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1 week ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Editor’s note: This interview is featured in the new season of our Chesapeake Uncharted podcast, which will be released May 21 as a companion to our film, Chesapeake Rhythms. The film explores wildlife migrations in the Bay region. Twenty years ago, Tom Horton was kayaking on the first day of spring. While paddling, he found a small bush sprinkled with monarch butterflies. He persuaded his friend, Dave Harp, to go there the next morning before sunrise.
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2 weeks ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Virginia’s Rappahannock Tribe has regained almost 1,000 acres of ancestral land along the cliffs that line the tribe’s namesake river. With the new plot of land, the tribe now stewards 1,435 acres along Fones Cliffs. The area has one of the largest concentrations of nesting bald eagles in the mid-Atlantic, according to the U.S. National Park Service. The site was also home to three of the Rappahannock communities that encountered and resisted Captain John Smith in 1608.
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2 weeks ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
In response to increasing energy demand because of extreme weather and the rapid growth of data centers, Dominion Energy plans to build a natural gas plant in Chesterfield, VA. But the nearby community, which was home to a coal plant for almost 80 years and currently lives near two existing gas plants, has resisted the project for months, citing concerns about air quality.
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3 weeks ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Along the banks of the James River in Richmond, VA, Boushall Middle School students were sword fighting with sticks, taking water samples and snapping selfies on the rocks. Even on a dreary day, 8th grader Maryam Al-Azzawi said she found the field trip to be “peaceful” and intriguing compared with her windowless science class.
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1 month ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin finished reviewing more than 900 bills, including the state budget, on March 24. The state General Assembly will reconvene on April 2 to examine his decisions. Data centers, which house computers that enable internet use, were a focal point during this legislative session. Of the 30 introduced bills trying to regulate them, only two made it past the General Assembly and the governor.
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1 month ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Ashley Ranalli’s favorite spot at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park was the cemetery. As a park ranger, she would dig through archives and learn about buried Union soldiers, like William Tinker, whose story she could share with visitors. But then she was laid off. “My connection with Tinker, my connection with the land, my service to that land was and is my most favorite thing that I’ve done with my life,” Ranalli said.
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1 month ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Serina Wittyngham has spent countless hours in the muddy marshes of Virginia’s Eastern Shore studying purple marsh crabs and their favorite meal, smooth cordgrass — aka Spartina alterniflora. Early on, she wasn’t sure how the growing population of these one-inch-wide critters was influencing the coastal ecosystem, but she would soon have some answers. And it turns out they are more of a threat to the atmosphere than they are to the marshes they inhabit.
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2 months ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
About two miles east of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond is a five-acre, grass-covered hill that some might see as a graveyard for years’ worth of trash. But Richmond officials see the former landfill site as an opportunity to bring solar energy to the city — at a time when citizens, towns and counties around the state have been opposing new solar projects.
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2 months ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Virginia saw a busy 45-day session with lines of residents stretching out the door ready to speak with legislators at the General Assembly building. Now, the Capitol is quiet as everyone waits to hear what will make it past the governor’s desk. Lawmakers hotly debated how to meet the state’s increasing energy demand while achieving state clean energy goals. Meanwhile, many natural resource efforts, including state funds for environmental issues, found bipartisan support.
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2 months ago | 
bayjournal.com | Lauren Hines-Acosta
Shelton Tucker spent his childhood in the community of Aberdeen Gardens in Hampton, VA, helping his father manage a garden on the family’s property. Fifty years later, Tucker’s hands rarely touch dirt, and flooding is encroaching on his neighbors’ backyards. But Tucker and other community members plan to change that by revitalizing both the community’s landscape and its culture. Aberdeen Gardens was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal projects.
