Va. Utility Faces Biggest Fight In Plan for 65-Mile Power Line

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.

The power line battle resembles others around the nation. Utilities in New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere have introduced a flurry of power plant and transmission line projects in recent years. The utilities say the projects are needed to feed growing energy demands and fend off massive failures such as the one that plunged the Northeast into darkness for a day in August 2003.

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.