Democratic nominee Tom Perriello has accused incumbent Republican Rep. John McGuire of “parroting of talking points from the corporations on Valley Link transmission line.”
He also expressed openness to the addition of a small modular nuclear reactor proposed at Dominion Energy’s North Anna power plant in Louisa County but did not directly answer when asked if he supported Appalachian Power’s proposal for a similar nuclear reactor at its Joshua Falls electric substation in Campbell County.
Perriello added that he understands the concerns people have about nuclear technology and said it is up to corporations to rebuild trust that has been broken between the companies and 5th District residents regarding energy issues.
McGuire’s campaign did not respond to a request for an interview from Cardinal News regarding the proposed transmission line or energy production.
Perriello talked at length about energy, a key issue in the 5th District, during a media availability last week. The district’s wide swath of land that stretches from the North Carolina border to north of Charlottesville has seen a variety of energy projects and proposals in recent years. Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power are exploring what could be among the nation’s first small modular nuclear reactors, in Louisa and Campbell counties, respectively. Dominion has also proposed a 3-gigawatt natural gas power plant in Cumberland County. And utility-scale solar has been a hot topic, particularly in Southside Virginia where communities have variously embraced or resisted it.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Virginia’s 5th Congressional District is considered solidly Republican by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. McGuire won the district with a 15-point margin in 2024. Regardless, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the district to their list of races that they consider “in-play” for the 2026 midterm elections.
Perriello said he was open to the addition of a small modular nuclear reactor proposed at Dominion Energy’s North Anna power plant in Louisa County.
“I also understand people’s concerns about nuclear technology, so I think this is a place where we need to have the currency of trust and that’s the currency that’s been broken,” Perriello said. “The onus here is on these corporations to come in and build trust in communities.”
The Valley Link transmission line is proposed to run through eight counties, six of which are located in the 5th Congressional District.
“It hasn’t been clear at all that John McGuire is opposed to the Valley Link transmission Line. He spent months parroting their talking points, he refused to meet with community leaders and he basically sent one letter trying to blame the Democratic Party for the problem,” Perriello asserted.
McGuire’s office sent a letter to Gov. Abigail Spanberger at the beginning of July asking her administration to stop the project, citing concerns his office has heard from constituents regarding private property rights, and impacts on farmland and the environment. It is unclear what else, if anything, the incumbent has done to oppose the energy transmission project.
Perriello said that if he were in Congress, he would be calling for hearings “every day” and “hauling the CEOs in front of folks,” and would be investigating and supporting litigation against the project.
“We’re not just taking a position on opposing the Valley Link transmission line, we are actively fighting the transmission line in the same way that I was actively fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline,” he said.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project was canceled in 2020. The Mountain Valley Pipeline began service in 2024. Dominion Energy was a lead partner in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and is part of the Valley Link joint venture. NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company seeking to merge with Dominion, is a partner in the Mountain Valley Pipeline joint venture, which is building a natural gas pipeline extension called Southgate, set to run 31 miles from Pittsylvania County into North Carolina.
“When it comes to something like this, we need people that actually understand the corruption and problems caused by [the Dominion] monopoly,” Perriello said.
What is the Valley Link transmission line and why does Perriello oppose it?
Critics of the $1 billion transmission line have said 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.
Valley Link has said that the “extra-high-voltage” line, announced in February, is necessary to meet increasing power demand driven by data centers, electric vehicles and other growth factors, and to make the electric grid more reliable.
“We absolutely have to test these claims, both about how much power is needed and about whether this is the right way to do it,” Perriello said.
He added that there are “tons of options” for the energy companies to explore aside from the transmission line to transport or produce enough power to satisfy energy consumption demands in Northern Virginia.
Among those options are increasing energy efficiency among large consumers like data centers, distributed power production, or decentralized, smaller scale energy-producing infrastructure located closer to consumers, Perriello said.
“There are lots of ways to do it. We just need leaders with the guts to force that question,” he said.
The Valley Link transmission line would use steel lattice towers 150 to 175 feet tall, with approximately four to five per mile. Those towers 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 have said that those rights of way — whether acquired voluntarily by easement or forcibly by eminent domain — would bisect farms, upend homebuilding plans and negatively impact businesses. Perriello counts himself among critics of the project.
“Valley Link is just a threat in and of itself. I think it is actually undermining our ability to do infrastructure the right way because it’s reinforcing people’s legitimate concerns that these corporations don’t care about them,” Perriello said. “Our starting point on Valley Link Transmission is that this is exactly the wrong way to do it.”
He pointed out that the project’s proposal does not require or allow the provision of the counties that the transmission line would run through.
“That means there’s no local democracy or accountability,” he said.
Counties that have the transmission line running through them have no say over whether the line is built or not. They can pass a local resolution opposing it but that would be a largely symbolic maneuver. It is possible for Campbell and Culpeper counties to have a more than symbolic say in the project because they are the proposed sites for the electric substations to be built at the endpoints of the line. The Culpeper County Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution expressing opposition to the project, but Campbell County has not.
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.
Could the governor intervene with the SCC in the project?
Valley Link has not yet finalized the project’s route. It has put forth multiple potential route corridors, with several variations along them, across Appomattox, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa and Orange counties.
Once in Culpeper, the line would connect to 500-kilovolt Dominion Energy lines to serve Northern and Central Virginia. Valley Link is a partnership between Dominion, FirstEnergy Transmission LLC and Transource Energy LLC, which itself is a partnership between American Electric Power and the electric utility Evergy.
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. The SCC’s review process would likely include opportunities for public comment and a public hearing.
Spanberger could intervene with the SCC over the proposed transmission line project, though she does not have the legal authority to halt the project per McGuire’s request. The legal step of “intervening” means that Spanberger could formally request to be a party to the case before the SCC in her capacity as governor, similar to the steps she has taken regarding the Dominion and NextEra merger currently before the SCC.
Valley Link engineers will create a final route for the Joshua Falls to Yeat line and submit it for consideration to the SCC, likely this fall. The state regulatory body will have the final say on whether or not the project moves forward. It could take state regulators about a year to deliberate on the project. The company anticipates a 2029 completion date, barring delays.
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.
