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Dominion buys into saving Dry Mill Road farms
When Don Kuney got the news that Dominion Virginia Power will not be putting an 80-by-180-foot power station in his west pasture, he said, "Awesome."
Then he looked up other ways to say that: "Overwhelming, grand, breathtaking, splendid, tremendous, amazing, awe-inspiring."
Dominion has accepted an offer from Dry Mill Road farm owners Donald and Gretchen Kuney, James Presgraves, and Johnathan Miller and Elizabeth Thompson that will keep its 230-kilovolt line underground an additional 1,900 feet and will move the power terminal that will bring the lines back above ground to an undeveloped lot at the top of the hill behind their properties.
The property owners will donate the easements -- rights to use the property -- that the company needs to get across their lands.
Dominion filed with the state May 21 to amend its already-approved plan to move the terminal station, and to keep the power line underground a little farther.
The General Assembly passed a bill earlier this year that commits Dominion to four underground power projects. Under the terms of that bill, the State Corporation Commission must act on Dominion's amended request within 30 days.
In the amended plan filed this week, the lines will run underground along the W&OD Trail to Clarkes Gap, just before Dry Mill Road intersects East Colonial Highway, the Route 7 Bypass and Route 9. Instead of coming back above ground at a station on the Kuneys' pasture, the lines will stay underground another 1,900 feet to 17 acres of undisturbed woodland and wildlife habitat, owned by Josephine and Mary Shepard, at the top of the hill.
The Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, which holds an easement on the Miller/Thompson property, also agreed to the donation of the easement.
May has been working with Dominion for more than two years to convince the company to try putting lines underground. "Even when we disagreed, and strongly, they were professional," May said.
In the end, above and beyond the last-minute effort to move the power station and the towers off the three Dry Mill Road farms, May said, he is "elated in the change in basic policy, in how we treat transmission lines in the 21st century. "
Kuney said that when he thinks as an engineer, not as a farm owner, he can see the Dominion engineer did a good job. "He utilized existing [Dominion and Virginia Department of Transportation] easements and he stayed in low-density areas."
The problem for Kuney the farm owner, as opposed to Kuney the engineer, is that he lives in that low-density area.
Other homeowners to the west will not fare so well, Kuney conceded. The overhead line will parallel Paeonian Springs, and cross the Route 704/Route 7 intersection immediately adjacent to but not on the side yard of the pre-Civil War Braeburn mansion.
Johnathan Miller, who worked with Dominion engineers and with May to convince the power company to add the 1,900 feet to the underground section of the line, said, "Success has many mothers, and there are a lot of people to thank. But the three people we need to thank the most are Joe May, and the Shepard sisters. Without their willingness to talk to Dominion, this could never have happened."
Dominion's Le Ha Anderson said the new transmission line should be energized by the summer of 2010, and will help put an end to power outages that have plagued the Purcellville area. May's bill removed any necessity for the company to get approvals from the Board of Supervisors for siting the substation at the west end of the line, at Route 287 just east of Purcellville. The company will withdraw its special exception application, but still file a site plan and work with the county and neighbors of the substation to "assure the best fit of the project," according to a statement.
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