Snap: Solar coaster returns

Roger Voisinet, a realtor who also installs solar energy systems, checks out the Free Union house where he placed a thermal solar system back in 1981 (pair of center panels) and then returned in July to install a 22-panel photovoltaic system (top). (0)

Snap o’ the day: Another fox sighting

Inside the offices of the Hook… (1)

New horror as Tech students slain at campground

Already reeling from the 2007 massacre and the nearly-two-years-later cafeteria beheading, Virginia Tech finds itself once again hit by horror, as two students visiting a campground in the nearby Jefferson National Forest have been slain by gunfire. (27)

TheRutabaga: Second Street becomes waste transfer station

The Landmark Materials Transfer Facility, which opened this summer, has been a remarkable success.

Neighborhood development chief Jim Tolbert announced today that the section of Second Street SE beside the abandoned Landmark Hotel has become an RSWA-sponsored waste transfer station. The site, which is being called the Landmark Materials Transfer Facility, has actually been accepting construction and demolition debris, as well as careless source unseparated recyclables such as coffee cups and cigarette butts, since the Downtown Mall re-bricking project was completed earlier this year. Tolbert says the program has been a success so far.

“We’ve been full to capacity More… (6)

Snap: Sleeving the leak

A geyser erupted Thursday afternoon when a contractor performing road-related drainage work inadvertently cut an old water main under the western edge of West Leigh Dive. Over a year ago, residents had been told that when new ductile iron pipe was laid under the opposite side of the road as a replacement that the old line had been decommissioned. Apparently not. Here, post-geyser, workers secure a sleeve to the old pipe (made of transite, an asbestos-infused concrete material). More pix of pumping and filling. (1)