Coalition to Protect Prince William County
PO Box 382
Haymarket, VA 20168
www.protectpwc.org
PRESS RELEASE
For more Information contact:
Elena Schlossberg
Executive Director, Coalition to Protect Prince William County
admin@protectpwc.org
SCC BIAS IN AMAZON/DOMINION POWER LINE CASE
Haymarket, VA (December 22, 2015) -Delegate Marshall and several other legislators recently requested that any SCC public hearings with regard to the Haymarket Power Lines be held after the General Assembly adjourns for the year. The SCC scheduled both hearings during the General Assembly or shortly after clearly not taking this request into consideration.
When Delegate Marshall sent a follow-up email asking for reconsideration of these dates he was told by Ken Schrad of the SCC staff, “The company’s application was received on November 6, 2015, in which the application cited an in-service need date of June 2018 with an estimated construction time of 12 months. … The Commission elected to choose the soonest dates available.”
Delegate Marshall stated, “This response completely undercuts any hope the public may have had that the SCC process would be fair and unbiased, and that the SCC would first determine whether there was a ‘need’ to place a Data Center several miles outside of an Industrial zoned area rather than accommodate ‘an in-service need date of June 2018 with an estimated construction time of 12 months.’
In short, the Commission will now have a difficult, if not impossible, task to convince western Prince William residents that the Commission has not already made a decision to comply with the Amazon/Dominion construction schedule. Why the rush to assume the “merits” of the application, if not to comply with a foregone conclusion that nothing will be presented by the public that could possibly impede Amazon’s construction schedule?”
Delegate Marshall has once again requested that the SCC reconsider these meeting dates (see attached email) so that the representatives of the citizens of the Haymarket area can be there to help represent them.
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