Richmond Times-Dispatch: Amazon doesn’t need controversial….
For the better part of three years, furor has steadily mounted over a proposed 230-kilovolt transmission line and associated electrical infrastructure that Dominion Energy wants to build in Prince William County, primarily to power an Amazon data center expansion but also, it says, to improve reliability and electrical service in the area.
Yet in a filing last week, opponents say lawyers for Amazon have acknowledged the data center expansion may not happen, undercutting the rationale for the entire controversial project.
At present, the lines and towers more than 100 feet tall are scheduled to run from Haymarket and Gainesville through the Carver Road area, a historic black neighborhood that includes properties acquired after an 1866 law allowed newly freed slaves to own land.
Amazon representatives, as in the past, did not respond to a request for comment. Dominion spokesman Chuck Penn said the project has “broad public benefit,” serving more than 450 customers directly upon completion and improving reliability for more than 6,000 customers in western Prince William.
The utility has “not been given any reason to believe” that the two additional buildings proposed at the Midwood data center project in Haymarket will not be built, Penn added. Even without the expansion, “the company believes it would still need a transmission solution in the Haymarket load area,” Penn said.
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The SCC, which issued a final order authorizing the construction of the transmission line last month, announced Friday that it would suspend the order while it weighed requests for reconsideration filed by the coalition and the Somerset Crossing Homeowners Association, another area organization opposed to the project.
“The order today keeps the case here at the SCC, and more than likely there will be another order of the commission as to the next step in the process regarding reconsideration,” spokesman Ken Schrad said Friday.
Opponents of the project hope this time the commission takes to heart their arguments that the line forces ratepayers to fund what amounts to an “extension cord” for Amazon that could cost up to $62 million and takes private property for little to no public benefit.
“The commission has not considered new evidence that challenges the ‘need’ that serves as the basis of Dominion’s application, and the evidence not only fails to demonstrate a need for the transmission line, the customer has admitted there is no need,” the Coalition to Protect Prince William County wrote. “In the absence of need, Dominion will not have the authority to take private property through eminent domain.”
Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William — who has been an outspoken critic of the line, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and Dominion — predicts the case could trigger legislative changes as to how the commission should consider similar projects.
“This is not government in the public interest,” Marshall said. “I really think that the way the SCC has handled this, and what Dominion has done, is going to necessitate a revamping of how these applications are made and handled.”
Marshall was at the March 8 meeting hosted by the Army Corps of Engineers, which must issue a permit for discharging fill material into wetlands and a stream related to the construction of the third building at the data center complex. That means the permit is a “federal undertaking” subject to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, and the corps convened a meeting of “consulting parties” to coordinate the effects of the project on historic properties, such as the Civil War Buckland Mills Battlefield, an areas that encompasses the data center site.
Marshall filed an affidavit with the State Corporation Commission stating that the attorneys for VAData, the Amazon entity that is behind the data center, said the first building is complete and requires no additional power; that the transmission line is not necessary until the third building is operational; and that “buildings two and three were not projected to be built and operational in the foreseeable future.”
“This sure looks awkward,” Marshall said in an interview. “I don’t see how anyone can keep a straight face. … The need was not there. It was contrived. It was made up.”
Penn said that characterization is inaccurate.
“We are not sure if the VAData attorneys misspoke or the coalition misunderstood what they meant, but the statement is incorrect,” he said. “Dominion Energy Virginia does not have capacity to serve buildings two and three on the Midwood site from a distribution perspective. The available distribution capacity is already contracted for by the two existing data center buildings that are currently in service and ramping.”
Of five possible routes for the transmission line project, the commission in April issued an interim order giving Dominion 60 days to secure an easement with Prince William for what it called the “railroad route,” which ran along a Norfolk-Southern rail line.
The SCC rejected as too expensive the county and residents’ preferred route along Interstate 66, with about 3 miles of the line buried underground. However, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors accepted a conveyance of property in the path of the railroad route from the Somerset Crossing homeowners group for an open-space easement.
In June, the supervisors rejected Dominion’s request for permission to build the line across the easement, reiterating their support for the partially underground route along I-66. After that vote, the SCC directed Dominion to proceed with the Carver route.
“We are going to adhere to the edict we get from our regulators,” Penn said. “We’re going to build whatever route that the SCC tells us to build.”
Hudson started the Alliance to Save Carver Road, which will hold a news conference Tuesday to urge the supervisors to fund a legal challenge to the transmission line, to organize opposition and raise money to fight the project. Dominion workers entered her property without permission and “really scared the tenants” of the rental house she owns with the prospect of 110-foot towers, she said.
“They’re going to clear a bunch of the trees. And my tenants have said if that happens, they want out of the lease,” Hudson said.
Dominion and Amazon, she added, are taking advantage of a community of elderly residents “with very little resources and very little voice.”
“They expect the ratepayers to pay for the installation of the line. Amazon is not paying one dime to install these lines,” she said. “It is a travesty. It is degrading to our community, and it is not fair.”
Penn, the Dominion spokesman, said the Carver route would cross about 75 properties that would require easements, though no “displacement of homes” will happen.
“It is important to note that we were disappointed when what we considered the best route for the Haymarket project was placed out of our reach when a homeowners association transferred property to Prince William County. This action blocked a route that we and the SCC deemed to have fewer impacts,” Penn said.
Jeanine Lawson, a member of the Board of Supervisors who represents the Carver Road area and whose Brentsville district includes the majority of the proposed line route, said she will push the county to “do everything we can legally do to protect the community.” “There’s a dark cloud over Dominion’s case of the need being tied to reliability just as much as the data center client,” she said.
She also rejected the notion that the Board of Supervisors forced Dominion into the Carver route.
“They created and proposed the routes. It appears the Carver route was not adequately vetted and the SCC made a decision based on incomplete data,” Lawson said.