Capon Valley Coalition

Another report of the Pennsylvania decision from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov. 14:

The state Public Utility Commission yesterday approved a 1.2-mile segment of a high-voltage power line that would begin in Greene County and provide power to the mid-Atlantic region.

By a 4-1 vote, commissioners approved a plan by Allegheny Energy to construct a 500-kilovolt power line from a new substation to be built in Dunkard, Greene County, to West Virginia and ending in Virginia.

The decision by the Pennsylvania commission was the last approval needed for the controversial $1 billion, 240-mile project.

In his dissent, commission Vice Chairman Tyrone J. Christy said the power line would do little to benefit local consumers.

“It is clear that customers in Western Pennsylvania will receive little in return for the siting of these lines in their back yards except upward pressure on the price they will pay for generation and transmission,” he said. “I cannot support a project that imposes all of the costs and none of the benefits on one segment of the public.”

The decision bucks a recommendation in September from two PUC administrative law judges that advised against it, calling the project a profit-driven attempt to ship “cheaper coal-fired generation” along an “energy superhighway” to the east.

The commission was apparently swayed by an agreement reached in late September by Greene County commissioners and the Greensburg-based utility. It called for the company to abandon its plans for another power station and a 36-mile power line extending from Greene County to North Strabane in Washington County.

Part of that agreement required the utility company to pay Greene County $750,000 and return easements purchased over the last 30 years from local property owners, many of whom challenged the validity of the easements in court.

In a related 3-2 vote, the commission voted to approve a request by Allegheny Power to delay a decision about the 36-mile line into Washington County. Utility company officials say they wanted a stay so they could work on an alternative proposal.

The company has said the new power lines were needed in Washington County to address growing local demand, though the two PUC judges said they saw no drastic need for new power transmission in the area.

From the Nov. 14 edition of The Washington Post comes word we did not want to hear:

Pennsylvania regulators yesterday approved the construction of a controversial high-voltage power line through part of the state, giving Dominion Virginia Power the final authorization necessary to begin construction on a 65-mile stretch through rural Northern Virginia.

Dominion officials praised the decision and said construction will probably begin before January. The earliest work will take place in the Prince William County section, where the utility has sufficient right of way to start building. Once completed, the line also will cut through Culpeper, Rappahannock, Fauquier, Frederick and Warren counties before ending at a substation in Loudoun County.

“We welcome this news, especially for our customers, businesses and schools in Northern Virginia, because this means that they will get the reliable electricity they expect,” Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson said.

The 65-mile stretch in Virginia is part of a three-state line proposed jointly by Dominion and Allegheny Power. Virginia and West Virginia have signed off on their sections of the $1.3 billion, 250-mile line; the decision yesterday by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission removes the last regulatory obstacle. (Emphasis added.)

Dominion says the 500-kilovolt transmission line is necessary to bring electricity to power-hungry Northern Virginia, where demand has risen by more than 8 percent in the past decade. Without it, officials say, the region could experience blackouts beginning in 2011.

But the project has sparked intense opposition among environmental activists and property owners, who say that Dominion has exaggerated the need and that the project will damage the landscape and contribute to global warming.

The lead opponent has been the anti-sprawl Piedmont Environmental Council, which raised more than $3 million to challenge the project and asked the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the state’s approval of it. That group and others say the region’s power problems should be solved by other means, such as conservation and the construction of small power plants close to the consumers of the electricity.

Robert W. Lazaro Jr., a spokesman for the organization, said he is disappointed but not surprised by the Pennsylvania decision.

“We’re in a regulatory environment that has no interest in pursuing 21st-century solutions,” Lazaro said. “They’re still doing what they did in the early 1900s, which is put up these huge towers and hope that they won’t blow down in the wind.”

Lazaro said the Piedmont Environmental Council expects the Supreme Court case to be heard next spring or summer. However, Dominion officials plan to move quickly to build the line so it can be up and running by summer 2011.

Dominion has begun negotiating with landowners in places where the company needs to acquire land or right of way. If the landowners refuse, however, the company may take the land through eminent domain.

“As a last resort, we have the right to do that,” Anderson said. “But it is our preference to work something out with the landowner.”