WJLA: Dispute pitting neighbors against power company and Amazon
by Richard Reeve/ABC7
Monday, July 31st 2017
Haymarket, Va (ABC7) – Along rural, quiet Carver Road in Haymarket, the signs sit in front of Christine Moore’s house.
“Attention Dominion Energy,” they read. “Private Property, no trespassing.”
“230,000 volts of electric power coming through our neighborhood?” Moore says. “I’m almost sure that would be a health hazard to us.”
Moore and others here say they’re concerned about a Dominion Energy Plan to install 100-foot high towers, on Carver, along a six-mile transmission line.
The idea is to provide power to a proposed 38-acre data center complex that would be run by an Amazon subsidiary.
“There’s clear need for the project,” says Chuck Penn, a Dominion Energy spokesperson. “The State Corporation Commission has already established the need, that on day one, 460 customers including Novant Hospital will be serviced by this line.”
The commission, also known as the SCC, regulates utilities in Virginia.
Penn also says 6,000 other customers will see their electric grid made stronger, to allow customers to get back on line ‘in minutes’ in the event of a power outage, for example.
The SCC argues there would be benefits to other utility customers in the area.
“Electrons flow like water,” says Ken Schrad, an SCC spokesperson. “As you improve system reliability with the addition of a transmission line, it’s going to enhance overall reliability to the area.”
However, some residents, and The Coalition to Protect Prince William County, are questioning the need for the project in the first place.
The group has filed motions as a respondent with the SCC, challenging Dominion’s plans.
In July, the commission agreed to suspend its ruling ordering the utility to build the line along Carver Road.
“This has been a fight that’s been going on for more than three years,” says Karen Sheehan, a coalition spokesperson. “It’s going to affect our environment, it’s going to affect our culture. If this route is selected, the trees behind me will be gone in a 100 foot wide path.”
The SCC has given Dominion until August 7 to respond to community objections about the Carver Road plan.
Dominion, and the commission, say Carver Road isn’t their first choice for a location of the transmission lines.
“We never wanted to be on Carver Road,” Penn says. “Carver Road was not our preference, and it’s still not our preference.”
The SCC says the Carver Road location is the second-best choice.
“Every line has impact,” Schrad says. “But you try to come up with something that has the least amount of impact to accomplish the ultimate need for the line.”
Penn, and the SCC say their preferred location would have been along a Norfolk-Southern Rail Line, known as the ‘rail route’.
“It was clear that the railroad route was the very best route that had the least amount of impact, that there was no resident within 200 feet of the center line of the right-of-way,” he says.
But Penn says Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart ‘colluded’ with the Somerset Crossing Homeowners’ Association “to block that route, and they still continue to block that route.”
Reached by phone Monday night, Stewart says the board of supervisors did indeed work out a deal with Somerset Crossing, where the HOA deeded a conservation easement on it, so that the county can use it for park purposes.
He says under state law, Dominion can use eminent domain against homeowners, but not against county-owned property, or easements.
Stewart says the arrangement is perfectly legal.
“The county accepted a conservation easement on that property to prevent the transmission lines from cutting through Somerset Crossing and the Hopewell’s Landing communities,” he says.
The SCC says cost will also factor in the final decision for the project, if it’s approved.
The ‘railroad’ route would cost around $55 million, the SCC says.
The Carver Road plan would cost around $62 million.
But a hybrid plan, calling for a line running along Route 66, with several miles underground, would cost $167-million.
Stewart says the Route 66 plan is the only one acceptable to board members.
Dominion and the SCC say that so-called ‘hybrid’ plan’s cost would have to be bourne by utility ratepayers statewide.
“It’s not fair for a widow in Portsmith, or somebody on a fixed income in Richmond, to have to pay for a project that is being blocked because somebody doesn’t want to see their view shed altered,” Penn says.
The SCC will be the final decider in this case.
It’s unclear exactly how long a new ruling would take.
Sheehan says if the Carver plan gets the go-ahead, Amazon and Dominion will be the beneficiaries, not residents.
“None of us need this. We don’t want it, it’s not for our need,” she says. “They’re afraid they’re going to lose their yards, they’re going to have transmission lines suspended over their back porch. They’re scared of the effects of these lines on their children.”
Schrad tells ABC7 News that no one should fear about losing their property, or being forced out of their homes.
Moore, who recalls seeing surveyors on her property, says she just wants to stay in the area where her family has lived since the 1880s.
“They were in my yard. They were along that fence line. They were up behind my house,” she says. “That’s scary. We want to stay in our neighborhood.”