Outcry Is Heard at Energy Forums

Protesters Assail Dominion's Plan for High-Voltage Lines

Hundreds of angry residents opposed to high-voltage power lines that would cut across part of Northern Virginia turned out at a public meeting in Manassas last night to air their frustrations and learn more about the proposal.

The tone was set by dozens of protesters who stood in frigid weather outside the Freedom Center at George Mason University's Manassas campus wearing neon-green T-shirts and stickers proclaiming: "Stop the Power Lines!" and "Say No! We Won't Glow!"

Many of the protesters were residents of Dominion Valley, which bused in hundreds of community members to attend the meeting because one of the proposed routes crosses the golf club community near Haymarket.

Some protesters, Linda Budreika among them, were veterans of a similar fight in 1993 to keep the Walt Disney Co. from building a theme park on land that now encompasses Dominion Valley. "We will not take this sitting down," Budreika said.

Yesterday was the last in a series of public meetings held across the region in recent weeks by Dominion Virginia Power to give residents a chance to examine detailed maps showing several proposed routes for the 500,000-volt lines. Dominion officials say the project is needed to bring electricity from the Midwest to energy-hungry Northern Virginia to prevent shortages and rolling blackouts, which they say could begin by 2011.

But the meetings have turned out to be forums for residents to express their displeasure over the project, which they said would disfigure their neighborhoods and send their property values through the floor.

Many who attended last night's meeting said they were not swayed by Dominion's contention that it has no choice but to erect the transmission lines.

Despite the fierce opposition, Dominion officials said they were pleased with the feedback from residents. "They clearly have an opinion," said Chet Wade, a spokesman for Dominion. "But it's going to be a very long process, and we plan to continue to disseminate information and continue the dialogue."

Residents said they are particularly incensed about the visual impact of the lines. Once completed, the lines would be carried by a series of 15-story steel-lattice towers constructed along a 150-foot-wide strip cleared of trees and buildings.

The company has not settled on a path for the lines but recently published a map with several possible routes, all of which roughly track Interstate 66 through Fauquier and Prince William counties, ending at a substation in Loudoun County. In the next few months, the company will choose a preferred route to submit with its application to the State Corporation Commission.

The meetings, company officials said, were scheduled not only to provide information but for officials to talk to residents about their priorities. In a questionnaire distributed at the meeting, officials asked, among other questions, whether residents preferred a particular route and whether any locations of importance appeared to be in any of the paths being considered for the lines.

Outside yesterday's meeting, protesters distributed sample questionnaires that urged respondents to write that "all [routes] are unacceptable," "we are all affected" and "you are destroying our community for Dominion's profit gain."

"People move here for a reason," said Prince William Supervisor John T. Stirrup (R-Gainesville), who represents an area in the project's path. "It's quality of life. It's the bucolic setting. And for something like this to happen, they feel like they've been double-crossed."

The brace of lines is expected to enter the county through the Thoroughfare Gap area, a significant Civil War site, Stirrup said. It could cross over the site of Camp Snyder, a $17 million camp being built by the Boy Scouts of America, he said.

And it would intrude on many residential areas, requiring the power company to confiscate people's property, he said.

Elena Schlossberg-Kunkel, who sits on the board of directors of the Prince William Conservation Alliance and joined last night's protest, said: "There is something really wrong when a private corporation can come in and ruin where you live."