Power Plays Loom in Transmission Line Battle

By Sandhya Somashekhar (Contact)

Sunday, February 24, 2008

RICHMOND — Dominion Virginia Power, the state's largest power company and a major force in the General Assembly, is facing what might be an unprecedented challenge to one of its planned transmission lines.

Starting Monday, the company and its opponents will square off at hearings in Richmond over a proposal to erect a 65-mile power line, carried atop 15-story steel towers, that would send electricity surging east across farms and forests in Northern Virginia.

Dominion Virginia Power says the line is needed to feed a voracious appetite for energy in the Washington area. Opponents say that the utility has exaggerated the need for the line and that the project would spoil a historic landscape and contribute to global warming.

The hearings mark a new phase in a two-year battle that has galvanized landowners, local officials and environmental groups throughout Northern Virginia, many of whom campaigned to defeat a proposal in 1994 by the Walt Disney Co. to build a theme park in Prince William County.

Over the next few weeks, engineers and industry specialists are expected to testify before the State Corporation Commission about the need for the $243 million project. Dominion officials say it would buttress an ailing electrical grid and help avoid the threat of blackouts, expected to start in 2011.

John D. Smatlak, Dominion's vice president for electric transmission, characterized the opponents' efforts as perhaps the greatest test Dominion has faced over a transmission line. But he said there also have been supporters, including Northern Virginia businesses.

"We've gotten hundreds of letters of support," he said. "They see the amount of growth happening in Northern Virginia. They see that they are using more power than they used to. And they know it has to come from somewhere."

But opponents of the proposal, which would connect power plants in western Pennsylvania to a substation in Loudoun County, have been campaigning against the project since it was announced.

"We have been preparing for this for two years," said Chris Miller, executive director of the nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council, which has raised more than $3 million to fight the project. Miller said no group has ever raised that much to oppose the utility. "We want to do the best job we can in presenting a factual case to the State Corporation Commission that demonstrates this project is a power line searching for a purpose," Miller said.

It will be months before the three-judge commission, which regulates utilities and businesses, decides whether the project can go forward. It is a complex case with dozens of participants, and it may finally be decided by the Virginia Supreme Court or federal regulators.

Two other large power lines have been proposed for the Washington area. One would start in West Virginia and end close to the Montgomery County border. The other would begin in Prince William, extend through Southern Maryland and then cross the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore.

"We are in a mode today where there's an urgent need to beef up our energy delivery system, and transmission is part of that," said David Owens, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association. "Even if you have the most aggressive energy-efficiency program, there is still the need to build new power facilities as well as transmission facilities in order to maintain the reliability we are accustomed to."

The reliance on long-distance transmission lines worries environmentalists who say the lines and steel towers would ruin the landscape and spur the construction of large power plants that emit greenhouse gases and hasten global warming.

Opponents also argue that the Dominion line is not needed for Virginia. Experts for the opposition are expected to testify during the hearings that the company has exaggerated the region's energy needs and that the company's true purpose is to sell electricity to lucrative markets in New York.

"If you look at the size of this line, the capacity of the line, and you compare that to the expected growth in the whole Northern Virginia area over the next decade, the line is grossly out of proportion," said Mitchell S. Diamond, a former energy official at Booz Allen Hamilton. "There are other solutions that would be better."

Foremost among the opponents is the Warrenton-based Piedmont Environmental Council, which has helped shape outlying parts of Northern Virginia with its anti-sprawl efforts, which have included the Disney fight.

Among the group's high-profile supporters are the Mars family, founders of the candy company, and actor Robert Duvall, who hosted a fundraiser for the group last year on his 360-acre farm in Fauquier County. The organization has hired several legal and environmental experts to represent them for the power line hearings, including Jeffrey D. Watkiss, a partner in the law firm of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

But opponents face a formidable foe. Dominion is one of the state's largest business taxpayers and an influential player in Richmond, with 16 registered lobbyists.

Last year, Dominion's political action committee donated more than $775,000 to political campaigns, split about evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The company was the largest business donor to state campaigns in 2007, data from the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project show.

The Dominion project is part of a 300-mile project planned with Allegheny Power. Dominion would be in charge of the eastern stretch, which would begin in Frederick, Va., and end in Loudoun, slicing through parts of Fauquier, Rappahannock, Culpeper, Warren and Prince William counties.

Your Thoughts...

Are you happy that the school year is over?