Despite repeated exhortations from officials across Northern Virginia to eliminate the Washington & Old Dominion Regional Trail as a potential site for more power lines and to consider burying the lines as the only option, Dominion Virginia Power representatives are holding fast to a plan for an overhead transmission line.
"It is our intent, our goal, to find an overhead corridor from Pleasant View to Hamilton," said John Bailey, Dominion siting and permitting coordinator, at a power line task force meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 3.
The company owns an easement on the W&OD Trail and already runs lines on the trail's eastern 34 miles; the final 11-mile extension would require 100 feet of clearance on the 100-foot-wide trail and would wipe out 26,000 trees.
The proposed 230 kilovolt power line extension on the W&OD Trail has faced organized resistance from the community. Still, after a series of task force workshops with Dominion representatives, discussion to eliminate the trail as a potential site for more power lines has reached a stalemate.
What could be most discouraging for proponents of the trail is the fact that despite their rallying, t-shirt wearing and flyer papering, well-planned opposition to power lines isn't unusual. That's according to Wayne Smith, senior counsel with the State Corporation Commission, which will make the final decision on the location of Dominion's new lines.
"Oh yes," he said. "It is typical to have opposition." He added that because Dominion owns the easement along the trail, the company is required to include the trail as a potential site in its application to the SCC, although it doesn't mean the trail will be selected.
IT COMES DOWN to money — a lot of it. Dominion estimates that an overhead transmission line on the W&OD Trail would cost $16 million, where an overhead line on routes 7 and 15 would cost $40 million. An underground route on the trail — which would still require some tree cutting — could cost $100 million.
Catoctin district planning commissioner John Herbert disputed Dominion's figures on underground construction. He cited a report by the Edison Electric Institute that said underground power lines cost $.5 million to $1.8 million per mile, significantly less than Dominion's estimate of $9 million per mile.
"I'm having a real problem jumping the gap from half a million to 1.8 million to 9 million," Herbert said.
"That particular document is marketing," responded Dominion engineer consultant Don Koonce.
Dominion also had representatives from Allegheny Power on hand to debunk the possibility of piggybacking on existing Allegheny lines rather than building new ones. According to its representatives, Allegheny wouldn't able to handle the additional power load Dominion requires.
"We have plenty of our own problems," one Allegheny representative said.
THE MOST VIABLE alternative to the W&OD Trail for a power line is the one for which Dominion drew up a map. An overhead transmission line along routes 7 and 15, intersecting the trail at points but never aligning with it, would get to the proposed substation just east of Purcellville in 11.8 miles at a cost of $40 million.
It would also present a whole new breed of problems, the most significant being obtaining right-of-way in residential neighborhoods.