New Alliance To Defeat Powerline Formed
By Paul Farmer
Power-line Landowners Alliance (PLA) has been created with the defeat of Dominion Power line as its goalA grass-roots coalition of landowners and non-profits in four counties has stood up a new organization determined to prevent Dominion Resources, Inc. from building a monstrous, new, industrial, 500-kV electric transmission line through western and southern Fauquier, Rappahannock, Culpeper, and Prince William Counties. The Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP), Concerned Culpeper Citizens (CCC), and directly affected landowners in those four local counties have collectively organized to defeat Dominion at the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC). That is where the case will be argued by staffs of lawyers from multiple litigants.
The Power-line Landowners Alliance, or PLA, comes to the fight with a case that no other party is likely to present: that this decision to build a massive new power line along the proposed route through these counties is an extraordinarily bad idea that will have a devastatingly serious, permanent, adverse impact on citizens who live or own land along the line.
The sole intent of the PLA is to represent the interests of landowners who will bear the burdens of lost use, lost value, and lost enjoyment of lands affected by Dominion’s ill-conceived misadventure in land desecration. The PLA intends to intervene on landowners’ behalf, exerting a level of influence at the SCC that no single landowner could expect to exert on his own. Financial and volunteer support for the PLA’s work is welcomed from all who oppose the spoiling of the beautifully scenic lands that we enjoy.
In addition to environmental, cultural, and historic concerns, the PLA estimates that the direct financial and life-style impacts to landowners (both those who live in the path of the line and those who have land nearby) will be enormous. The PLA believes that no affected landowner should stand by without legal representation in this matter. Few, however, have the financial wherewithal to independently enter the fray on their own behalf.
Counsel for the PLA strongly believes that it has a winning case to make before the SCC. The PLA also supports the case that Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and others will make that this new transmission line is not needed. But other than the PLA, no organization plans to make the case that the proposed route through the affected counties is an extraordinarily bad route for another massive, industrial power line. If the SCC finds that a new transmission line IS needed, only the PLA stands in the way of the SCC designating that the route will come this way.
For weeks, the PLA, RLEP, CCC and an initial group of landowners have been working behind the scenes to put a strategy in place to battle Dominion where it really counts – with attorneys at the SCC. The PLA asserts that it is now time for all those in Rappahannock County and elsewhere who will be most affected to come forward, hear more about their plans, and take action.
If you own land along the current Dominion transmission line through Rappahannock County, if you have land near enough to the power line to see its towers when raised to double their current heights, or if you simply feel strongly enough about this issue to want to consider helping their work against Dominion, the PLA invites you to attend their public meeting in the Flint Hill Fire Hall at 7 PM on Tuesday, July 3. Expect to be informed about the PLA, Dominion’s proposal, the SCC process, and how to protect your rights as a landowner. There will be a question-and-answer period. You will also be given the opportunity to discuss this issue off-line, either at the event or privately later.
The PLA intends to win this battle. If you are among the impacted, our success can only be realized with your support. Please come out and help us help you.
-- Sharon Kilpatrick
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