Richmond lawmakers, still adjusting to their new home in the Pocahontas Building, stay busy trying to get their bills passed before the end of this year’s General Assembly session on March 10.

The Gazette-Journal caught up with legislators representing Gloucester and Mathews counties—Del. Keith Hodges (R-Urbanna) and Sens. Lynwood Lewis (D-Accomac) and Tommy Norment (R-Williamsburg)—on Monday prior to each chamber entering session at noon.

Del. Hodges

A hot local topic for this year’s session is finding state funding mechanisms to enable dredging of waterways that have filled in to points they are no longer safely navigable. Hodges said he has entered five bills into this year’s session to provide tools for localities to solve the dredging problem and has also included a budget amendment to help fund dredging projects, which have lost much of their federal backing.

Hodges says there is a bottleneck in the permitting process for dredging project...