By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; A01
Dominion Virginia Power is planning to build a high-voltage power line that could stretch across parts of Prince William, Fauquier and Loudoun counties, an answer to the region's growing energy needs that has raised fears of spoiling some of the state's most fiercely protected open land.
It would be part of a 240-mile, 500,000-volt electricity line from southwestern Pennsylvania to a substation near the Loudoun village of Aldie to serve Northern Virginia, where the addition of tens of thousands of residents the past decade has pushed demand up by 40 percent. It is also one of about 10 similar proposals across the country that could test a new federal law giving power companies far-reaching authority to take land if their services are deemed vital to national interests.
The area Dominion is considering for local portions of the line includes thousands of acres of private property, nature preserves and historic districts as well as a half-dozen Civil War battlefields and about 80,000 acres of forest and farmland protected from development through conservation easements. Cutting across them would be hundreds of 15-story towers, with cables stretching in between.
"People have spent millions of dollars protecting this area, and now someone is saying, 'Well, we don't have many houses out here -- let's throw a power line across it,' " said John Staelin, chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Clarke County, which also could be bisected by the line. "That doesn't make sense to me."
Dominion, which serves most of Northern Virginia, says a new line is needed to satisfy the region's enormous appetite for power, which it expects to grow by an additional 8 percent over the next five years, when the line would go into service.
"The transmission lines that we have right now are getting loaded up during real hot days and real cold days," said John D. Smatlak, vice president for electric transmission for Dominion. "We will have severe overloads beginning in 2011, and we are at risk of having blackouts during peak days."
The increased pressure on the system is caused by the addition of thousands of new homes each year in the region and the proliferation of electricity-hungry high-tech companies that gravitate to the area, he said. The line is expected to provide enough electricity to power 275,000 homes and will help reduce stress on the electricity systems across the mid-Atlantic region, Smatlak said.
Dominion officials have not chosen a route, but they pledged to try to minimize the impact of the line and work with conservation groups.
Area environmental groups, which for years have fought to protect open space and scenic vistas, are concerned that the fields and forests of northwestern Virginia will be permanently marred.
"The bottom line is you couldn't have picked a worse place to build a highly visible power line," said Christopher G. Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, a slow-growth advocacy group. "What Dominion wants to do is ram a very intrusive industrial power line right through the center of that area."
The group hasn't suggested alternatives because it questions the region's needs for greater power capacity. It has hired a consultant to study the demand and, in the meantime, is mobilizing area residents and other organizations against the plan for the line.
What happens with the power line could have consequences beyond Virginia if Dominion chooses to test a new federal law giving it power to bypass measures that protect private property.
The U.S. Department of Energy has labeled the entire mid-Atlantic region from New York City to Northern Virginia a "critical congestion area," meaning its electricity use greatly outstrips the ability to safely and economically deliver it.
The new law was designed to bypass state and local agencies that balked at badly needed power line projects for political reasons, said Kevin Kolevar, a director at the Energy Department. "We have actually seen a lot of support from states who have been unable to overcome local opposition -- states that believe they have to build more infrastructure due to demand," Kolevar said.
Dominion officials said they are not pursuing the "national interest" designation -- as long as the state approval process goes smoothly. If it doesn't, Dominion won't rule it out.
Dominion officials said their first step will be to hold public meetings later this year in the areas where the line could go. They will then decide on a route and file an application with the State Corporation Commission. That panel will consider public opinion gathered through e-mails and at hearings and issue a decision.
If approved, construction of the power line, which would be built jointly with Allegheny Power, could start between a year and two years from now. It is part of $1.3 billion worth of transmission line upgrades approved by PJM, an agency that manages the electrical grid in about a dozen states.
The new line, dubbed the Allegheny Mountain path, is one of two large transmission line projects in the region. An even higher-voltage line, the Delaware River path, would slice through Western Maryland on its way to New Jersey from West Virginia. It is in the preliminary stages, but Ohio-based American Electric Power is already seeking the "national interest" designation for it.
The region being considered for the Dominion line includes portions of Virginia's Frederick County as well as Warren, Clarke, Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun, regions where landowners and conservationists have spent millions of dollars to keep development at bay.
The area includes more than 20 miles of the Appalachian Trail, which the line could have to cross. Among the Civil War battlefields it might affect is Guard Hill near Front Royal, where 550 soldiers died Aug. 16, 1864.
Of prime concern to conservation groups is that much of the area is protected through easements, through which landowners donate or sell the development rights.
"This is probably the densest corridor of conservation easements certainly in Virginia and maybe even the entire East Coast," said Bob Lee, executive director of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which holds about 80,000 acres of easements in Dominion's study area.
The easements are supposed to last forever, and some conservationists worry about the precedent that may be set if power companies are able to erect transmission lines despite such growth-control measures.
"When a person donates an easement, they're doing it so they can preserve the scenic beauty of an area," said Gray Coyner, land conservation officer for the Piedmont Environmental Council. "Then to turn around and scalp it? Aren't we cutting off our nose to spite our face?"
From a vantage point in the hills near the Appalachian Trail in eastern Fauquier, Coyner, a seventh-generation farmer, looked out over Ovoka, a historic farmhouse surrounded by pastures and a meandering picket fence. To his left sat the placid village of Paris, a cluster of clapboard cottages with peaked roofs nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The view is a snapshot of another era, preserved with great difficulty against the pressures of modern life, Coyner said.
"It didn't stay this way by accident," he said.
But modern life demands certain sacrifices, said Smatlak, who said virtually every project of this scope will have its share of intense opposition. Dominion plans to use existing right of ways where possible, he said, and will seek to minimize the impact of the line on the landscape.
"No one wants a power line on their property. We see this time after time when we build power lines," he said. "But in the end, everyone wants the power that comes from them."
