When Paul McDonald learned last month that a massive power transmission line was proposed to run through his property, first he was stunned.
Then he took action.
McDonald, a software developer in Orange County, began organizing online opposition to Valley Link Transmission’s proposed 765-kilovolt line that would run 115 miles through nine counties, from Campbell to Culpeper, to deliver more electricity to Northern Virginia.
He created a website, Block Valley Link, to outline the case against the project, along with an accompanying Facebook page and Facebook group. The group has more than 2,800 members, of whom more than 600 joined in the past week.
McDonald and others have been organizing community meetings, posting news articles and videos of county board meetings, encouraging people to write to elected officials and showing how to mail “no trespassing” notices to Valley Link in an effort to keep surveyors off their property.
“I’m not an activist. I was shoved into this, and we’re trying to get organized,” McDonald said in an interview.
Critics of the $1 billion transmission line say it would harm private property, their communities’ rural character, the environment and the health of people living and working near it.
At 765 kilovolts, it would be in the highest voltage category of transmission lines in the United States. The line would be able to carry about 6.6 gigawatts of power, which, for context, is about three and a half times the output of the North Anna nuclear power plant in Louisa County.
The transmission line would use steel lattice towers 135 to 160 feet tall, with approximately four to five per mile. They would require 200-foot-wide rights of way, much of which would be in “greenfield” land — outside of land already earmarked for utility use.
The project’s opponents say that Valley Link acquiring those rights of way — whether voluntarily by easement or forcibly by eminent domain — would bisect farms, upend homebuilding plans and negatively impact businesses.
In Appomattox County, residents Nathan and Leslie Brown say the proposed transmission line threatens the 50-acre hardwoods farm that they’re carefully cultivating as a family homestead.
“It’s the biggest power line you can build, and it’s going directly through our property,” Nathan Brown told Appomattox supervisors at their March 16 meeting. “In fact, their line proposes to go right through our pond.”
Valley Link says the “extra-high-voltage” line, first announced last month, is necessary to meet increasing power demand driven by data centers, electric vehicles and other growth factors, as well as to make the electric grid more reliable.
They’ve compared it to another historic massive infrastructure investment, the interstate highway system after World War II.
Valley Link officials say they want to hear residents’ concerns.
The company sent more than 120,000 notices to owners of property within a mile of the proposed route corridors.
It’s held informational meetings, each typically staffed by more than 40 representatives, throughout the nine counties where the line is slated to run. After gathering feedback, Valley Link will hold more meetings this summer.
“The feedback is the most important thing, because we don’t know what we don’t know,” said George Porter, a spokesperson for Valley Link and for Appalachian Power, whose parent company, American Electric Power, is part of the Valley Link joint venture.
“That’s why we need the customers to tell us, ‘You can’t come through here,’ or ‘Yes, you can come through here, but just stay next to my fence line,’ or something of that nature,” Porter said during an interview at an informational meeting in Lynchburg on Monday.
Porter acknowledged that some potentially impacted residents don’t support the project, but said that Valley Link’s goal has been to provide open communication through the informational meetings.
“You may not like everything that we’re proposing, but we’re going to be honest with you and tell you exactly what we’re doing,” he said.
The project is named “Joshua Falls to Yeat” for the electric substations that would serve as its endpoints in Campbell and Culpeper counties, respectively. An interactive map is available on the project website.
Valley Link has not yet finalized the project’s route. It has put forth two main potential route corridors, with several variations along them.
One route would require about 18 acres of McDonald’s 350-acre farm in the Locust Grove community of Orange County. Another would require 30 acres, he said.
While Valley Link cites multiple reasons for growing electricity demand, McDonald and others argue that the project is really about data center growth in Northern Virginia, which has been dubbed the “data center capital of the world” — yet the line would run through largely rural Central Virginia.
“This is not for the public good,” McDonald said.
Opponents place hope in Culpeper
Between Campbell and Culpeper counties, the Joshua Falls to Yeat line is slated to cross Appomattox, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania counties.
Once in Culpeper, it would connect to 500-kilovolt Dominion Energy lines to serve Northern and Central Virginia. Valley Link is a partnership among Dominion, FirstEnergy Transmission LLC and Transource Energy LLC, which itself is a partnership between American Electric Power and the electric utility Evergy.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
American Electric Power already has some of the large 765-kilovolt lines in its portfolio, including one that runs to the Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County, just a few miles outside Lynchburg. If it’s built, Joshua Falls to Yeat would mark the first such line for Dominion.
The Yeat substation was originally planned for Fauquier County, but Valley Link changed it to Culpeper because the Fauquier location would have impacted more homes, Adam Maguire, a project manager with Valley Link and Dominion Energy, told Orange County officials at a public meeting on Tuesday.
McDonald said he believes the opposition’s best hope lies with the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors.
Virginia’s State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body that will be tasked with evaluating Valley Link’s proposal and then approving it, rejecting it or mandating that it use a different route.
But building a new electric substation typically requires local government approval — and the Yeat substation has yet to be built.
Culpeper County’s acting county administrator, Denise Harris, said in an email Monday that the county has not yet received a land-use application for the substation.
Asked when Valley Link will submit a substation plan to Culpeper County, Craig Carper, a spokesperson for Valley Link and for Dominion Energy, said Valley Link officials “don’t have a specific timeline for all our filings at the moment.”
McDonald said he hopes Culpeper supervisors can stop the Joshua Falls to Yeat line before it gets to the SCC.
None of Culpeper County’s seven supervisors responded to an email from Cardinal News asking whether they would support the Yeat substation.
If the substation moves forward, McDonald said his group is working to secure lawyers to contest the Joshua Falls to Yeat project before the SCC.
The SCC’s review process would likely include opportunities for public comment and a public hearing.
Meanwhile, more than 200 comments opposing the Joshua Falls to Yeat project have been filed with federal regulators under a case that is not specific to this project but instead asks whether new power generation and storage to the grid should be expedited.
Some of the commenters argue that fast-tracking new power generation interconnection would increase future demand for large transmission lines such as Joshua Falls to Yeat.
Examples of those who have used that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission case to register their opposition to Valley Link’s proposal include the manager of a Louisa County dog-boarding business and a Goochland County farmer whose house dates to the late 18th century.
Residents, local governments speak up
The SCC, not local governments along the proposed Joshua Falls to Yeat corridor, will evaluate whether the transmission line should be built and if its route is proper.
Nonetheless, some local boards of supervisors have passed or will consider passing resolutions opposing it. They include Appomattox, Louisa and Orange counties.
Louisa County board Chair Duane Adams has suggested that counties affected by the transmission line proposal work together to “have a greater impact on the outcome of this project.”
Dozens of people signed up to speak at a Tuesday joint meeting of Orange County’s board of supervisors and planning commission, which lasted nearly five hours.
Missy Chambers said at the meeting that her multigenerational family farm produces corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and cattle across three counties, and Valley Link’s proposal would affect more than 100 acres of her land.
“My land is valuable,” Chambers said. “I would rather eat than help some data center have electricity. Destroying productive agricultural land hurts America and the price of food.”
The public comment period came after a number of pointed questions and comments from supervisors and commissioners about aspects of the project including its route and anticipated rights of way.
Referencing the thousands of people who had shown up to Valley Link’s various informational meetings, supervisor Crystal Coleman asked Maguire, “Out of those thousands of people … how many felt this was a good project and were in support of it?”
“That’s a tricky question,” Maguire replied.
“It’s not tricky, actually,” Coleman said.
Maguire said that a project that impacts greenfield land typically brings out people who have questions about it.
“So generally I’d say that the majority of people we hear from have questions or concerns. And then you’d have a smaller percentage who say, ‘I love transmission lines’ — well, let’s call that 2%,” he said.
At the Appomattox County Board of Supervisors meeting on March 16, resident Sarah Elyard implored supervisors to make a statement that they oppose the project.
“This project changes the trajectory, landscape and character of our county. It doesn’t have to be in your backyard for you to understand and empathize with these landowners,” Elyard said.
Appomattox County supervisors agreed to consider a formal resolution at their April meeting.
“As far as the Valley Link thing is concerned, I’ve had numerous constituents contact me on that, and they bring up valid points, and I would certainly support them in a resolution,” said supervisor Trevor Hipps.
Regulatory process anticipated to take at least a year
Valley Link engineers will create a final route for the Joshua Falls to Yeat line and submit it for consideration to the SCC later this year, likely in September.
Valley Link estimates that state regulators will take about a year to deliberate on the project. If the project and route are approved, the company will then begin negotiating acquisition of rights of way.
The company has said it hopes to acquire the right to use the necessary land through voluntary easements, in which a property owner retains ownership of the land but is paid for its use.
Property owners who refuse could find themselves facing the prospect of eminent domain, in which a utility seizes private property for the public good and compensates the owner, although Valley Link has said that would be a last resort.
If all proceeds on schedule, the line would be completed in 2029, according to Valley Link’s estimate.
The capital cost of the project would be spread among transmission operators in the service territory of PJM Interconnection, the wholesale transmission operator for Virginia, 12 other states and Washington, D.C.
Those operators, which include Dominion and Appalachian Power, would determine how to incorporate the costs into their customers’ bills.