Controversial Cumberland gas plant would be second largest in nation

Good morning from The Mercury.

By Shannon Heckt

In a crowded school cafeteria in Cumberland Monday evening, residents of the rural county  gathered to hear Dominion Energy representatives detail the gas plant the utility is pitching to the local leaders and state regulators. 

The Cumberland Energy Center will be able to generate three gigawatts of power, making it the second largest gas plant in the nation if it is approved. 

The gas plant is part of Dominion’s proposed fleet of energy generation projects to meet the increased demand for power, which is expected to more than double by 2045. If approved, the plant would take about ten years to come online, with construction slated to begin in 2029. 

By Charlotte Rene Woods

In 2017, U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, touted voting to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act 60 times. Nearly a decade later, he was one of just 17 Republicans nationwide to vote to extend expired ACA subsidies, before Congress ultimately let them lapse.

The expired subsidies have spurred 94,000 Virginians to drop their insurance so far and is the latest healthcare issue congressional candidates in Virginia and elsewhere must contend with on the campaign trail.  

By Markus Schmidt

As college football season gets into full swing over Labor Day weekend, sports betting companies, public health experts and Virginia lawmakers are confronting a question that has grown more pressing since wagering moved into smartphones: How can the industry keep gambling from becoming an addiction?

Representatives from those groups gathered Wednesday at the Hilton Richmond Downtown for a Responsible Gaming Roundtable hosted by the Sports Betting Alliance, an advocacy organization representing bet365, BetMGM, DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel — five of the nation’s largest online sports betting operators.

By Nathaniel Cline

Waynesboro City Police Department Chief David Shaw identified Anthony I. Ignatiadis-Isabelle, 19, of Waynesboro, as the gunman in a shooting at Westwood Hills Elementary School in the Virginia’s western region on Wednesday morning.

Ignatiadis-Isabelle forced entry into the elementary school around 9:12 a.m., Shaw told reporters in an evening press conference the same day. A school staff member was shot while no students were injured. Police found Ignatiadis-Isabelle dead in the school’s library after apparently shooting himself. 

IThe U.S. Postal Service rushed the development of electronic tools to comply with a Trump administration policy placing new restrictions on mail-in voting, and defied a court order to stop work on the system, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint published Tuesday by Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

The unnamed whistleblower predicted the result could be “foreseeable catastrophic disruption to our coming nationwide elections based on the reckless pursuit of readying a new, insufficiently tested, poorly planned mail-in ballot screening system.”

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