By Kafia A. Hosh
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Dominion Virginia Power has agreed to pay Leesburg $2 million in exchange for easements that the utility needs to build a transmission line.
The settlement follows a year of negotiations between town and Dominion officials. The Leesburg Town Council has long opposed the planned 12-mile, 230,000-volt line from Leesburg to Hamilton, saying that the steel poles carrying the line will be an eyesore and will lower property values.
The State Corporation Commission approved the project in February 2008.
Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson said the company conducted its negotiations with Leesburg in the same way that it deals with private landowners when easements are at stake.
"We're buying the right to have access to the land to build and maintain the transmission line," she said.
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The easements involve land in the 1300 block of East Main Street, in Olde Izaak Walton Park and near the Route 7/15 Bypass and Sycolin Road.
The Town Council approved the settlement agreement during its regular meeting May 29. Mayor Kristen C. Umstattd said that for the past year, town officials had pressed Dominion to increase its original offer of $8,000.
"There was a great deal of negotiation between the town and Dominion over that amount," she said. "It's the best we could do in a really bad situation."
Anderson said she could not confirm the amount of Dominion's original offer.
Under the settlement, Dominion also agreed to bury about a one-mile stretch of smaller distribution lines between Battlefield Parkway and Crosstrail Boulevard.
Some of the settlement money will pay to plant trees along Route 7. One of those buffers will be at the Village at Leesburg, but it will be smaller than originally planned, Umstattd said. She said the landscaping, which would have been funded by developers, had to be scaled back because of the power line.
"They were willing to put it in," Umstattd said, referring to Kettler, the company building the development. "The trouble was, Dominion was going to come in and rip it all out. Now that's been obliterated by this project, so we're going to be left with a few smaller trees and a few smaller shrubs."
The council has not decided what to do with the settlement money. Council member Thomas S. Dunn II said taxpayers should reap the benefit and suggested that some of the money could be used to lower Leesburg's vehicle decal fee from $25 per year to a one-time fee of $1.
He said the $2 million from Dominion will never offset the view of 100-foot-tall steel towers in parts of the town.
"It's really hard to put a dollar amount on the blight that these towers are going to have on our community," he said.
Dominion has said that it needs to build the transmission line to keep up with population growth in western Loudoun and that it expects the line to be in service by next spring.
Anderson said that Dominion's preferred route for the line was south of Leesburg but that an SCC hearing examiner recommended the path that cuts through the town.
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