Prince William-Gainesville Times: An open letter to Dominion: Where’s the need?

While route questions are getting a lot of attention, the need for this project is an open question and must be definitively proven first.

The Coalition to Protect Prince William County has been challenging the need for this project since day one.

Contrary to what Dominion has been, and will continue to try to argue, this rural area of Prince William County is not at risk of having insufficient power. Current county growth projections very clearly outline this.

The SCC commissioners, in their decisions on this project, said, “It is uncontested that a retail customer of the Company (Dominion Energy) is driving the identified need for this Project.”  Dominion admitted that 97 percent of the power is for the data center.

The Code of Virginia requires that a transmission project must fulfill a public need, not a private need.

Amazon, the private retail customer working with Dominion Energy to create the need for this project, wants to operate a data center campus, which would be comprised of a total of four buildings just outside of the town limits of Haymarket. One Amazon data center is already operational (powered through double-stack distribution lines running straight through the town of Haymarket, which were also installed for this customer), in a leased building on property immediately adjacent to the land purchased for its new data center campus. As stated in Dominion’s application to the SCC, the retail customer (Amazon) told Dominion that it wants to build three new additional data center buildings to be in service by June 2018.

However, most recently, Amazon’s own attorneys changed the story about the need for this project, in testimony to the Army Corps of Engineers. Amazon’s counsel told this group the following, regarding the plans for Amazon’s new data center campus buildings:

• The first of the new buildings is complete and also operational using the existing electrical utility infrastructure.
• The second of the new buildings is not yet built, and would also operate without the requirement for additional electrical utility infrastructure.
• The electric transmission and distribution facilities delineated in Dominion’s application would not be required until the final third building was operational.
• The last two buildings were not projected to be built in the foreseeable future, if ever, as construction would only occur if expanded data center capacity was required in the future by the customer.

So, the private retail customer for this project, Amazon, says it doesn’t need the power now, and it may not build all the planned buildings?

Who is lying? Dominion? Or Amazon?

Where’s the need? I don’t need the power from this project. Who does?

Dominion is using these data center projects as a way to expand its network grid, at no cost to the company, so that it can transport and sell electric power, much of it to customers outside of Virginia. With the proposed Haymarket project, Dominion will benefit and see its profits expand yet again, with the addition of more transmission lines as well as a new substation. And – a substation in Haymarket will give Dominion yet another way to run even more subsequent transmission lines through our countryside to that substation, to further expand its network grid even more in the future, enabling the utility to sell even more power to surrounding states, and make even more money on the backs of Virginia ratepayers.

I am a wife and mother who grew up in Northern Virginia, and I have now lived in Prince William County for close to 20 years. I would much rather be playing with my new granddaughter and working in my garden, than spending countless hours dealing with all of this. But I am also one of the residents watching our government entities, our public utility, and the richest man on earth working to take away from me, and mine, and all future generations, the history, the environment, the culture, the neighborhoods, and the way of life that we cherish in this rural part of Virginia. I am one of thousands upon thousands hitting the coalition website more than a million times to keep educated on all the twists and turns of this issue. I am disgusted, and I am angry.

Karen Sheehan, of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, lives in Haymarket.