When a massive electric transmission line was first proposed in February to run 115 miles across Central Virginia, Nathan and Leslie Brown learned that its route was drawn to go through a pond on their 50-acre Appomattox County property.
Late last month, the transmission line’s developer — Valley Link, a partnership of several major energy and utility companies — released multiple revised routes for its $1 billion “extra-high-voltage” project, named “Joshua Falls to Yeat” after the electric substations that would be its endpoints in Campbell and Culpeper counties.
Those new routes, Valley Link says, are based on more than a dozen in-person and virtual meetings with the public, more than 2,000 comments and a review of more than 15,000 miles of route alternatives. They’re designed to “minimize impacts wherever possible while meeting the project need,” the company says.
Those impacts include requiring 200-foot rights of way along the line’s path, with four to five steel lattice towers per mile. Each tower would measure 135 to 160 feet tall. Potentially impacted property owners and others are concerned about the project’s effects on land values, rural aesthetics, health and the environment.
Under Valley Link’s latest revisions, the line wouldn’t run through the Browns’ pond. Instead, it would go through a cabin that Nathan has been building by hand for the past two years using timber cut and milled on the property, or through a nearby valley whose scenic beauty was a chief reason the Browns bought the land.
“You think you do everything right, and you plan and plan, and save and save, and somebody comes through with a threat like this. It’s devastating. It’s heartbreaking,” Leslie Brown said.
The couple, who live in Midlothian, bought the property about 18 years ago. They call it Witch Tree Farm. Now, they’ve paused their plans for it, including building their primary home and a home for Leslie Brown’s mother there.
“Everything’s in limbo until we find out what’s going on, basically,” Brown said.
Brown said that she and her husband regularly call and email elected representatives. When Valley Link submits its plan to the state for review, the Browns will send regulators their comments. If necessary, they’ll hire an attorney.
“We have to fight this,” she said.
The transmission line project is still in the early stages. With the new maps published, Valley Link plans more community meetings in June before submitting its formal application this fall to state regulators, who will decide whether to approve the project and which route it should use if approved.
Valley Link has said that Joshua Falls to Yeat is necessary to serve a rising demand for electricity fueled by “growing population, electrification, industrial expansion and data center growth.” It has compared it to the post-World War II investment in interstate highways.
“This project is essential for Virginia’s economy, the reliability of our grid, and the everyday lives of our customers,” Joe Woomer, a Valley Link Transmission board member and Dominion Energy’s senior vice president of electric transmission, said in a February announcement about the project.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Valley Link said in a recent statement that with its newest revisions, fewer than 75 homes along the 115-mile corridor are within 500 feet of each of the revised routes, and no homes are within 150 feet of the revised routes. The company said that comments from the public “contributed to extensive routing refinements and identification of important local resources and land use issues.”
When the project was announced, Valley Link sent more than 120,000 notices to property owners within a mile of the proposed route corridors. The company held 11 in-person open house meetings this year that were attended by more than 3,400 people. Two virtual meetings drew nearly 700 attendees.
The company plans another virtual meeting at noon June 10. It will hold nine more open houses, one in each of the nine affected counties, between June 15 and 25. Information on those meetings is available at Valley Link’s website.
“We look forward to sharing the refined routes in person and continuing our dialogue with the communities we serve,” Valley Link spokesperson Craig Carper said in the statement.
Transmission line would span nine counties
Valley Link is a partnership among Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission LLC and Transource Energy LLC, which itself is a partnership between Appalachian Power parent company American Electric Power and the electric utility Evergy.
The Joshua Falls to Yeat line would run from Appalachian Power’s Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County, through seven counties — Appomattox, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania — and into Culpeper County.
Learn more about Valley Link’s proposed routes
Valley Link’s new proposed routes are available on its website. At the website, click “Continue as Guest,” or sign in with an account. An instructional video will appear, and the map can be seen after closing that video’s box.
The earlier proposed routes, which Valley Link says are no longer under consideration, can be seen by checking the box next to “March Routes” on the interactive map.
In Culpeper, it would end at a substation called Yeat, where it would connect with a 500-kilovolt Dominion line. That substation has not yet been built.
At 765 kilovolts, Joshua Falls to Yeat would be in the highest voltage category of transmission lines in the United States.
American Electric Power already has a 765-kilovolt line that ends at the Joshua Falls substation, just a few miles outside Lynchburg. Valley Link would carry that high-voltage power farther north.
Valley Link could acquire its rights of way through voluntary easement agreements with property owners or forcibly by eminent domain, in which private property is seized with compensation in the name of the public interest. Either way, critics say it would harm homes, farms and businesses.
A number of groups have come out against the project, such as the Piedmont Environmental Council, or have been created specifically because of Valley Link’s proposal, such as Block Valley Link, which organizes project opponents through means including its website and Facebook group with more than 5,000 members.
Numerous residents have spoken up at meetings of their county boards of supervisors. Boards in eight of the nine potentially affected counties — all except Campbell — have formally expressed opposition to the line.
Authority over the approval and siting of large transmission lines in Virginia rests with the State Corporation Commission, not county boards of supervisors.
Nonetheless, Buckingham, Goochland and Louisa counties have authorized up to $250,000 each out of their budgets to put toward potential legal fees related to their opposition to the project.
Earlier this month, Preservation Virginia named the proposed Joshua Falls to Yeat corridor to its annual list of the state’s most endangered places. The nonprofit works to save historic locations around the commonwealth.
“The demand for additional land and electric power by data centers continues to impact conserved viewsheds and historic districts throughout Virginia,” the group said.
“Solutions could include exploring alternate routes, using existing rights-of-way, or undergrounding the lines, but the overall project speaks to the continuing pressures created by the data center industry.”
Why Valley Link can’t build the line underground, sparing the impacts to above-ground land and viewsheds, has been a frequent question at public meetings and in online discourse since the project was announced.
Valley Link has said that’s not an option and that there are no underground 765-kilovolt lines in the U.S.
“The technology just isn’t there yet for putting these large, extra-large high-voltage transmission lines underground,” spokesperson Rob Richardson said at the May 19 Culpeper County board meeting.
Decision will rest with state regulators
Valley Link plans to file its formal application, including its final proposed route, this fall with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission.
The SCC regulates high-voltage transmission lines and will have the ultimate authority over whether the route is approved, including the details of its specific path.
Valley Link representative Lane Carr, who is also a siting and permitting specialist with Dominion Energy, told Culpeper supervisors on May 19 that the company believes it can prove the project’s need to the SCC and that it minimizes impacts as much as is practical.
“I’m not here to tell you this is not an impactful project. I don’t debate that at all. But ultimately it is up to the approval of the SCC,” Carr said.
If the SCC approves some version of the project, Valley Link will then begin negotiating with property owners about obtaining easements.
The company’s goal is to have the line completed in 2029.
Carr noted that the SCC does not require Valley Link to hold open houses to provide the public with information and take questions. She said that the company has chosen to do so.
“We are here to work as closely with Culpeper as we can and listen to your people,” Carr told the county supervisors.
Preserve Orange Alliance is a group whose stated goal is to protect Orange County’s agricultural and rural character but which is advocating for localities along the entire proposed transmission line path.
The group said May 27 on social media that a “transmission corridor of this scale has no place cutting through rural Virginia communities, farmland, forests, and historic landscapes.”
“The fight is not over. The SCC process still lies ahead, and public opposition remains critical,” the group said.
Endpoints in question
With the Yeat substation in Culpeper County not yet built, opponents of the Joshua Falls to Yeat proposal say that’s where their best hope might lie.
The SCC regulates the routes of large transmission lines, but local governments decide through their zoning and permitting powers whether new substations are built.
Valley Link is purchasing 448 acres in Culpeper County, with plans to develop about 127 of it, with the Yeat substation itself taking about 85 acres.
In April, Culpeper’s board of supervisors adopted a resolution opposing both the line and the planned substation.
At the board’s May 19 meeting, Carr told supervisors that Valley Link does not have a planned alternative endpoint besides Yeat.
Supervisors asked what would happen if the SCC approved the transmission line but the county refused to approve the substation.
Carr said in that case, Valley Link probably would look into whether the SCC, instead of the county, could have authority over the substation.
“If we deny the substation,” asked supervisor DeWayne Payne, who wore a yellow “No Valley Link” shirt identical to those worn by a number of residents in the meeting audience, “you have the ability to supersede us and to still continue with the line as you’re proposing now.”
“We don’t have that ability now to supersede. … We would probably research what that might look like,” Carr replied.
Meanwhile, Appalachian Power already has a Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County, where the Joshua Falls to Yeat line would begin.
Valley Link said in planning documents that it wants to relocate the Joshua Falls substation to a nearby site because of space constraints at the existing location.
In addition to serving as a potential connection point between American Electric Power’s existing 765-kilovolt line and the proposed new one, Appalachian Power is exploring the possibility of building a small modular nuclear reactor at Joshua Falls.
Appalachian Power plans to file its proposal with the State Corporation Commission, separately from the Valley Link project, by the end of the year.
Appalachian Power spokesperson George Porter said the company is “currently developing the project details to determine what local approvals are needed.”
