| Dear Coalition friends and supporters,
We want to impress upon you, and our Supervisors, the magnitude of transmission lines and substations that are gathering like a storm at our collective doorstep. All for one undeniable reason.
The Dominion Representative in Monday’s “stakeholder” meeting confirmed it with no hesitation. We want to be sure that YOU understand exactly who requires ALL this power:
“Environmental stakeholder pushed Dominion to be crystal clear: What is necessitating this power grid expansion?”
“Dominion representative: “You are right, data centers are a huge driving factor of this need.”
The onslaught of massive transmission lines and substations would NOT be happening if ALL local supervisors understood the broader impacts. For a decade, the Coalition has been trying to impress upon our elected leaders: YOUR DECISIONS are creating the need for grid expansion that impacts our communities, that impacts our environment, and that impacts our rising electricity bills.
Please take the time to understand all the information in this email – there is A LOT here that YOU need to know.
NOTE: Our participation in these private meetings with Dominion Energy is to be able to forewarn the citizens about what is being planned. However, our warnings in blast emails DO NOT take the place of Dominion Energy outreach to the public, in spite of their protestations to the contrary. We want that to be crystal clear. The Coalition is NOT an emissary of, or a mouthpiece for, Dominion Energy.
IT MUST BE EMPHASIZED: Dominion is only at the beginning of grid expansions in Prince William County to serve their Data Center Overlords — one of the biggest being Amazon Web Services.
1. Hornbaker new substation and 230kV transmission line – We alerted about the Hornbaker transmission line and substation last July.
2. Daves Store 230kV transmission line and substations. As you know, we just sent out an email last week about the “Daves Store” 230kv transmission line and 4 substations.
There are 3 more new transmission lines for Data Center power needs to share with you:
3. Vint Hill to Hornbaker 230kV transmission line route. While on the backburner for right now, it IS coming, and it will have major impacts creating an entirely new corridor.
In the map below, in the area within the black and white “study area” lines, look in the lower left-hand corner for “Vint Hill” and then follow up to the right for the word “Hornbaker.” Imagine a massive 105 ft tall transmission line snaking somewhere between those two points.
4. Devlin Substation to Hornbaker 230 kV transmission line. This one is going to be a nightmare, so we hope those impacted communities will start reaching out to supervisors NOW.
The Devlin substation to Hornbaker transmission line route has the potential to cut through many communities. We wish we had a better map, but this is the only one Dominion Energy provided on Monday. Our goal right now is to get the initial warnings out to the community. Victory Lakes, Dunbarton, Saybrook, Braemar and others should be asking for more information on the potential path of this route. All we can share is that it will route somewhere between the Devlin substation in the upper left of the map and the Hornbaker Switching Station in the lower right of the map.
Please understand, these projects are to address possible power reliability issues caused by Data Centers which are NOW requiring power.
5. Morrisville to Wishing Star 500kV transmission line addition (Fauquier to Loudoun – through Prince William County)
While this is a “wreck and rebuild” of existing transmission lines running North-South through Prince William County, these towers are not that old, maybe 15 years since the big upgrade. This project is to reconfigure and add ANOTHER 500kV line to the existing corridor. The parallel giant-looking 130′ tall iron towers along the entire corridor between Fauquier Morrisville substation and Loudoun Wishing Star substation will be replaced with three monopoles, each 180′ tall – an increase of 50′ in height. Dominion anticipates that more land will be required for expanded rights-of-way around the Morrisville and Vint Hill substations because of this corridor expansion, if not possibly elsewhere along the corridor. This “enhancement” is to address CURRENT power reliability issues and need – primarily due to the load demand of Data Centers.
 
Our commitment to keep you informed – over the last 10 years – has never wavered.
From our local Boards of Supervisors to our General Assembly — What have our elected leaders wrought on our communities?
What is happening to our power grid, to our communities, to our electricity bills is NOT normal, and we will not pretend that it is. NO OTHER community in America is facing this kind of transmission and infrastructure build-out. YOUR public utility is taking from YOUR pockets to subsidize the personal extension cords for what is a brand-new category in Dominion Energy’s portfolio: Data Centers.
And the people elected to watch out for the little guy are turning a blind eye. We know there are a few local supervisors, and a few state Delegates and Senators, who have stood up in opposition to this gathering storm. But that has not been enough to create any real change.
What will it take to correct course? How many transmission lines will be taking private property? How much fossil fuel will be burning to generate the electricity being demanded? How much of our hard-earned money will WE have to pay for this one industry’s power need?
We hope you can cut through all the noise of “economic development” and “golden goose,” and understand: These impacts are “personal” to thousands of families in homes. Families who bear the brunt of the transmission lines. This is “personal” to the millions of rate payers who will see their electricity bills rise.
Billion-dollar tech companies have the audacity to pontificate about social justice — as our water and air quality suffer the consequences of industrialization with rising carbon emissions due to their reliance on fossil fuel.
Our local supervisors have the audacity to talk about social justice as large lot landowners sell out for millions of dollars, and leave communities like Village Place, who can’t organize an “assemblage” to escape the blight, but instead must live the reality of being consumed by Data Centers.
The opinion piece below, alluding to Skynet, reflects living in the midst of the 30 million sq ft Data Center Alley, which will be growing to 40 million at buildout.
If Nothing Else – Understand this point: Prince William County has currently built out ONLY 8 million sq ft (approximately) of data centers. But our county is on track to DOUBLE Loudoun County’s Data Center Alley — at a projected build out of 80 MILLION sq ft.
WHERE IS OUR GENERAL ASSEMBLY?
WHO IS PROTECING THE CITIZENS?
Virgilio: Swallowed Up by the Skynet | Opinion | loudounnow.com
“Currently 30 million square feet and projected to grow to 40 million or more in the next few years, it is as large as all of the Tesla gigafactories worldwide and larger than 250 COSTCO warehouses combined. Loudoun’s Skynet currently consumes 3 gigawatts of electricity, more than three times as much electricity as all of the households in Northern Virginia.”
“Increasingly, residents in eastern Loudoun are living inside a machine that is growing, destroying our environment, and consuming resources at an alarming rate. That’s not the Loudoun we envisioned when we bought our homes. It’s a dystopian Skynet future, totally incompatible with residential communities, that our elected officials and administrative staff are knowingly, aggressively, irresponsibly pursuing.”
“Our government leaders can hide behind inadequate planning and zoning, but they are the only ones responsible for those same planning and zoning regulations and approvals. The reality is that they have picked Skynet over us, sold off Loudoun to the Skynet developers, and then tell us it’s in our best interests.”
As Data Centers Encroach, Arcola Neighborhood Seeks a Way Out | News | loudounnow.com
“We are not here as applicants because we want to be here,” one Hiddenwood resident stated. “We are here because of years of land use and zoning decisions that have overlooked our small community.”
“Kyle Calhoun, whose parents live in Hiddenwood, said his parents bought their home when he was 13 and his grandparents moved into the neighborhood a few years later.”
“About ten years later, things changed. My family spent several stressful years working with their neighbors to oppose the JK2 rezoning application to build a data center smack dab outside of their front window,” he said.”
“Calhoun said his parents and grandparents had “endured hazards much worse than predicted,” as construction began around their homes.”
Steve Precker – Dominion Energy:
stephen.s.precker@dominionenergy.com
Greg Mathe – Dominion Energy:
Gregory.E.Mathe@dominionenergy.com
Go here for state and county leaders’ email addresses.
“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.” The Lorax
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