💧 Good morning, RVA: Omicron closures?, sprawl, and sewer investments

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you can expect highs nearly in the 70s. Do get out and enjoy the next three days of great weather, because a cold front comes to town on Sunday bringing us back to classically December temperatures.
 

Water cooler

By now you’ve probably heard about how Cornell University decided to shut down their Ithaca campus due to a massive increase of COVID-19 cases following Thanksgiving break. Even with a 97% vaccination rate among students, the university reported over 900 positive cases—some caused by the Omicron variant—during the second week of December. Scary, but here’s some super important context that you really have to seek out in most of the reporting I’ve seen: As of yesterday, they had not seen severe illness in any of the infected students. That’s great news! While the virus spread very quickly, it looks like the vaccines are doing their job. So why shut down the entire campus? I saw a good thread on Twitter, which I’ve now lost, that suggested moving back to virtual learning during exams is pretty easy and low-risk for a university at this point—in fact, a lot of students have already left campus. The same thread suggested that if a similar outbreak happened during the meat of the semester, colleges will be much less willing to shutter campuses and would prioritize in-person learning. This makes a lot of sense to me, and, at least at this point, I don’t think we’ll see a mass reversion to virtual higher ed. However and annoyingly! We’re still in a “learning more every day” phase of this pandemic (again).
 

Connor Scribner at VPM reports on the Richmond region’s urban sprawl problem and how that it breaks our environment in all sorts of ways. Bad air quality, loss of biodiversity, more heat-related illnesses, stormwater runoff—sprawl exacerbates all of these things. Tap through for the climate-related reporting, but read until the end for an unexpected discussion on how a Land Value Tax could help encourage sprawl-reducing, in-fill development.
 

I didn’t listen to City Council’s Governmental Operations committee meeting yesterday, but, this morning, I did check in on RES. 2021-R086 which would request that the mayor include funds for a real, live Department of Transportation in his upcoming budget. The resolution was forwarded out of that committee to full Council with “no recommendation.” That’s not as good as “recommended for approval,” but better than “recommended to be stricken” or whatever the bad one is. Since I didn’t tune in, I don’t know what the vibes were—apathy? ambivalence? haughty scoffing? general confusion? I’ll try to pull up the audio or ask someone better connected to the inner workings of Council than myself to find out.
 

Yesterday, I complained about all the dang state-level items in this newsletter and lamented the lack of zoning and sewer updates. An lo! This morning I opened my email and found Yet Another Announcement from outgoing-Governor Northam—this one about investments in the Chesapeake Bay including money for replacing Richmond’s combined sewer system. From the release: “The proposal includes a $165 million investment to support the cities of Richmond, Lynchburg, and Alexandria and $68.6 million in funding for local municipal wastewater needs.” First, I don’t know if this is new money or just a re-announcement of money we already knew was trickling down the pipe. Second, $165 million split three ways is a hilarious drop of untreated sewage in the James River compared to the total amount needed to overhaul our sewer system. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll take it, celebrate it, and then ask for more next year.
 

This morning’s longread

New York City bans new natural gas hookups in step toward all-electric future

Electrify all the things! This is definitely the future, so if you’re sitting on an aging natural-gas furnace, hot water heater, or stove, start thinking about replacing it with an electric appliance instead. We’re down to one natural gas appliance left (the furnace), and when it goes we’ll be an all-electricity house.
 

The city isn’t the first to attempt something like this. Other, smaller cities like Brookline, Massachusetts, and San Jose and Berkeley, California, have enacted similar bans on new [natural gas] hookups, but New York City is by far the largest to date. Some 40 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions come from boilers, furnaces, and hot water heaters. New buildings in the city will use heat pumps for heating, air conditioning, and hot water. That may not be as much of a stretch as it seems. Even during colder months, air-source heat pumps are at least twice as efficient as the best natural gas furnaces, and in more ideal conditions, they can move up to 4.5 times as much heat as the energy they consume. In New York City, they’re about three times more efficient than gas furnaces, and they have the added benefit of providing air conditioning in the summer.
 

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Picture of the Day

This is the plant that sits next to all of my coffee equipment.