Purcellville Vice Mayor Carl “Ben” Nett’s name has been removed from the Purcellville Police Department’s online directory. His name was not listed on the police department page of the town’s website as of April 7. The Times-Mirror has contacted Nett, all members of the Purcellville town council, town staff and the town attorney to confirm his employment status. Interim town manager Kwasi Fraser responded, saying the town is prohibited from discussing or commenting on personnel matters.

The Hanover landfill applying to expand has a recent history of detecting contaminants like chloroform and cobalt in the surrounding groundwater. Documents obtained by The Times-Dispatch show that the Ashcake Road Landfill, near Lewistown Road and Interstate 95, has been under heightened scrutiny from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality since 2021. DEQ warned the facility last year about exceedances of groundwater contamination, while citing it for improperly reporting truckloads for illegal dumping.

The Hanover residents suing Wegmans and the county said they won’t appeal their case to the Virginia Supreme Court, ending the five-year legal battle. Brian Buniva, the homeowners’ lawyer, said his clients decided not to appeal their case after being rebuffed by the Court of Appeals. They said that a court victory would only lead to yet another struggle. Appeals Court Judge Junius P. Fulton III wrote in his March 4 opinion that he felt Hanover did nothing wrong during the approval process. He wrote that the homeowners were in no way restricted from offering their opinions to the board during the zoning hearings. Much of their legal argument said that pandemic era social distancing restrictions, virtual public meetings and limited gathering space had hindered their right to “meaningfully” participate in public discourse.

Public access to government records that document the handling of illnesses, faulty products, and safety lapses at health facilities will slow after mass firings at the federal Department of Health and Human Services swept out staff members responsible for releasing records, according to transparency advocates and health experts. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s layoffs across health agencies in recent days eliminated workers who handled Freedom of Information Act requests at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and cut FOIA staff at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health, said six current and former federal workers KFF Health News agreed not to name because they fear retaliation and are not authorized to speak to the press.