Pa. Decision Allows Work to Begin on High-Voltage Power Line (Washington Post)
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.”