Virginia House Votes to Allow Alternate Names for Buggs Island Lake

The Virginia House of Delegates voted today, February 13, 2015 to approve Senate Bill 972, which would allow state and local agencies to refer to Buggs Island Lake as “Kerr Lake” or the “John H. Kerr Reservoir.” Previous legislation required state and local agencies to refer to the reservoir only as “Buggs Island Lake.”

The bill was approved by a unanimous vote of 97–0, with no abstentions. Three delegates were not present at the time of the vote. The bill was voted on in a block with other legislation.

Senate Bill 972 now goes to Governor McAuliffe for his signature. The House of Delegates did not introduce any amendments to the bill, which had been previously approved by the Virginia Senate on January 21, 2015. I covered the Senate’s vote—which was not unanimous—more thoroughly in an earlier post.

For more coverage, please read my original post on this topic, in which I extensively examined Senate Bill 972 and the controversial history of the name of Buggs Island Lake. Stay tuned for more updates as the bill wends its way from the Virginia General Assembly to the Governor’s desk.