Housing needs in Washington and Smyth counties received a healthy dose of federal funds Wednesday as People Inc. and the Mount Rogers Planning District Commission received $113,304 each for rehabilitation projects.

David Tuell likes to sit at his kitchen table on Tiny Town Avenue in Chilhowie to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and listen to the goings-on on his police scanner. He didn’t turn the radio on Monday morning. He could not know that, for a change, he was about to watch police in action instead of merely listen to their coded exchanges with each other and dispatchers.

Marion Town Council members and people in the council gallery rose to give Marion Police Officer Steve Widner a standing ovation Monday as Mayor David Helms repeated an award presentation first held the previous Tuesday during the town’s Patriot’s Day observance.

When people interested in environmental protection come face to face with people who extract natural resources from the environment, the scene is frequently characterized, charitably sometimes, as confrontational. Think northern spotted owl proponents facing down loggers in the old-growth Pacific Northwest and the stories about saw-foiling chains locked around targeted trees.
But in Abingdon last week, people working with endangered species spent three days with coal mining officials and while positions were clear and goals delineated, what emerged was not confrontational but largely cooperative. One speaker early in the presentations Thursday understood the dynamic that would not lead in the direction of conflict. The gathering was of the 80 percent of moderates on all sides of the issue. Absent was the 20 percent holding extreme views.

The United Way of Smyth County is gearing up for what Executive Director Susan Ferraro hopes is a campaign that reverses the goal-missing trend of the last couple of years.

One lane of southbound Interstate 77 remained closed Friday morning following a fatal two-vehicle crash in Wythe County.

With all the talk lately about the drought’s effects on local crops and livestock, it seemed as though the other shoe finally dropped Monday when Smyth County asked some of its customers to conserve water.

Lauran Roth Glover wants to improve health in rural communities across America. As every grassroots initiative must start somewhere, the physician assistant student wants this movement to begin in Saltville.

Appalachian Power Co. customers remember their history, but it’s repeating itself anyway.

Citing health concerns, Craig Barbow resigned from Saltville’s Town Council Tuesday.