New Spot Planned for Leesburg Power Pole

Residents Wanted Less-Visible Site

By Kafia A. Hosh

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Dominion Virginia Power officials have decided to move the site of a planned 130-foot pole in Leesburg to a spot where fewer residents will see it, after homeowners and the Leesburg Town Council had said that it would lower property values.

The steel tower is part of a 230,000-volt transmission line that Dominion is building from Leesburg to Hamilton. The utility originally wanted to install the tower behind a cul-de-sac on Wage Drive, and the company bought a house on the street in July so it could access the site.

After neighbors protested the plan and the council asked state and congressional leaders to get involved, Dominion met last month with residents, council members and Virginia Department of Transportation representatives to hear suggestions for alternative sites. According to Dominion, the pole must be placed within a VDOT easement that runs along the Route 7 Bypass, which backs up to Wage Drive.

At a community meeting this month, Dominion officials said that after considering seven possible lox cations, they decided to install the pole behind a corner of the parking lot of Leesburg Community Church on Lee Avenue, east of the original site.

"It allows us access from the church, and it mitigates a straight-line view of the pole when you're driving down Wage Drive," said Le-Ha Anderson, Dominion's spokeswoman.

Most residents said they favored that location, and it satisfied the church, the council and VDOT, Anderson said.

But it didn't satisfy Kim Graff, whose property on Wage Drive is next to the church's parking lot.

Graff said that although her house will shield most neighbors from the pole, she will have a clear view of it from her kitchen and family room. It will sit about 100 feet from her house, and she will see it looming above her when she tends to her vegetable garden or goes out on her deck, she said.

"I won't even want to go out in my back yard, it's going to depress me so much," Graff said.

While some people were sending out holiday greeting cards, Graff was e-mailing state lawmakers about her concerns. She said she wants them to pressure Dominion to modify the route of the transmission line so that it avoids her neighborhood entirely. After all, she said, the legislature got involved in the project this year, passing a bill that called for Dominion to bury a 1.8-mile segment of the mostly overhead line.

"I'm asking them, 'Why not [protect] our neighborhood?' " Graff said. "I'm not going to go down without a fight."

Several of her neighbors said they are sympathetic to her predicament. Mike Napierkowski said he told Dominion officials at the community meeting this month that he didn't "want to put my neighbors to the flames."

Napierkowski, who lives near Graff, said the tower will still be visible to some residents. "Anything above 100 feet, you're going to see it," he said. "No matter what, you'll always see the wires, and you'll always see the pole."

But Wage Drive resident Terry Titus said he supports the new location as a last resort.

"It will be visible still, but less visible to the majority of the other residents," he said. "We can't win. We've got to take the best we've got and move on."

Anderson said Dominion was open to suggestions from some residents to move the site an additional 30 feet to the east, so that it would be closer to the church and farther from Graff's property. She said the utility would want to get input from the council and VDOT before considering such a change.

The utility is also addressing residents' concerns that some trees will need to be cleared behind the neighborhood to make room for the pole and wires. Residents said the trees block out noise from traffic along the Route 7 Bypass. Anderson said Dominion will plant some greenery after the pole is constructed.

"We won't replace it tree for tree," she said. "We would replace trees that could survive well under the power line."

Dominion has said that it needs to build the 12-mile transmission line to keep up with population growth in western Loudoun and that it expects the line to be in service by spring 2010. The State Corporation Commission approved the project in February.

Tagged: Dominion Power, Leesburg Town Council, power line

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