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Rising area utility rates hit city residents hardest

The city of Richmond and its surrounding counties of Henrico, Hanover and Chesterfield are looking to increase public utility rates and fees in the coming year to pay for infrastructure upgrades and maintenance.

But in Richmond, a lack of space for new development means the city doesn't get as much revenue as the counties from the thousands of dollars in fees charged for connecting new utility service to a home or business.

That makes the Department of Public Utilities more dependent on rate and fee increases to meet federal requirements and to service older infrastructure, including some pipes nearing 100 years old and one of the commonwealth's oldest water plants.

For water and wastewater service most Richmond residents pay $47 a month in fees before using a single drop of water. That's compared with $22 in Chesterfield, $16.28 in Henrico and $14.03 in Hanover.

The city of Richmond, which bills customers monthly for water and gas, operates five utilities – water, wastewater, stormwater, gas and streetlights – that serve about 500,000 residential and commercial customers. Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover counties, which bill customers every two months, operate only water and wastewater utilities.

In the nearly $781 million budget the Richmond City Council will vote on in May, the administration has asked for increases in natural gas, water and wastewater fees and rates.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Trial date set for Capitol protesters

A trial date has been set for the 30 women's rights activists arrested at the state Capitol in a March 3 protest against a bill requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion.

Judge David E. Cheek, at a hearing Friday morning in Richmond's Manchester General District Court, scheduled June 19 to try the 30. Each defendant faces one count apiece of misdemeanor trespassing and one of misdemeanor unlawful assembly.

Seventeen women and 13 men, ranging in age from 19 to 76, were charged in the nonviolent Capitol protest. Two-thirds of the protesters are in their 20s, and all but a handful are from the Richmond area. The others are from the Charlottesville area, Chesapeake or Winston-Salem, N.C.

Each misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Food Task Force to present ideas for healthy living in Richmond

Allowing backyard chickens, converting city properties to orchards and eliminating water fees for community gardens –they are all among ideas Richmond's Food Policy Task Force is bringing to the community this week.

Creating a food hub – a location where farmers can take their crops for wholesale – was also high on the list of some task force members. Restaurants and universities could purchase all their produce in a one-stop shop, instead of having to visit a number of locations around town. The food hub, which would be reachable by public transportation, could also feature a farmers market, a community co-op where residents could buy more and healthier food, and offer cooking classes.

The committee, which began meeting in July, also called for a two-year moratorium on opening fast-food restaurants in Richmond's “food deserts,” low-income neighborhoods that lack grocery stores.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

New twister warnings aim to make danger clear

Even expert storm chasers would have struggled to decipher the difference between the tornado warnings sent last May before severe weather hit Joplin and, a few days later, headed again toward downtown Kansas City.

The first tornado was a massive EF5 twister that killed 161 people as it wiped out a huge chunk of the southwest Missouri community. The second storm caused only minor damage when two weak tornadoes struck in the Kansas City suburbs.

In both cases, the warnings were harbingers of touchdowns. But 3 out of every 4 times the National Weather Service issues a formal tornado warning, there isn't one. The result is a “cry wolf” phenomenon that's dulled the effectiveness of tornado warnings, and one the weather service hopes to solve with what amounts to a scare tactic.

In a test that starts Monday, five weather service offices in Kansas and Missouri will use words such as “mass devastation,” “unsurvivable” and “catastrophic” in a new kind of warning that's based on the severity of a storm's expected impact. The goal is to more effectively communicate the dangers of an approaching storm so people understand the risks they're about to face.

The system being tested will create two tiers of warnings for thunderstorms and three tiers for tornadoes, each based on severity. A research team in North Carolina will analyze the results of the experiment, which runs through late fall, and help the weather service decide whether to expand the new warnings to other parts of the country.

Brief by the Associated Press

Military hosts atheist event

For the first time in history, the U.S. military hosted an event expressly for soldiers and others who don't believe in God, with a gathering like a county fair Saturday at one of the world's largest Army bases.

The Rock Beyond Belief event at Fort Bragg, organized by soldiers here after a 2010 evangelical Christian event at the base, is the most visible sign so far of a growing desire by military personnel with atheist or other secular beliefs to get the same recognition as their religious counterparts.

“I love the military,” said Sgt. Justin Griffith, main organizer of the event and the military director of American Atheists.

Griffith said non-religious soldiers are not permitted to hold atheist meetings at the base and so far have been rebuffed in efforts to change that. They feel their beliefs marginalize them.

Organizers said the goal was not to disparage religious soldiers, but to celebrate the beliefs of secular members of the military and their families.

Brief by the Associated Press

Venezuelan leader returns to Cuba for treatment

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez traveled to Cuba on Saturday for another round of cancer treatment, saying he will be in Havana for several days and then return home.

He said during an earlier speech to supporters that he was traveling to Havana for a second round of radiation after recent surgery to extract a second cancerous tumor in his pelvic area. Chavez had another tumor removed from the same place in June.

The 57-year-old leftist president, in office since 1999, has vowed to overcome cancer to win another six-year term in the Oct. 7 election.

Brief by the Associated Press

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