationwide, debate over energy. The Virginia Clean Economy Act mandates the state transition to a carbon-free electric grid by 2050, which would seem to rule out natural gas. However, the act makes an exception if natural gas is required for “reliability,” which is why we now see multiple gas plants proposed across Virginia — Chesterfield County, Cumberland County, maybe some I’m missing.

Here’s where aspiration runs into reality: At any given moment, more than 40% of the power on our electric grid comes from natural gas. That’s a lot of power to replace with something else.

Some inconvenient numbers: The Solar Database produced by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia shows that Fluvanna County has approved 13 megawatts of solar power. The proposed natural gas plant would generate 1,540 megawatts. Fluvanna would have to approve 118.4 times as much solar to get to the level of that natural gas plant. Now, obviously we wouldn’t expect one county to do that all by itself. However, that one gas plant would churn out nearly as many megawatts from one location as we’ll encounter from solar on our entire Troy-to-Ithaca trip. That might be an odd metric, but here’s a more conventional one. The existing natural gas plant in Fluvanna is measured at 1,011 megawatts. Add that and the proposed one, and Fluvanna’s natural gas operations would be pumping out 2,550 megawatts. That would be more megawatts in a single location than Virginia approved in solar across all of Virginia last year (2,233 megawatts).

Of course, that’s also a lot more carbon emissions versus none for solar, but the point is Virginia would have to double its solar approvals just to equal that one natural gas plant — and then some, because solar facilities only generate power when the sun is shining while natural gas can run around the clock. That’s why solar projects are considered inefficient; they take up a lot of land for the amount of power they produce.

We’ve barely gotten started on our journey, and already we’ve encountered one of the central challenges with the energy transition we’re trying to pull off: How do we replace all this natural gas? We won’t find the answer in Fluvanna County, but we will find the question.

Nelson County: How do we plan for the future?

We move on to Nelson County, where the big news recently was the county’s purchase of 683 acres along U.S. 29 for economic development purposes. The county says there’s no specific project in mind; this is just planning for the future. Naturally, given the times, the land acquisition has stirred concern that a data center might be on the way, and polls show that Democrats and Republicans alike now despise the facilities, despite the tax revenues they produce. County officials say not to worry — that data centers aren’t allowed under Nelson County ordinances. Still, people worry.

Nelson County’s land purchase also highlights one of the challenges facing many localities: a misunderstanding of how slow-moving economic development often is.

North District Supervisor Cameron Lenahan voted for the purchase but said he wants to see a plan to develop the land in five years or get rid of it. “If this is to bring in jobs to Nelson County, good-paying jobs and not bottom-of-the-barrel jobs for economic development, I’d be on board, but this has got to be a five-year plan,” he said. That is completely unrealistic: Roanoke bought land for the Centre for Industry and Technology in 1982, and some tracts are still undeveloped. Botetourt County bought the land for the Greenfield Business Center in 1995, and the land sat vacant for almost two decades before it finally began to be developed. Danville and Pittsylvania County bought the land for the Southern Virginia Megasite in 2008, and it sat empty until Microporous started construction for a battery plant this year.

Had those localities not acted when they did, though, the land might have been developed for other purposes — and there would have been no large tracts ready when companies came calling. Both Democratic and Republican administrations in Virginia have pushed to make sure that large tracts are available for economic development prospects. That’s what Nelson County is doing, although one of its own supervisors seems not to understand that economic development is a long game — longer than Odysseus’ journey.

Our Odie might not live to see this investment for Nelson County pay off, but his children might.

Amherst County: Taxes going up but options to offset them are controversial

One of the most famous scenes in “The Odyssey” — both Homer’s version and the movie version — comes when Odysseus faces a choice of how to navigate around three dangers. First, there are the sirens who are trying to lure sailors to their doom. Then sailors must make a seemingly impossible navigational choice. On the one side, the ravenous six-headed monster Scylla. On the other, the ship-swallowing whirlpool Charybdis. Amherst County faces choices roughly similar in their unpopularity.

Assessments have gone up. The board of supervisors has cut the tax rate, but even so, taxes are still going up for many property owners. Enter one possible remedy, possibly two. Petitions are being circulated to put a referendum on the fall ballot to allow a Rosie’s Gaming Emporium (there’s a similar drive underway in Pulaski County). Amherst voters rejected a Rosie’s by a wide margin in 2021; will the new assessments cause them to reconsider?

Meanwhile, there are persistent rumors that a big revenue generator might want to locate in Amherst — and not everyone is happy about that. Such a revenue generator would be a data center. (Spoiler: This is going to be a recurring theme.) There are no specific proposals before the supervisors, but this week the planning commission approved an ordinance that would ban data centers by right and require them to seek specific approval from the supervisors.

Campbell County: An energy center faces energy decisions

From Amherst, Odie would cross the James River on U.S. 29 and skirt the eastern edge of Lynchburg. I’ll resist the temptation to dwell on Lynchburg’s political drama (no Republicans on the fall ballot for the city council, but instead two rival slates of Republicans running as independents, which would seem to give an advantage to the three Democrats). Instead, let’s talk about what Odie finds in Campbell County when he passes into that locality.

Campbell County is home to a major Appalachian Power substation at Joshua Falls. It factors into the state’s energy debate two ways. First, there’s the proposed Valley Link transmission line that would run from Joshua Falls to a proposed substation in Culpeper County and would be connected to the Dominion Energy grid. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.) The purpose of this proposed line would be to move power from the Midwest to Northern Virginia, where data centers are guzzling electrons in record numbers. Not surprisingly, this power line is quite controversial in the counties it would run through. Most of that opposition seems to be in places other than Campbell County, but that hardly matters. Campbell County helps illustrate how the power grid is connected — and how if we talk about putting more energy on the grid, that means we need more power lines. Campbell is one of the places where the theoretical becomes real.

Campbell, meanwhile, is facing another energy decision: what zoning to have for a proposed nuclear plant. Appalachian has proposed to build a small nuclear reactor — an SMR, as the industry calls them, small modular reactors. The greater Lynchburg area knows more about nuclear energy than most because two big nuclear companies — BWX Technologies and Framatone — call the region home. Will that make Campbell a politically easy place to build a nuclear plant? We’ll see.

Bedford County: Solar farms not welcome

Odysseus runs into problems with the sun god when his hungry crew slaughters some of Helios’ sacred cattle. When our Odie enters Bedford County, he’ll enter a county that has its own beef with the sun, so to speak. Bedford County wants no industrial-scale solar.

“If you wanna have solar on your rooftop or on your business or on your own land that is for net metering, that’s okay. But the thousand-acre utility-scale solar arrays, we do have a problem with those,” county administrator Robert Hiss said last year.

Bedford is a county that is tempting state intervention, because the Clean Economy Act requires more solar — a lot more, as we saw above — and the General Assembly is concerned that rural localities aren’t doing their part. Many rural localities, though, either don’t want big solar projects or feel they’ve done their part already.

Bedford is the fifth-largest locality in Virginia by land mass, and the largest with no utility-scale solar facilities. Of the state’s 25 largest counties by physical size, only three don’t have any solar big enough to show up on the Solar Database: Bedford County, Washington County (14^th in size) and Buchanan County (23^rd). At some point, legislators from those power-hungry localities in Northern Virginia may start asking why Bedford isn’t doing its part, and saying “We think solar is ugly and we don’t want it” may not be a sufficient answer. The danger for rural localities is that the state takes over solar siting, in which case Bedford might be a prime candidate for solar facilities.

Franklin County: A ‘flash’ protest over the industry some don’t want in the industrial park

Franklin County hasn’t been keen on solar, either, although it has some. The big controversy there, though, is over the so-called “Project Flash,” a data center that might be headed for the county’s industrial park, the Summit View Business Park. In Northern Virginia, we’ve seen understandable protests against data centers that crowd up against housing developments. However, even the prospect of putting them in industrial parks — be it here in Franklin County or Botetourt County or Wythe County — is exciting opposition. Opponents would seemingly be happy if the land sat vacant and produced no tax revenue rather than see a data center there. At one time that would have been a surprise, but the latest polling shows conservative voters moving just as strongly against data centers as liberals have been.

Henry County: A county with solar farms now feels it has done enough and wants to limit solar development

At last our Odie crosses into his home county. He’ll find that since he’s been gone, Henry County has accepted solar farms — 13 approved projects for 303 megawatts, according to the Solar Database. In all, the county has approved 1,754 acres of solar, which is 1,754 acres more than Bedford has. Not all that is built, but Henry would like to make sure no more is. That could put Henry, much like Bedford, under the state’s magnifying glass. These energy questions quickly become uncomfortable: Rural areas ask why they should be the ones to sacrifice their land and viewsheds just so that Northern Virginia can have data centers. The issue is more complicated than that, but that’s how it’s often framed in rural Virginia. These rural counties didn’t ask Virginia — particularly Northern Virginia — to become a data center capital. Their legislators also didn’t vote for the Clean Economy Act that mandates non-carbon energy — yet these rural areas are now being expected to shoulder some of the load, and many aren’t happy about that.

Remember how Odie started off his odyssey by passing the natural gas plant in Fluvanna County that wants to expand? This is the flip side of that: counties that don’t want to do any more solar — even though state law requires utilities to develop more solar somewhere. Where is that going to be? The prospect of rooftop solar is a great thing, but can it match the numbers that are going to be required to replace natural gas? We have a state government whose policies are at cross-purposes with many of the local governments that also have a say in these decisions.

If Odie has any thoughts on how to solve that dilemma, they go unrecorded. He’s got a house full of unwanted guests waiting for him. In Homer’s version, and the movie — well, some of you already know how that ends. Let’s just say we hope that in our version, Odie calls 911 instead.

Want more political news and analysis? And maybe an odd cultural reference or two? Then sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons.

The post A Virginia odyssey from Troy (in Fluvanna County) to Ithaca (in Henry County) reveals the state’s energy challenges appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hollywood has done what generations of English teachers could not: Get people interested in the classics. Take director Christopher Nolan, add in a star-studded cast that starts with Matt Damon, and next thing you know translations of Homer’s ancient Greek text “The Odyssey” are topping best-seller lists again. The movie version isn’t doing so badly, either, grossing $264.1 million on its opening weekend.

I would be practically derelict in my duties if I did not try to find some way to tie “The Odyssey” to what’s happening here in Virginia.

This would be easier if we were covering upstate New York: We could simply trace the route from Troy to Ithaca — the New York cities, that is, not the ones that Odysseus spent 10 years trying to traverse. We’re not in New York, though; we’re in Virginia. Fortunately, we have a Troy, too — a small community in Fluvanna County. Alas, no one has bothered to name a community here Ithaca. However, there is an estate in Henry County that is known as Ithaca, although some know it simply as the R.L. Stone House, after its original owner, one of the founders of Bassett Furniture. For our purposes, this will do — we will take a metaphorical trip from our Troy to our Ithaca and see what challenges we find along the way.

Odysseus had to deal with drugged-out lotus eaters, an ill-tempered cyclops, sirens who tempted him to sail to his doom and many other dangers. To my knowledge, we won’t encounter any of those things here in Virginia, but we will encounter challenges of other sorts. Spoiler alert: They mostly deal with energy and data centers, which some may think are just as difficult to deal with as the creatures Odysseus had to work his way past.

So, let’s begin. Of course, if we really had an Odysseus here in Virginia, he’d likely go by the nickname Odie. You remember good ol’ Odie. Whatever happened to him anyway? Always kept a good hound dog around.

Fluvanna County: How do we replace natural gas?

Our Odie wants to take the quickest way home, so from Troy he ought to get on Interstate 64 at Zion Crossroads, go west to Charlottesville, then south on U.S. 29. Odie, though, is not just in a hurry; he’s a proud man, and his hubris often gets the better of him, both in the original telling and ours. Odie thinks he can outsmart everyone else, so he’s going to try to take a shortcut, and we all know how shortcuts work out. 

This one through Fluvanna County will take him near Scottsville — and the Tenaska natural gas plant that’s on the Fluvanna side of the James River at Scottsville. That plant has been in the news lately because Tenaska wants to build a second natural gas plant there, and to say that’s been controversial is like saying the sirens can keep a tune. It’s stirred up exactly the kind of opposition you’d expect to such a thing: complaints about carbon emissions. Despite that opposition, the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors has voted 4-1 to approve the project, which now awaits regulatory approval.

This is more than just some local controversy. It’s part of a statewide, even nationwide, debate over energy. The Virginia Clean Economy Act mandates the state transition to a carbon-free electric grid by 2050, which would seem to rule out natural gas. However, the act makes an exception if natural gas is required for “reliability,” which is why we now see multiple gas plants proposed across Virginia — Chesterfield County, Cumberland County, maybe some I’m missing.

Here’s where aspiration runs into reality: At any given moment, more than 40% of the power on our electric grid comes from natural gas. That’s a lot of power to replace with something else.

Some inconvenient numbers: The Solar Database produced by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia shows that Fluvanna County has approved 13 megawatts of solar power. The proposed natural gas plant would generate 1,540 megawatts. Fluvanna would have to approve 118.4 times as much solar to get to the level of that natural gas plant. Now, obviously we wouldn’t expect one county to do that all by itself. However, that one gas plant would churn out nearly as many megawatts from one location as we’ll encounter from solar on our entire Troy-to-Ithaca trip. That might be an odd metric, but here’s a more conventional one. The existing natural gas plant in Fluvanna is measured at 1,011 megawatts. Add that and the proposed one, and Fluvanna’s natural gas operations would be pumping out 2,550 megawatts. That would be more megawatts in a single location than Virginia approved in solar across all of Virginia last year (2,233 megawatts).

Of course, that’s also a lot more carbon emissions versus none for solar, but the point is Virginia would have to double its solar approvals just to equal that one natural gas plant — and then some, because solar facilities only generate power when the sun is shining while natural gas can run around the clock. That’s why solar projects are considered inefficient; they take up a lot of land for the amount of power they produce.

We’ve barely gotten started on our journey, and already we’ve encountered one of the central challenges with the energy transition we’re trying to pull off: How do we replace all this natural gas? We won’t find the answer in Fluvanna County, but we will find the question.

Nelson County: How do we plan for the future?

We move on to Nelson County, where the big news recently was the county’s purchase of 683 acres along U.S. 29 for economic development purposes. The county says there’s no specific project in mind; this is just planning for the future. Naturally, given the times, the land acquisition has stirred concern that a data center might be on the way, and polls show that Democrats and Republicans alike now despise the facilities, despite the tax revenues they produce. County officials say not to worry — that data centers aren’t allowed under Nelson County ordinances. Still, people worry.

Nelson County’s land purchase also highlights one of the challenges facing many localities: a misunderstanding of how slow-moving economic development often is.

North District Supervisor Cameron Lenahan voted for the purchase but said he wants to see a plan to develop the land in five years or get rid of it. “If this is to bring in jobs to Nelson County, good-paying jobs and not bottom-of-the-barrel jobs for economic development, I’d be on board, but this has got to be a five-year plan,” he said. That is completely unrealistic: Roanoke bought land for the Centre for Industry and Technology in 1982, and some tracts are still undeveloped. Botetourt County bought the land for the Greenfield Business Center in 1995, and the land sat vacant for almost two decades before it finally began to be developed. Danville and Pittsylvania County bought the land for the Southern Virginia Megasite in 2008, and it sat empty until Microporous started construction for a battery plant this year.

Had those localities not acted when they did, though, the land might have been developed for other purposes — and there would have been no large tracts ready when companies came calling. Both Democratic and Republican administrations in Virginia have pushed to make sure that large tracts are available for economic development prospects. That’s what Nelson County is doing, although one of its own supervisors seems not to understand that economic development is a long game — longer than Odysseus’ journey.

Our Odie might not live to see this investment for Nelson County pay off, but his children might.

Amherst County: Taxes going up but options to offset them are controversial

One of the most famous scenes in “The Odyssey” — both Homer’s version and the movie version — comes when Odysseus faces a choice of how to navigate around three dangers. First, there are the sirens who are trying to lure sailors to their doom. Then sailors must make a seemingly impossible navigational choice. On the one side, the ravenous six-headed monster Scylla. On the other, the ship-swallowing whirlpool Charybdis. Amherst County faces choices roughly similar in their unpopularity.

Assessments have gone up. The board of supervisors has cut the tax rate, but even so, taxes are still going up for many property owners. Enter one possible remedy, possibly two. Petitions are being circulated to put a referendum on the fall ballot to allow a Rosie’s Gaming Emporium (there’s a similar drive underway in Pulaski County). Amherst voters rejected a Rosie’s by a wide margin in 2021; will the new assessments cause them to reconsider?

Meanwhile, there are persistent rumors that a big revenue generator might want to locate in Amherst — and not everyone is happy about that. Such a revenue generator would be a data center. (Spoiler: This is going to be a recurring theme.) There are no specific proposals before the supervisors, but this week the planning commission approved an ordinance that would ban data centers by right and require them to seek specific approval from the supervisors.

Campbell County: An energy center faces energy decisions

From Amherst, Odie would cross the James River on U.S. 29 and skirt the eastern edge of Lynchburg. I’ll resist the temptation to dwell on Lynchburg’s political drama (no Republicans on the fall ballot for the city council, but instead two rival slates of Republicans running as independents, which would seem to give an advantage to the three Democrats). Instead, let’s talk about what Odie finds in Campbell County when he passes into that locality.

Campbell County is home to a major Appalachian Power substation at Joshua Falls. It factors into the state’s energy debate two ways. First, there’s the proposed Valley Link transmission line that would run from Joshua Falls to a proposed substation in Culpeper County and would be connected to the Dominion Energy grid. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.) The purpose of this proposed line would be to move power from the Midwest to Northern Virginia, where data centers are guzzling electrons in record numbers. Not surprisingly, this power line is quite controversial in the counties it would run through. Most of that opposition seems to be in places other than Campbell County, but that hardly matters. Campbell County helps illustrate how the power grid is connected — and how if we talk about putting more energy on the grid, that means we need more power lines. Campbell is one of the places where the theoretical becomes real.

Campbell, meanwhile, is facing another energy decision: what zoning to have for a proposed nuclear plant. Appalachian has proposed to build a small nuclear reactor — an SMR, as the industry calls them, small modular reactors. The greater Lynchburg area knows more about nuclear energy than most because two big nuclear companies — BWX Technologies and Framatone — call the region home. Will that make Campbell a politically easy place to build a nuclear plant? We’ll see.

Bedford County: Solar farms not welcome

Odysseus runs into problems with the sun god when his hungry crew slaughters some of Helios’ sacred cattle. When our Odie enters Bedford County, he’ll enter a county that has its own beef with the sun, so to speak. Bedford County wants no industrial-scale solar.

“If you wanna have solar on your rooftop or on your business or on your own land that is for net metering, that’s okay. But the thousand-acre utility-scale solar arrays, we do have a problem with those,” county administrator Robert Hiss said last year.

Bedford is a county that is tempting state intervention, because the Clean Economy Act requires more solar — a lot more, as we saw above — and the General Assembly is concerned that rural localities aren’t doing their part. Many rural localities, though, either don’t want big solar projects or feel they’ve done their part already.

Bedford is the fifth-largest locality in Virginia by land mass, and the largest with no utility-scale solar facilities. Of the state’s 25 largest counties by physical size, only three don’t have any solar big enough to show up on the Solar Database: Bedford County, Washington County (14^th in size) and Buchanan County (23^rd). At some point, legislators from those power-hungry localities in Northern Virginia may start asking why Bedford isn’t doing its part, and saying “We think solar is ugly and we don’t want it” may not be a sufficient answer. The danger for rural localities is that the state takes over solar siting, in which case Bedford might be a prime candidate for solar facilities.

Franklin County: A ‘flash’ protest over the industry some don’t want in the industrial park

Franklin County hasn’t been keen on solar, either, although it has some. The big controversy there, though, is over the so-called “Project Flash,” a data center that might be headed for the county’s industrial park, the Summit View Business Park. In Northern Virginia, we’ve seen understandable protests against data centers that crowd up against housing developments. However, even the prospect of putting them in industrial parks — be it here in Franklin County or Botetourt County or Wythe County — is exciting opposition. Opponents would seemingly be happy if the land sat vacant and produced no tax revenue rather than see a data center there. At one time that would have been a surprise, but the latest polling shows conservative voters moving just as strongly against data centers as liberals have been.

Henry County: A county with solar farms now feels it has done enough and wants to limit solar development

At last our Odie crosses into his home county. He’ll find that since he’s been gone, Henry County has accepted solar farms — 13 approved projects for 303 megawatts, according to the Solar Database. In all, the county has approved 1,754 acres of solar, which is 1,754 acres more than Bedford has. Not all that is built, but Henry would like to make sure no more is. That could put Henry, much like Bedford, under the state’s magnifying glass. These energy questions quickly become uncomfortable: Rural areas ask why they should be the ones to sacrifice their land and viewsheds just so that Northern Virginia can have data centers. The issue is more complicated than that, but that’s how it’s often framed in rural Virginia. These rural counties didn’t ask Virginia — particularly Northern Virginia — to become a data center capital. Their legislators also didn’t vote for the Clean Economy Act that mandates non-carbon energy — yet these rural areas are now being expected to shoulder some of the load, and many aren’t happy about that.

Remember how Odie started off his odyssey by passing the natural gas plant in Fluvanna County that wants to expand? This is the flip side of that: counties that don’t want to do any more solar — even though state law requires utilities to develop more solar somewhere. Where is that going to be? The prospect of rooftop solar is a great thing, but can it match the numbers that are going to be required to replace natural gas? We have a state government whose policies are at cross-purposes with many of the local governments that also have a say in these decisions.

If Odie has any thoughts on how to solve that dilemma, they go unrecorded. He’s got a house full of unwanted guests waiting for him. In Homer’s version, and the movie — well, some of you already know how that ends. Let’s just say we hope that in our version, Odie calls 911 instead.

Want more political news and analysis? And maybe an odd cultural reference or two? Then sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons.

The post A Virginia odyssey from Troy (in Fluvanna County) to Ithaca (in Henry County) reveals the state’s energy challenges appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia marked a milestone earlier this week: Voter registrar offices across the state were open for early voting on Sunday.

This was the first experience with a new law that mandates voting offices be open for two Sundays before an election — in this case, the Aug. 4 primaries for which early voting is now underway. They’ll be open again this Sunday, too. In the past, registrars were allowed to open on Sunday if they wanted to; now they’re required to do so.

How did the first Sunday go? That depends entirely on where you look — and what primaries were happening there.

Overall, the Sunday voting appears to have been a success. Across the state, 868 people showed up to vote on Sunday, according to figures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. That was more than any single weekday last week except Friday. The in-person voting last week ranged from 731 to 864, then jumped to 1,048 on Friday.

In some large places, such as Arlington County, the Sunday voting was the busiest day of the early voting period. In Arlington, Sunday voting was so popular that more people showed up to vote (287) than had shown up in person to vote in the entire previous week (265).

In much of the state, though, absolutely no one showed up to vote. In 62 of the state’s 133 localities, nearly half, no in-person votes were recorded, according to the data VPAP collected from the Department of Elections.

This map shows how many in-person votes were recorded in each locality on Sunday, July 19. Hover your cursor over each one to get the exact number.

Most of the places with no voters were rural counties, particularly those west of the Blue Ridge. However, some cities also recorded no voters, according to the VPAP data. These included Norfolk and Portsmouth. They can be explained by the primaries on the ballot. Both of those are heavily Democratic cities, and there are no Democratic primaries on the ballot there, just a Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Another populous county with Democratic leanings, Prince William County, also showed no voters on Sunday, even though Republicans there had multiple reasons to vote — both the Senate primary and either a 7^th District Republican primary or a 10^th District Republican primary, depending on which part of the county they live in.

Democrats have historically embraced early voting with more enthusiasm than Republicans, so it’s no surprise that we saw higher voting in Democratic primaries, where they’re being held, than in Republican primaries. For instance, Buchanan County is one of the most Republican counties in the state, typically voting 80% or more Republican. In this year’s primary, Buchanan voters have two ballots to choose from: a Republican ballot in that Senate contest or a Democratic ballot for the 9^th District House nomination. Despite being a Republican stronghold, only one Republican voter showed up on Sunday, while two Democrats did. We shouldn’t read that as Democrats now having a 2-1 advantage in the county, just that Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans.

Likewise, Floyd County has long been a Republican county, but on Sunday no Republicans showed up to vote. However, 20 Democrats did — an unusually large number compared to some communities. Henrico County — part of which is in the 1^st District, which has a seven-way Democratic primary for a congressional nomination — saw 17 Democratic voters and four Republican ones.

The two localities with the most Sunday voters were Arlington (298) and Alexandria (128). Both are strongly Democratic localities. They’re also in the 8^th House District, which has the heaviest-voting primary in the state so far — incumbent Democrat Don Beyer is facing four challengers. More votes have been cast in the 8^th District Democratic primary than any other congressional primary in the state this year, and the Sunday voting saw both localities produce their biggest day yet of in-person early voters. In all, almost half — 49.0% — of the in-person Sunday voters in the state were in those two localities. (Arlington also has a Democratic primary for county board of supervisors, which further explains the spike in interest there.)

However, across much of the 1st District, most localities saw no voters, even though that’s home to the state’s second heaviest-voting Democratic primary plus the Republican Senate primary. The Sunday voters in that district were mostly in suburban localities. Chesterfield County, which is partially in the 1st District, saw 31 Democratic voters and 11 Republican ones, both lower than on weekdays. 

Many registrars spent the day processing mail ballots, because many localities recorded mail ballots on Sunday. However, others — including lots of rural localities where voters tend to be Republicans who are resistant to mail balloting or early voting in general — recorded no votes at all, mail or in-person.

This item began as a short blurb intended for our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, but quickly outgrew that as I did more research. This column offers a taste, though, of what you can find in that newsletter, which goes out Friday afternoons. This week, I’ll look at early voting trends across the state and dig deeper into the recent Virginia Commonwealth University poll. Sign up here:

The post For the first time under a new law, Virginia’s election offices were open Sunday. In nearly half the state, no one showed up to vote. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia marked a milestone earlier this week: Voter registrar offices across the state were open for early voting on Sunday.

This was the first experience with a new law that mandates voting offices be open for two Sundays before an election — in this case, the Aug. 4 primaries for which early voting is now underway. They’ll be open again this Sunday, too. In the past, registrars were allowed to open on Sunday if they wanted to; now they’re required to do so.

How did the first Sunday go? That depends entirely on where you look — and what primaries were happening there.

Overall, the Sunday voting appears to have been a success. Across the state, 868 people showed up to vote on Sunday, according to figures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. That was more than any single weekday last week except Friday. The in-person voting last week ranged from 731 to 864, then jumped to 1,048 on Friday.

In some large places, such as Arlington County, the Sunday voting was the busiest day of the early voting period. In Arlington, Sunday voting was so popular that more people showed up to vote (287) than had shown up in person to vote in the entire previous week (265).

In much of the state, though, absolutely no one showed up to vote. In 62 of the state’s 133 localities, nearly half, no in-person votes were recorded, according to the data VPAP collected from the Department of Elections.

This map shows how many in-person votes were recorded in each locality on Sunday, July 19. Hover your cursor over each one to get the exact number.

Most of the places with no voters were rural counties, particularly those west of the Blue Ridge. However, some cities also recorded no voters, according to the VPAP data. These included Norfolk and Portsmouth. They can be explained by the primaries on the ballot. Both of those are heavily Democratic cities, and there are no Democratic primaries on the ballot there, just a Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Another populous county with Democratic leanings, Prince William County, also showed no voters on Sunday, even though Republicans there had multiple reasons to vote — both the Senate primary and either a 7^th District Republican primary or a 10^th District Republican primary, depending on which part of the county they live in.

Democrats have historically embraced early voting with more enthusiasm than Republicans, so it’s no surprise that we saw higher voting in Democratic primaries, where they’re being held, than in Republican primaries. For instance, Buchanan County is one of the most Republican counties in the state, typically voting 80% or more Republican. In this year’s primary, Buchanan voters have two ballots to choose from: a Republican ballot in that Senate contest or a Democratic ballot for the 9^th District House nomination. Despite being a Republican stronghold, only one Republican voter showed up on Sunday, while two Democrats did. We shouldn’t read that as Democrats now having a 2-1 advantage in the county, just that Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans.

Likewise, Floyd County has long been a Republican county, but on Sunday no Republicans showed up to vote. However, 20 Democrats did — an unusually large number compared to some communities. Henrico County — part of which is in the 1^st District, which has a seven-way Democratic primary for a congressional nomination — saw 17 Democratic voters and four Republican ones.

The two localities with the most Sunday voters were Arlington (298) and Alexandria (128). Both are strongly Democratic localities. They’re also in the 8^th House District, which has the heaviest-voting primary in the state so far — incumbent Democrat Don Beyer is facing four challengers. More votes have been cast in the 8^th District Democratic primary than any other congressional primary in the state this year, and the Sunday voting saw both localities produce their biggest day yet of in-person early voters. In all, almost half — 49.0% — of the in-person Sunday voters in the state were in those two localities. (Arlington also has a Democratic primary for county board of supervisors, which further explains the spike in interest there.)

However, across much of the 1st District, most localities saw no voters, even though that’s home to the state’s second heaviest-voting Democratic primary plus the Republican Senate primary. The Sunday voters in that district were mostly in suburban localities. Chesterfield County, which is partially in the 1st District, saw 31 Democratic voters and 11 Republican ones, both lower than on weekdays. 

Many registrars spent the day processing mail ballots, because many localities recorded mail ballots on Sunday. However, others — including lots of rural localities where voters tend to be Republicans who are resistant to mail balloting or early voting in general — recorded no votes at all, mail or in-person.

This item began as a short blurb intended for our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, but quickly outgrew that as I did more research. This column offers a taste, though, of what you can find in that newsletter, which goes out Friday afternoons. This week, I’ll look at early voting trends across the state and dig deeper into the recent Virginia Commonwealth University poll. Sign up here:

The post For the first time under a new law, Virginia’s election offices were open Sunday. In nearly half the state, no one showed up to vote. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hello, hello! I’m a new reporter based in Wise County, bringing you another edition of Southwest Field Notes. 

I just moved to Southwest Virginia this month, and a few people have said they’re sorry when I tell them I’m from New Jersey. It’s OK! I’m just happy to be here now. 

I’m from West Windsor, New Jersey, but spent the past few years in Boston for school and graduated in May. Since I made the move, I’ve been admiring the mountains, meeting people and getting used to a mile really equaling a minute down here. Can’t say Boston was the same.

I’ll be covering the coalfield counties for Cardinal, which means I’m doing a lot of driving. Since I can’t be everywhere at once, I’ll rely on you to help me know where to be and when. You can reach me any time at anna@cardinalnews.org.

For this week’s edition, I’ll dive into a few things I’ve heard about in my past few weeks here, from new-old legislation to new-old music stores.

Here’s just a pinch of what’s going on in the region. I have so much to learn, and am grateful for any help.

Support Our Miners Act introduced by the House 

As I’m told, there have been many pushes to reform benefits miners receive through the federal black lung program. Since 1969, the federal government has allowed some coal miners who have black lung disease, and their families, to apply for medical care and compensation through various versions of this legislation. 

In more recent years, especially as severe black lung grips a younger population, bills have been introduced to help address benefits that advocates say have not adapted to current needs. Iterations of the Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act include increases in assistance to pay attorneys, reimbursements for CT scans to diagnose the disease and changes to the medical evidence system, which has inhibited survivors and their families from receiving aid.  

It was passed out of committee in 2022, when Democrats controlled the House, but did not progress after that. A more recent version of the bill was introduced in 2025. 

Now Congress has the next five months to pass a new bill: the Support Our Miners Act, sponsored by Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and co-sponsored by Reps. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., and Morgan McGarvey, D-Ky.

It’s been hard to lobby for the older legislation because of the number of changes it asks congressional offices to understand, said Quenton King, a government affairs specialist at Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. The new bill would focus specifically on the monthly stipend some miners receive to account for decades of inadequate increases. 

A miner received $144.50 each month when the federal program was created in 1969. In today’s currency, that would equate to nearly $1,200 a month, according to statistics from Appalachian Voices. 

A single miner today receives $794 monthly, and increases based on dependents, numbers the organization says have fallen behind the cost of living. 

The bill would provide a $458 increase per month for a single miner, nearly $5,500 per year. Automatic adjustments for inflation each year going forward would also be ensured under the new bill.

King said the bill now needs co-sponsors, specifically Republicans. They have reached out to U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith’s office, among others, as they seek to educate Appalachian lawmakers about the bill.

There have been no new co-sponsors since the bill was introduced on June 30. King said they are hopeful there will be a new Congress after the November election that might have more success, but they are “still going to fight to the end for this one.” 

The Gnarled String is coming to St. Paul 

Today is the last day to visit The Gnarled String Music Shoppe in Norton, a one-stop music store that’s been on the city’s main street for the last year. 

But loyal patrons will soon be able to visit the storefront in St. Paul. Jennifer Molinary and Nic Cook’s new location will open at 16617 Russell St. on Aug. 15. 

Molinary said she and Cook are ready to get everything set up and open in their new location. Their previous lease was terminated and after searching for a location in Norton and coming up dry, they settled on St. Paul. Molinary’s father owns the building and has been hoping to bring a business in. 

Molinary grew up in St. Paul and said there hasn’t been a music store in town for many years. She remembers being young and walking over to one whenever she could. 

Now she’ll get to walk over again, this time to work. The couple lives in town and hopes their new storefront will contribute to the effort to revitalize St. Paul’s downtown in recent years. 

“Hopefully us having the music shop, the Lyric, and the town bringing more music into it will help bring the community together,” Molinary said. 

She said she and Cook are still working out the details for a partnership with the Lyric Theater, home to live performances and community events since the historic theater was restored and reopened in 2022. 

They hope to partner with the Lyric to potentially host their Gnarly Desk sessions, a video series where they invite local artists to promote the local music scene in the region and expand its identity beyond traditional genres. 

After opening, they’ll also start figuring out how they could offer space for local bands to practice, which became a key part of business at the previous location. Bands would pay $75 monthly for weekly practice sessions and extra time if the schedule allowed. 

“We have a lot of bands in the area, and everybody lives pretty far away from each other, so it was nice to have a central location,” Molinary said. “I know the bands here have really appreciated the space.” 

Lessons will still be available at the Gnarled String, with Cook teaching string instruments. 

Early voting for Aug. 4 primaries is still open 

Early voting for Democratic and Republican primaries, held to select a candidate for the November election, is still open for another week. 

Early voting will end Aug. 1. 

Voters can cast ballots in two races: the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and the Democratic primary for U.S. House District 9.

Bert Mizusawa, Kim Farington and David Williams are on the Republican ticket, and the winner will run against Democratic incumbent Mark Warner on Nov. 3.

Joy Powers, Adam Murphy and Douglas Crockett are running for the Democratic slot in hopes of unseating Republican incumbent Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.

In Wise County, early turnout for the Republican primary was 0.11%, or 27 voters, as of June 22. Early voting in the Democratic primary was .07%, or 19 voters as of the same time. 

Allison Robbins, director of elections and general registrar in Wise County, said these are typical numbers for a primary in the county. The turnout in the 2025 Democratic and 2024 Republican primaries were a little less than 300 voters, or a little over 1%, she said.

Those interested in early voting can visit their local registrar’s office.

The post Southwest Virginia Field Notes: New legislation pushes to increase monthly stipend for black lung benefit recipients  appeared first on Cardinal News.

Welcome to Notes from the Square, a roundup of state politics and policy news. Each week, we bring you updates on the movers and shakers in Virginia politics as well as the legislation they’re supporting or opposing — with a Southwest and Southside Virginia focus. 

Got a tip or story idea? Email me at elizabeth@cardinalnews.org.

Spanberger overseas: The governor’s trade mission to the UK, Italy and France

Gov. Abigail Spanberger concluded the first leg of her first economic trade mission as the commonwealth’s chief executive on Tuesday, after four days in the United Kingdom. 

Spanberger and her delegation met with more than 30 companies in the aerospace, aviation, defense, biopharmaceutical, agriculture and forestry industries over the course of those four days. 

The governor, along with Secretary of Commerce and Trade Carrie Chenery and Virginia Economic Development Partnership leaders, met executives from around the world at the Farnborough International Airshow to explore opportunities for new and expanded investment in Virginia’s aerospace, aviation and defense sectors, Spanberger’s office said. 

The next leg of the trade mission includes Italy and France, where the Virginia delegation is slated to meet with senior business executives in industries including aerospace and defense, advanced manufacturing, agriculture and forestry, food and beverage manufacturing, energy and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. 

“These industries are experiencing notable growth, and it’s important that Virginia be aggressive in securing these jobs and fostering continued innovation,” Spanberger said in a statement. “Just as importantly, agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture are vital Virginia industries, and this trade mission provided unique opportunities to build on important trade relationships.” 

Earle-Sears hits the campaign trail? 

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate and lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears announced that she plans to hit the road this fall to campaign against two constitutional amendments that will be on the ballot in November. 

HJ 1/SJ 1 guarantees access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, and HJ 3/SJ 3 protects same sex marriage. 

Her announcement came in the form of a fundraising email to supporters from her political action committee. Dates and locations of the tour have not yet been announced. 

She previewed the upcoming campaign tour in an article published Tuesday on the conservative news outlet Daily Signal. Earle-Sears’ chief of staff did not return calls or emails from Cardinal News regarding the tour. 

Earle-Sears lost her bid for governor to Spanberger by a 15.360-point margin in November.

$1.3 million to Tazewell County for Hurricane Helene relief

The office of U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, announced Monday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded nearly $1.3 million in Hurricane Helene-related grants to Tazewell County. 

That includes: 

• $715,795 for Bluefield University to lead interior and exterior site repairs, 
• $429,270 for the Virginia Department of Transportation to repair damaged guard rails and culverts in Tazewell County, and
• $143,118 for the town of Richlands to deliver an improved access route to the local community. 

The nearly $1.3 million is the latest in federal funding to be allocated to help Southwest Virginia recover from the September 2024 storm. The region was also slated to receive from the feds: 

• $46.67 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced in January 2025; 
• Nearly $6 million in a separate grant for Washington County water line repairs, announced in April 2025;
• More than $4.2 million for a Wytheville wastewater treatment system, announced in January; 
• More than $8.6 million for water line repair, announced in February; 
• More than $1.7 million for bridge repair, announced in April; 
• More than $2.8 million for road repair, announced in June;
• More than $9.3 million for waterline repairs and $1.2 million in bridge repairs, announced in July; and
• $7.3 million for the repair or replacement of damaged homes for low- and moderate-income households in Giles and Washington counties and $322,712 for a water treatment facility generator in the town of Fries, in Grayson County, announced in July. 

2 Southwest Virginia residents named in Spanberger’s latest round of board appointments

Spanberger included two residents of Southwest Virginia among a slew of new board appointments that her office announced on Monday. 

Both were assigned to the governor’s Student Advisory Board:

• Vivienne Eaton of Salem High School, Salem City Schools
• Will Duncan of Patrick Henry High School, Washington County Public Schools 

The post Notes from the Square: Gov. Spanberger visits Europe on her first trade mission appeared first on Cardinal News.

Welcome to the first-ever edition of Martinsville Field Notes, where I’ll give you quick updates on what’s happening in Martinsville and Henry County every Friday. In this week’s column, you’ll hear everything from dinosaurs to data centers. 

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s column, you can reach me at julianna@cardinalnews.org. There’s always something happening in Martinsville and Henry County, and I’d love to hear from you!

Henry County board to consider zoning for data centers, solar projects

The Henry County Board of Supervisors will consider zoning changes for data centers and solar projects at its meeting on Tuesday. 

County Administrator Dale Wagoner said there are no active proposals for data centers in the county.

“This is a preliminary measure to update our zoning ordinance to provide a definition for what exactly a data center is and to put restrictions on where they can go and what they must do to be able to even apply for an application for a special use permit to locate in Henry County,” said Brandon Martin, the county’s public information officer.

The proposed changes to the zoning ordinance would put parameters on any data center companies applying for a special use permit. The company would have to provide a water impact study, conduct noise testing and meet equipment requirements, including ensuring that it is not intrusive to other parts of the industrial park.

Since potential data centers have to go through the special use permit process, the county board of zoning appeals would hear them on a case-by-case basis. There would be a public hearing for each special use permit.

“The public will have ample opportunity to hear about any proposed data centers that come in the future if they decide that they want to locate in Henry County,” Martin said.

Any data center would have to be on industrially zoned property, Martin said. That includes the industrial parks, like Commonwealth Crossing, the Patriot Centre and Martinsville Industrial Park. 

There’s very limited land in the industrial parks, Martin said. A data center company could also buy large parcels of agricultural land and have it rezoned to industrial, but the process would have to go through the planning commission and the board of supervisors. There would be public hearings at both of those meetings.

The board will also consider lowering the cap on the amount of land that can be used for solar projects. The cap for solar projects is currently 1% of the county’s available land.

The cap would be lowered to 1,754 acres, which is the amount of land already approved for solar use. Henry County has designated a large portion of land to solar projects in comparison to surrounding areas.

“What we’re trying to do is preserve our rural land and our farmland and the green space that we have in the county,” Martin said.

Tuesday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the county administration building. 

Dino Festival returns with new T. rex

The annual Dino Festival at the Virginia Museum of Natural History begins today, with the debut of a life-size Tyrannosaurus rex.

It’s expected to bring 4,000 people to the museum for the two-day experience. 

The festival — the museum’s largest educational event — will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The life-size, 40-foot animatronic T. rex will sit outside of the museum. There will also be casts of new footprints that have never been shown before, collections found in Wyoming and Montana, as well as new crocodile fossils found along Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

“We roll them out on the same tables we do lab work on because it’s the thing that’s stable,” said Adam Pritchard, the museum’s associate curator of paleontology. “It’s very authentic.”

The museum focuses on “the power of real,” meaning visitors get to see the actual scientific specimens.

“It’s not just an entertainment event,” Pritchard said.

There will be 12 options for food and drink at the Dino Dining District outside. Vendors offer snow cones, gelato, Mexican food, lemonade, barbecue and Chick-fil-A.

There will also be face painting, balloon animals, crafts and a photo booth. All activities are included in admission.

It will be visitors’ last chance to see the exhibition, The Age of Dinosaurs. The exhibit has a life-size cast skeleton of Triceratops and an interactive fossil dig pit.

The Age of Dinosaurs also includes “the only known fossil evidence that Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex engaged in battle and Triceratops having survived the encounter,” said Robbie Hendrix-Wirt, the visitor services and events manager.

More than 30 volunteers and 50 employees will work the festival this weekend for it to run smoothly for over 4,000 visitors. Over half of the visitors come from outside of the area, mostly from North Carolina, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Richmond and eastern Virginia.

Admission is $15 for adults aged 18 to 59 years old. It costs $10 for those between 3 and 17 years old, seniors older than 60, and college students. Dino Fest is free for children under 3 years old and military families. For anyone who attends on Friday, admission is free on Saturday.

Martinsville’s superintendent ‘elated’ about tax referendum that could benefit schools

Martinsville School Superintendent Zebedee Talley said he was “elated to hear” that the city council added a referendum to November’s ballot that — if residents vote yes — would increase the sales tax by 1% to support school improvement projects.

He said he’s confident that Martinsville residents will vote yes in November.

“We’re really excited. We have buildings that need repairs,” Talley said. “We have so many capital needs and it’s been a long time since we’ve built a structure.”

School projects include HVAC systems and roofs, said Rob Fincher, the city manager. Bigger projects include setting up charging stations for electric school buses and relocating the city’s school bus hub.

Surrounding school systems such as Henry County, Danville, Pittsylvania County and Patrick County have been benefiting from the 1% sales tax for a few years now — with Henry County bringing in over $27 million over the past five years. 

“This is a great opportunity for our kids to have equal access,” Talley said.

Talley said students learn better in well-maintained schools. He said he’s excited that the council made the decision to add it to the ballot but is also grateful that state legislators decided to make the sales tax more accessible.

The state law went into effect July 1 and authorizes all cities and counties to put the referendum on the ballots to impose the 1% increase. Martinsville became one, if not the first, locality in western Virginia to put the referendum on the ballot.

The post Martinsville Field Notes: Data centers, solar projects on Henry County agenda appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia’s debate over data centers has reached a turning point.

For years, the commonwealth’s principal challenge was attracting investment. That effort succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Northern Virginia is now home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers and has become an indispensable part of the nation’s — and increasingly the world’s — digital infrastructure.

Today, however, Virginia faces a different challenge. It is no longer simply recruiting an industry. It is stewarding one.

Recent discussions have focused on taxes, electric demand, transmission lines, water consumption, noise and local impacts. These are all legitimate concerns. Yet they are largely being addressed as separate issues rather than as parts of a single public policy challenge.

The more important question has received remarkably little attention.

What happens when Virginia’s data centers grow old?

Not obsolete overnight, but mature. Every successful industry eventually reaches a point where decisions shift from attracting initial investment to encouraging reinvestment. Data centers are no different.

Within the next decade, owners of existing facilities will increasingly face decisions about modernization, expansion, redevelopment and replacement of equipment. Those decisions will be influenced by advances in computing technology, artificial intelligence, cooling systems, power efficiency and economics.

Virginia should begin asking what will drive those reinvestment decisions.

The commonwealth already possesses an extraordinary concentration of private investment in land, buildings, substations, transmission infrastructure, fiber networks and skilled personnel. Those assets have enormous value. Before assuming that future demand must be met primarily through new campuses on previously undeveloped land, shouldn’t Virginia first understand the opportunities presented by reinvestment in the infrastructure already in place?

Could modernization of existing campuses increase computing capacity while making better use of existing electric and fiber infrastructure? Could reinvestment reduce pressure for additional greenfield development? Could it lessen demands for new transmission corridors, substations, roads and water infrastructure? Could redevelopment of existing industrial sites meet some future needs more effectively than extending development into productive farmland and rural communities?

These questions deserve careful study before the commonwealth commits itself to another generation of infrastructure decisions.

This is not an argument against data centers. Nor is it an argument against economic development. Virginia’s success in attracting technology investment has been remarkable and should continue to be encouraged.

But success changes the policy challenge.

The next chapter in Virginia’s data center economy should not be guided solely by recruitment strategies developed during the industry’s rapid expansion. It should be guided by a broader public-interest framework that integrates economic development, energy, transmission, land use, water resources, taxpayer protection and long-term stewardship.

Good public policy asks not only how to attract the next investment, but how to make the wisest use of the investments already made.

Virginia has mastered recruitment.

Its next challenge is stewardship.

Bill Russell is a former federal telecommunications policy official and former member of the Virginia Public Telecommunications Board.

The post Former telecom policy official: What happens when Virginia’s data centers grow old? appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Economy:

Chesapeake approves eight-month pause on data center applications. — Virginia Business (paywall).

Politics:

Even without a new map, Buttigieg says Virginia Democrats can win with focus on healthcare, affordability. — Virginia Mercury.

Culture:

UVa professor behind documentary tracing folk icon Pete Seeger’s environmental activism. — The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress (paywall).

Economy:

Shearer’s Foods to close Bristol facility; about 155 employees affected. — WCYB-TV.

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: Chesapeake approves 8-month pause on data center applications; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.