Richmond Times-Dispatch: Dominion gets delay…
By: Robert Zullo Richmond Times-Dispatch
July 26, 2017
Dominion Energy, facing a wave of determined opposition from local government, a pair of state lawmakers and residents over a planned 230-kilovolt Prince William County transmission line and associated infrastructure intended to power an Amazon data center expansion, on Monday asked state regulators for a 60-day pause in the process.
The next day, the State Corporation Commission, which is considering requests from opponents of the project to reconsider its approval of the transmission line between Gainesville and Haymarket, said Dominion will get the additional time to attempt to iron out what seem intractable differences with county officials over the latest proposed route for the project.
However, it will also have to respond to filings by the Coalition to Protect Prince William County and the Somerset Crossing Homeowners Association, who contend that representatives from Amazon have acknowledged the data center expansion and accompanying load requirements that spawned the transmission line project may never materialize.
Both groups and other opponents have argued that the need for the roughly five-mile line and the 112-foot-tall towers that will carry it has not been proven. They want Dominion to bury the line along a route that parallels Interstate 66 if it must be built and say Amazon, which has yet to publicly acknowledge its role in the thorny project, should pay a major portion of the cost, not Dominion’s ratepayers.
Amazon has not responded to numerous requests for comment from the Times-Dispatch.
Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, and state Sen. Richard H. Black, R-Loudoun, sent a letter to the commission earlier this month, requesting that it revoke the certificate of need and public convenience it issued for the project.
“Amazon/VADATA admitted through their own attorneys on March 8, 2017, they do not currently and will not in the foreseeable future (if ever) generate the power requirement listed in Dominion’s application. Why doesn’t this public admission alone invalidate Dominion’s application?” they wrote.
Dominion spokesman Chuck Penn said that characterization is inaccurate. The company has said in addition to serving the data center, the line will meet a broad need in an area it contends is developing rapidly and will soon require power infrastructure upgrades.
“There’s nothing that we have been told or learned about that changes the fact that this project is needed,” Penn said.
The latest phase in the fight over the project involves the Carver Road route, one of five considered by the commission, which regulates public utilities, and the SCC’s second choice. The commission directed Dominion to come to terms with the county over its preferred “railroad route,” which ran along a Norfolk-Southern rail line and would have fewer impacts to residences than other alternatives.
But 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, a move that was explicitly made to block the project. The commission, which rejected the underground option as too expensive, ruled that if Dominion and the county could not agree on the railroad route, the Carver route would also be acceptable. In June, the supervisors rejected Dominion’s request to cross the railroad route easement.
As the proposed route has shifted to their neighborhood, Carver Road residents have marshaled opposition, including securing a $30,000 commitment from the county last week to fund a legal challenge to the transmission line.
And in a letter Monday to Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, a conservative firebrand and former GOP gubernatorial candidate who has openly blasted Dominion and came within a hair’s breadth of upsetting Ed Gillespie in the Republican primary, Dominion now says it has identified properties along the Carver route that would require county approval to cross.
“We will make a formal request for that crossing shortly — which we anticipate being denied — but wanted to first provide context for how we reached this point and what a workable path forward could look like,” wrote Bob McGuire, Dominion’s director of electric transmission project development.
McGuire’s letter says business expansion and development in the county means delaying the project “puts economic growth and reliable electrical service in Prince William at risk” and that the county’s decision to block the railroad option amounts to pitting different parts of the county against each other.
“It would appear the county is working to obstruct, at all costs, the needed power to reach project which it was instrumental in luring,” McGuire wrote of the data center.
Dominion says there are two viable options for common ground for the county and utility: Allow the line to be built along the railroad route or “compromise and work together” on an overhead route along I-66, “which, while it does have impacts, maximizes use of an existing public transportation corridor.”
Stewart, who is now running for U.S. Senate, said that unless Dominion agrees to the I-66 hybrid route, the option that involves burying the lines along I-66, there’s nothing to talk about.
“Prince William County will not allow Dominion to cut up communities in the county,” Stewart said. “We’ve said this to them probably a dozen times. We’ve said it from the beginning. We’re not changing our position. … If they want to sit down and negotiate, there’s nothing to negotiate.”
He also bristled at a letter sent by Dominion this week to people in the Carver Road area, which blamed the county government’s blockage of the railroad route for the project shifting to their area.
“We wouldn’t be talking about this transmission project, let alone a transmission line route, if it were not for the economic development that occurred under the Prince William Board of County Supervisors’ watch,” the utility wrote to residents. “However, the reality is, there are increased power demands in your area and Dominion Energy Virginia is obligated to meet them. ”
Stewart said the company’s “arrogance is off the charts.”
“They’ve been trying to play the communities against each other. They’ve been trying to play the county against the community,” he said, adding that county officials are also questioning the need for the transmission line. “There’s a real lack of trust that we have in Dominion and frankly their behavior has been reprehensible.”
Both Dominion and the SCC have said that the only route Prince William will agree to, the hybrid I-66 route, is too expensive. It would cost nearly $100 million more than other options such as Carver Road, which is estimated at about $62 million, according to Penn, the Dominion spokesman.
“That’s not our problem,” Stewart said.