It's WINDSday | November 1, 2023

Celebrating the Power of Wind, Clean Energy and a Green Environment

"This is big!" announced Governor Glenn Youngkin before a large crowd of industry and elected officials gathered on the grounds of the revived Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT). "Huge" might have been a better adjective.

Because on the dais was not just the governor but also Virginia's lieutenant governor and attorney general, plus Portsmouth's congressman, mayor and state senator and the CEO of Dominion Energy, Bob Blue.

And adjacent to the tent in which they sat were eight mammoth (bigger than huge) monopiles, each 272 feet in length and weighing 1,500 tons. The first of 176 that will form the foundations for Dominion's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, they had arrived just a week or so earlier from Germany where they were manufactured.

Portsmouth Leaders: Councilman Vernon Tillage; Mayor Shannon Glover; Councilman Mark A. Hugel

Youngkin enthusiastically endorsed CVOW as a significant component of an all of the above energy strategy that will feature more clean fuels like solar, hydrogen and nuclear, the power behind future economic growth in the state. And what the governor said he also likes about CVOW is that "it's on time and on budget."

Youngkin then joined Bob Blue and VA Transportation Secretary, Norfolk's Shep Miller, on a scissor ladder that lifted them to the side of a monopile to sign their names.   

Eight more seabed bound monopiles will reach PMT in December with the balance to follow along with large transition pieces and then blades.

Construction of the 836 foot tall wind turbines begins 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach in the spring.

There won't be a ceremony for each component shipment, but the appearance of these bigger than big pieces at PMT will never become routine. The industry is here. Now we can see it. 

There will likely never be a mayor in our area who will serve as long as Meyera Oberndorf (1988-2008) did in Virginia Beach. And nowhere is the Newport News native (who passed away in 2015 at the age of 74) more revered than at Coastal Café on Princess Anne Road, which sits just outside the Carolanne Farms neighborhood where Meyera and husband Roger were its most famous residents.

“I lived my whole life across the street from them,” says restaurant owner Barrie Engel, “and I am still in that house. My sister Lori is just down the street.” Indeed Lori (Murphy) is president of the tight and active civic league for Carolanne Farms (and Arrowhead), which meets monthly on a Monday evening at Coastal Café (www.coastalcafe.biz), the only night of the week it’s closed. “We do everything we can to support the people in these communities,” says Barrie, “through outings, including fishing trips and Tides games, events like Poker Runs and donations.” 

And they respond, coming in regularly (for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch) for the excellent brisket, omelets, tacos and other dishes cooked up by chef Terrance Hudson or to drink some cold ones. A single mom of one (22-year-old Joyner is learning to become a pilot, ironically like Heidi Oberndorf and her father Roger, who died in 2013,) Barrie taught or performed school security in Virginia Beach, buying the restaurant in 2007 and managing both jobs until giving hospitality her full-time attention. 

“Meyera and Roger were in here often, and she would come to schools where I worked to speak or read to the children,” says Barrie. “She was wonderful.” One of the mayor’s many campaign pictures is on one of the busy walls, along with a fresh WINDSday sticker. “And from now on,” says the proprietor, “we will have WINDSday, not Wednesday, specials.” We feel like one of the locals now too.

That is a zucchini in the hands of Cameron Kania, harvested from the garden behind his home off Shore Drive.

Credit the soil, a by-product of composting that will someday become the full-time vocation for this Norfolk Academy and West Virginia University grad whose current 9-5 is doing financial analysis for Tidewater Mortgage. Before and after work though, Cameron’s the prez/ceo/you name it of Tidewater Compost (TC), which he founded last year after watching a documentary about “soil health.” And has his venture “grown,” just like his crazy Italian zucchini.

“Today we have 200 members and have kept over 50,000 pounds of food waste out of our local landfills.” And you can be part of this revolution in conservation.

For a small set up fee and $35 a month, Cameron and his team will drop off a kit, complete with a small bucket and compostable liners for your meat, bones, seafood, seafood shells, dairy, grains, baking ingredients, processed foods, soiled paper products, cardboard and more, along with a larger 5-gallon one that TC (www.tidewatercompost.com) picks up weekly and delivers to the region’s only DEQ permitted industrial compost plant located in western Tidewater.

“It takes about eight weeks for the scraps to become rich, black soil for your garden, and we return a portion of this compost back to our members,” says Cameron, who has just opened drop-off service kiosks at community gardens in Norfolk (Freemason Street Baptist) and VB (Nimmo United Methodist). “With access to farmland in Chesapeake, we intend to build our own commercial composting facility to process all of our collections in-house.” 

In the meantime, composting, which we must do more of to save dump space (and produce bigger and healthier tomatoes, cucumbers and squash), is on the march. Farmer John Clayman (in photo below), who runs Drishti Compost in VA Beach (www.drishticompost.com), collects leftovers from restaurants, Wegman’s, and horse farms, and turns it into compost. He’s seeking a permit for his own facility in the city. 



“I hope more people will take advantage of services like ours,” says Cameron, “because it’s vital for the environment.” That’s good green advice from a dedicated new WINDSday Partner. 

That’s Kay (Weisberg) Taub, formerly of Norfolk but now a longtime resident of Silver Spring, MD. She tells her neighbors to “leave the leaves” because she wants them for her compost bin. She takes the bags, or will even rake them up, to add to her pile of decaying coffee grounds, orange peels and corn cobs. 

What she gets is rich soil for her vegetable garden. What they get is the leaves off their back (or front) yards.   

CLICK HERE for more reasons to “leave the leaves.” 

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