Today's top audio stories are mostly about the continuing water outages and boil advisories in Central Virginia.

Keep up with the latest information on Greater Richmond's outages at vpm.org/richmond.

Do you have questions or updates? Get in touch with us at [email protected], @vpm.org on Bluesky or u/vpmnews on Reddit.

Our top audio stories today include an update on the ongoing water situation in the City of Richmond, an update on the ongoing water situation in Henrico County and an update on the ongoing water situation’s effects in Chesterfield County.

We'll be updating our primary post in English and Spanish throughout the week; keep checking back.

For the latest water news, visit vpm.org/richmond.

Cold temps could complicate taking care of power outages; the state crime lab is set to move from Richmond to Hanover; proposal aims to speed up local solar and energy storage siting; state’s standard deduction rate could be sunset. 

Today’s top audio stories include rough weather, the state crime lab is set to move from Richmond to Hanover and Virginia’s standard deduction rate could be sunset. 

PLUS: Virginia voters will cast ballots Tuesday in three special elections. 

In Loudoun County, Suhas Subramanyam’s election to Congress triggered an election for his state senate seat. Democratic Del. Kannan Srinivasan and Republican Tumay Harding are competing for that post. Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam are running to replace Srinivasan in the statehouse. 

West of Richmond, voters will elect a replacement for Republican state Sen. John McGuire — either Republican Luther Cifers or Democrat Jack Trammell. 

Plus: How a program for students at a Virginia community college wants to help people who’ve been in foster care graduate college...and how it has shown promising results so far; the Richmond City Council’s first meeting of 2025; and other stories.

The 2025 BizSense Crystal Ball; A new mayor and city council; Plans for City Center and the Diamond District; and a lot of Dominion land up for grabs.

Happy New Year!

In our last special episode of the 2024 holidays (or first special episode of 2025), Richmond Reporter Keyris Manzanares examines what it takes to prepare students for a bilingual and biliterate future.

We'll be back with a regular VPM Daily Newscast on Monday.

In today’s special episode... it's a Curious Commonwealth!

Editor Whittney Evans explores a question the team received that happened to be about the new headquarters VPM is building in Richmond's historic Monroe Ward neighborhood.

We’ll be back with another special newscast on Friday, Jan. 3.

A note: VPM Media Corporation does hold the FCC license for VPM News. This Curious Commonwealth went through the normal editorial process, which means station leadership did not read or hear this piece before we published and aired it.

**PS: Submit your Curious Commonwealth questions to us here!**

Today’s special episode is three new entries in a yearlong series we've been calling Brown v. Board 70. Within are the stories of two Black Virginians who lived through school segregation, Massive Resistance and eventual school integration.

Check out the full series on VPM.org:

We’ll be back with another special episode on Monday, Dec. 30.

In today’s special VPM Daily Newscast episode, Editor Dave Cantor speaks with the minds behind Master Plan — it's a a shorthand phrase for how David Sirota sees wealthy businessowners working to relax campaign finance laws. 

In the series, a number of Richmond connections come up, including a former U.S. Supreme Court justice and a former Virginia governor. 

You can listen to Master Plan wherever you get podcasts. 

We’ll be back with another special newscast on Friday, Dec. 27.

Richmond’s search for its preferred development team for the seemingly stagnant City Center redevelopment project is said to be down to one team and in final negotiations as the slow-moving process enters a third year; VCU Athletics’ new hub near The Diamond took a step closer to becoming reality last week; and a startup that was spun out of MIT is planning to build what it hopes will be the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant in Chesterfield County.