Updated 1:45 p.m., Nov. 5: This story was updated to include additional votes tallied as of Wednesday afternoon.
Wise County voters have rejected a referendum that would have marked a first step toward creating a local electric authority to work with large businesses that require lots of power.
Officials had said the proposed authority would not have handled residential electric customers. Rather, it would have focused on big commercial and industrial customers such as data centers or advanced manufacturers that use so much electricity that they would require new power plants, possibly next door to them.
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Residents who opposed the proposal had multiple objections. Among others, they said county officials failed to provide adequate information to voters and they expressed concerns that an electric authority could be used to bypass public input when the county evaluates future project proposals.
“This power authority is a gift to big profitable corporations,” Lauren Albrecht, of the Wise County chapter of Virginia Organizing and the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, said at an Oct. 23 press conference held by a coalition of community groups opposed to the referendum.
The electric authority does not currently exist. Officials in the Southwest Virginia county had said that voting on the referendum to allow the county’s participation in an electric authority was necessary before it could be created.
As of Wednesday afternoon, that vote stood at 54% opposed and 46% in favor with 10,238 votes tallied, according to unofficial figures from the Virginia Department of Elections.
Voting numbers available as of Wednesday afternoon do not include mail-in absentee ballots received by deadline but processed later. They also do not include provisional ballots, such as those from people who registered and voted on Tuesday.
Those votes tallied later typically represent a small fraction of the total.
In Wise County, 11,022 votes had been counted all together as of Wednesday afternoon, which means nearly 800 voters cast ballots without weighing in on the referendum.
Proposal created with economic development in mind
The proposal for the electric authority came as Wise County officials look to court new large businesses and increase the county’s tax base.
Companies scouting new locations are increasingly emphasizing the importance of having enough electricity, according to Brian Falin, Wise County’s industrial development supervisor and executive director of the county’s industrial development authority.
“It used to be water and sewer, but now power is the number one consideration for economic development projects,” Falin said during an Oct. 22 public webinar on the referendum.
The idea of an electric authority grew out of concerns that Old Dominion Power might not be able to supply sufficient power for new large businesses, Wise County Administrator Mike Hatfield has said.
Old Dominion Power serves about 28,000 Southwest Virginia customers in Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott and Wise counties. It’s the Virginia arm of Kentucky Utilities, which has a larger footprint with more than 500,000 additional electricity customers in Kentucky.
An Old Dominion Power spokesperson in August did not comment on the referendum directly but said that the utility has “several major capacity and enhancement projects currently underway to support overall load growth across our service areas.”
If a large business came to Wise County and needed a new power plant, the electric authority would have ensured that the company, not residents, would pay for it, county officials have said.
Opponents had multiple concerns
Some referendum opponents expressed concerns that the authority could open the door to nuclear power in Wise County.
Officials have expressed interest in small modular nuclear reactors coming to the county but have said the authority would focus on other sources of power, such as natural gas or solar, that could be built sooner.
Referendum opponents also said the Wise County Board of Supervisors should have held public hearings before supervisors voted in June to petition the circuit court to add the referendum to this year’s election ballot.
And opponents said that county staff used a referendum committee to push for a yes vote despite a state law that says a county government should present only a “neutral explanation” to voters.
The Wise County Electric Authority Referendum Committee received $10,000 each from the county’s general fund, the county’s public service authority and its industrial development authority.
Among the committee’s members were Falin and Hatfield, who served as the committee’s treasurer and principal custodian of the books, respectively.
Hatfield said the committee was organized in accordance with state law and that the county’s general fund money paid only for neutral, factual mailers.
Pro-referendum information such as “vote yes” flyers were funded by the PSA and IDA without using taxpayer dollars, Hatfield has said.
