Lattice structures for proposed power lines are a rusted gold color. This one faces east on Skyline Drive. Courtesy Dominion
Last August, locals protested Dominion Virginia Power’s plans to rebuild area transmission lines with a much brighter material than their darker predecessors. Now a state commission has ruled that the power company must chemically darken its structures, and the group of people that worried new lines would stick out like a sore thumb is rejoicing.
Supervisor Ann Mallek says she has always supported upgrading the transmission lines in the Cunningham-Dooms 500kV power line rebuild, but she wanted county residents, landowners and visitors to have the best option available.
“Darkening the towers seemed to be a reasonable and inexpensive method to accomplish this goal,” she says. “The dozens of speakers at the [State Corporation Commission] hearing last year agreed [and] made good points, yet [Dominion] was unwilling to comply.”
Mallek says the SCC, in its order to darken the towers, has shown respect for the county’s comprehensive plan, tourism and financial success, and “the quality of life in Albemarle.”
Dominion workers will now chemically dull the galvanized steel lattice structures before they rebuild the transmission lines, according to Greg Mathe, a company spokesperson.
Kristopher Baumann, who owns a farm in Rockbridge County, has a pending lawsuit against Dominion for allegedly misrepresenting the color and size of power lines in a similar rebuild in his area.
“People want to know why the state government allowed this and why wasn’t anyone protecting the public and the land?” says Baumann. “We now know that Dominion misrepresented its plan to various state agencies, but at the end of the day, it should have been the SCC that stopped Dominion. In the Albemarle case, the SCC paid attention.”
Adds Baumann, “We can only hope that this will be the new normal for the SCC in the future and that utility companies will have to comply with the law and regulations, and design facilities in a manner that causes the least environmental and scenic harm. The big question is why doesn’t Dominion just start doing the right thing?”
Greg Buppert, along with other attorneys at the Southern Environmental Law
Center, questions the public necessity for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Amy Jackson
A local legal group will file a last-minute opinion that there isn’t enough market demand for a $6 billion pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will eventually approve or deny plans for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, is accepting comments for its draft environmental impact statement until April 6.
“I think the bottom line here is that Dominion is rushing forward with a project that has real questions about its public necessity,” says Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Greg Buppert. “FERC is also not looking at the issue.”
Dominion Energy and Duke Energy are the major companies backing the pipeline.
“Once this pipeline is in the ground, ratepayers will be stuck with it,” says Buppert. “Landowners will have lost their property to Dominion, and, at that point, it’s going to be too late to say this project wasn’t really needed. The problem is no one is looking; no regulators are asking this question right now.”
Attorneys with the SELC used electricity forecasting models for the next 10 years from PJM Interconnection, the group that controls the electricity grid throughout the state, to assess the current and future need for more electricity.
“The data from PJM is striking because that’s not our analysis, it’s analysis from the grid manager who has a vested interest in making sure the grid is working and understanding what the demand for electricity is going to be,” Buppert says. “It estimates projections that are a lot less than Dominion’s.”
For instance, SELC attorney Will Cleveland compares Dominion and PJM’s projections for 2027. While the former has the summer peak demand estimated at 24,016 megawatts, the latter is estimating it at 20,501 megawatts—a difference of 3,515 megawatts.
“To put that into perspective, the massive natural gas power plant that Dominion is currently building [in Greensville County] is about 1,600 megawatts in size,” he says, so the gap between the two forecasts is a little more than two additional power plants. “So, if PJM’s load forecasts are more accurate, which we think they are, that’s two new power plants Virginia doesn’t need.”
The plant in Greensville will cost state ratepayers about $1.5 billion.
Dan Genest, a spokesperson with Dominion Virginia Power, which will be a customer of the ACP, says there are several reasons for the discrepancy between his company’s forecasts and PJM’s.
“In its forecasting model, PJM fails to take into account several factors that drive up demand that are unique to Virginia,” he says, including data centers, major electric appliance saturation—or exactly how many refrigerators, stoves, water heaters and other appliances are in Virginia homes and how much energy they use—and a large presence of federal, state and local government facilities such as military bases and offices.
Genest also points to PJM’s treatment of solar energy facilities, which have a negative impact and reduce its overall load forecast. Though those at Dominion say renewable energy is important, it is often undependable, and they can’t factor it into their projections, Genest says.
“So at nighttime or when it is cloudy, the customer still expects his lights will work even though his solar system is not [working],” Genest says. “Let’s say a customer uses 1,000 kilowatts of electricity per month and he generates about 100 kilowatts per month from rooftop solar. We still need to have enough electricity to cover that customer’s full needs when his solar is not operating.”
In February 2015, ICF International, an independent consulting service based in Fairfax, released a study showing the economic impacts of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which projected a 165 percent increase in demand for natural gas between 2010 and 2035—in part because utilities are closing a number of coal-burning plants to make way for cleaner-burning natural gas.
Regional pipelines are already operating at full capacity, Dominion says, and though some expansions are planned, they are already fully subscribed in terms of customers.
But pipeline opponents still maintain there’s a better way to meet Virginia’s energy needs.
“For better or for worse, Dominion is doubling down on gas for the next 80 years,” says Buppert. With renewable energy systems gaining momentum and their prices continuing to drop, he says, “This is the wrong time to make a massive investment in gas.”
Though Dominion Virginia Power announced last week the hiring of a contractor to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, efforts to halt its construction, and that of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, have not ceased.
A new survey released September 21 by two anti-pipeline groups, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Virginia Organizing, shows that 55 percent of Virginians do not back Governor Terry McAuliffe’s support of the two pipelines, despite his belief they will create jobs, lower bills and help the environment.
The Cromer Group, a public opinion research group, interviewed 732 of the state’s registered voters for the survey.
The environmental groups note that 60 percent of female Republicans and 52 percent of female Democrats say McAuliffe has missed the mark.
Caroline Bray, a 20-year-old third-year student at UVA and the president of the university’s Climate Action Society, falls on the far left of that spectrum, she says. But she’s not sure it matters in this case.
Caroline Bray, a 20-year-old third-year student at UVA and the president of the university’s Climate Action Society, says the fight against the pipeline isn’t a partisan issue. Courtesy Caroline Bray
“One thing I’ve learned from traveling through the counties that the pipelines are supposed to cut across is that pipelines are not a partisan issue,” she says, adding that those bearing the brunt of the proposed pipelines live in rural, historically conservative areas. “They fight against them as hard as, if not more than, many liberals.”
A typical conservative pipeline opposer, she says, takes the stance that the proposed pipelines would infringe on their property rights, while liberals worry more about environmental concerns.
And one of those most recent concerns is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s newly released Mountain Valley Pipeline environmental impact statement, which determines that any negative ecological effects associated with it are “limited.”
“Having crossed through the countryside that the Mountain Valley Pipeline is supposed to traverse,” Bray says, “I find it shocking.”
This spring, she hit the road with the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition to travel the MVP’s proposed path from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Blacksburg, stopping along the way to speak with people who would be impacted by its presence.
“This land is unprecedented for a 42-inch pipeline,” she says. Much of the area’s mountainous topography has a karst landscape that is conducive to sinkholes and erosion, and West Virginia’s Monroe County has more than 100 natural water springs, she says. “If the rocks below these springs are shifted by the pipeline, the source of drinking water for an entire community and wildlife down the watershed could be permanently threatened.”
She also mentions a Monroe family she met that has lived on their property for more than eight generations, since before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
“Their land is sacred to them, and altering it with this pipeline is unjust in every way,” Bray says.
Also making headlines in the realm of Virginia pipelines has been McAuliffe’s insistence that governance over those entities is strictly a federal issue and the state has no authority.
“He seems both confused and forgetful,” says the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition’s Rick Webb, who notes that McAuliffe has said the state will grant the natural gas pipelines their water permits, which are required, under the Clean Water Act if the companies backing them meet the statutory requirements.
On McAuliffe’s September 22 visit to Charlottesville, he was greeted outside Democratic campaign headquarters on the Downtown Mall by a group of sign-waving pipeline protesters who demanded he take action.
He told a Newsplex reporter that he has no say in the matter, but he supports the group’s right to protest.
“This is democracy, this is what America is all about,” he said. “You’ve got 10, 15 folks protesting, but remember, I’m the governor of 8.5 million people.”
In other news, the results of a study commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates released September 12 say the anticipated natural gas supply will meet the maximum demand from next year until 2030 without building a new pipeline.
“It’s an issue of competitive advantage rather than public need,” Webb says. “It’s mostly about Dominion seeking to displace Williams Transco as the major natural gas supply for the Southeast, while passing the cost of doing so along to its captive ratepayers.”
Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says the report is full of flawed assumptions and misleading data.
“It’s an anti-pipeline report paid for by anti-pipeline groups, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone what it says,” he says. “The fact is, demand for natural gas in Virginia and North Carolina is growing significantly.”
Demand will grow by 165 percent over the next 20 years, he says, because coal is being replaced with cleaner-burning natural gas. And not only are new industries increasingly relying on natural gas, but the population itself is growing.
“There is no way existing pipelines or gas storage can meet that huge growth in demand,” Ruby says. “Existing pipelines in the region are constrained and operating at full capacity. Even planned expansions of those pipelines are fully subscribed.”
In Hampton Roads, he says pipelines are so constrained that the natural gas service is “curtailed” for large industrial customers during high-demand periods in the winter. In North Carolina, he adds, one pipeline serves the entire state, and because it’s located in the western half, entire communities in eastern North Carolina have limited to no access to the supply.
“The region’s existing pipelines cannot address these challenges,” says Ruby. “New infrastructure is required. That’s why we’re proposing to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.”
Upon completion of the Berkmar Bridge, one can drive from the former Shoppers World, now called 29th Place, up to CHO without setting wheels on 29. Courtesy of VDOT
Good news for smoothie fans
Charlottesville has no reports of hepatitis A cases like the outbreak that struck 28 Tropical Smoothie Cafe patrons throughout Virginia that was thought to be caused by contaminated Egyptian strawberries, according to the local Virginia Department of Health office.
Understudy steps in
While UVA drama professor Walter Francis Korte Jr., charged with two counts of possessing child pornography earlier this month, is still being held at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail, two of his classes—Cinema as an Art Form and Film Aesthetics—are now being taught by Matthew Marshall, another professor in the department, according to the Cavalier Daily. History of Film, which Korte was also scheduled to teach this semester, is no longer listed for students.
A little more time
Photo: Scott Elmquist
U.S. Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled to reverse former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell’s 11 corruption convictions in June, sending his case back to Richmond’s 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether there is enough evidence for a retrial. His council and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are now asking the appeals court to give the U.S. Justice Department three more weeks to further prepare and consider its next steps before taking any action.
Hotel hot spot
Rendering courtesy of CARR City Centers
Developers announced August 29 that they have secured a $25.8 million loan for a 10-story luxury hotel on West Main Street. As part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection Hotels, the space will feature 150 guest rooms and suites, a restaurant and 3,000 square feet of meeting space. It will be located next to Uncommon, West Main’s newest digs. Construction is slated to begin this fall, and the hotel is expected to open in 2017.
Sexual assault details
The victim of the August 19 sexual assault occurring on Emmet Street, possibly between Thomson Road and Jefferson Park Avenue, recently told Charlottesville Police that “a couple of people” on the street took her home after the assault. Police ask for anyone who aided the victim or noticed anything suspicious in the area between 11:30pm and 1am to contact Detective Regine Wright-Settle at 970-3274.
Bridging the gap
While the U.S. 29 and Rio Road grade-separated intersection got all the attention this summer, the Berkmar Drive Extended project, parallel to Seminole Trail, has been chugging along. Upon completion, one can drive from the former Shoppers World, now called 29th Place, up to CHO without setting wheels on 29. And VDOT has documented the bridge construction over the Rivanna with pretty nifty time-lapse photography. The connecting road beams are supposed to go in this week.
2.3 miles long
Costs $54.5 million
Two lanes with four-lane right of way for future expansion
Includes bike lane, sidewalk and multi-use path
By the Numbers: Power struggle
Dominion Virginia Power was officially given the go-ahead August 23 to begin
a $140 million power line burial project across the state.
400 miles of power lines buried
$350,000 per mile
$6 extra per year that each customer will pay
50 cents added to average customer bill starting next month
Quote of the Week:
“Every year he has new evidence about why he shouldn’t be in jail in Virginia.” —Delegate Rob Bell about Jens Soering’s petition for absolute pardon.
After Dominion's rebuild in Rockbridge County, this is the view from Kristopher Baumann's front yard. Courtesy of Kristopher Baumann
City and county residents heavily criticized Dominion Virginia Power’s plans to rebuild area transmission lines at a recent public hearing, and a Rockbridge County man, who has filed suit against the power company after a similar rebuild in his area, says locals’ concerns are justified.
“They marred one of the most beautiful valleys in the state so they could save themselves a little bit of money,” says Kristopher Baumann, who owns a farm in Rockbridge.
His suit alleges that Dominion lied about the number and type of towers it planned to build and the degree to which new structures would resemble those being replaced. The power company also published false information to the public and did not follow statutorily required procedures, according to the suit.
“Dominion has admitted that it made no attempt to mitigate the appearance of the transmission line as it traverses nearly 40 miles of pastoral landscape through the Shenandoah Valley,” the lawsuit reads. “Although other projects in Virginia have been built with darkened towers at the lowest heights possible, so as to blend more effectively in a rural environment, these towers are enormous and made of a bright galvanized steel that reflects in the sun, making the long line of towers a scar upon the landscape that is visible above the trees, from miles away.”
The materials Dominion is proposing to use to rebuild the area’s Cunningham-Dooms 500kV transmission lines, which run almost 30 miles through Albemarle, is the biggest turnoff for some locals.
At the August 8 State Corporation Commission public hearing, Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek said she has been disappointed by Dominion’s “misrepresentation and incomplete information,” and she asked the commission to reject Dominion’s application for the local rebuild, citing the height, width and, most importantly, she said, the appearance and color of the towers.
“The company rejects the COR-TEN material, which has been used for decades,” Mallek says. COR-TEN provides protection from corrosion through a chemical process that turns steel into a brownish color that blends with the landscape.One of these lines built in 1960 that was supposed to last 25 years has lasted more than 50 without any expensive maintenance treatments, she says. “Therefore, the worry that there is a structural deficit is not supported by facts.”
In a report to the SCC, Dominion has stated there is a $266,000 difference in total installation costs to use darkened poles rather than the silver galvanized poles, says Mallek, and “the additional investment is minute when compared to the damage that the galvanized poles will do to the scenic viewshed of Albemarle.”
Daisy Pridgen, a Dominion spokesperson, says the decision to use different poles is not cost-based, but issue-based. The overall cost of the project is slated at $60 million.
“Significant issues were discovered in the structural joints of all lattice tower structures built with COR-TEN steel,” she says, and Dominion stopped using it several years ago.
When a galvanized steel tower is first erected, Pridgen says, “it can appear somewhat reflective initially, but the exterior finish dulls relatively quickly and fades to a medium gray color,” she adds, “similar to the dulled effect observable over time on highway guardrails.”
In the Cunningham-Dooms 500kV rebuild, each structure of about 160 is being replaced and the height of new towers will be about 28 feet taller on average. The original line, built in the early 1960s, needs to be replaced to current standards to maintain system reliability, Pridgen says. Dominion is now working to provide detailed responses to the August 8 SSC hearing, which will be available in September.
Says Mallek, “We need engineers to find ways to accomplish this rebuild with brown poles to reduce the impact of the line, not accountants telling the SCC that this extra cost is too much.”
In Rockbridge and Augusta counties, Dominion got approval for the rebuild from the SCC “based on false numbers,” Baumann says, “claiming that the tower heights would be far less than they actually are.” At the time, Dominion’s website said the average height would be 115 feet, though towers are as high as 174 feet, his suit claims. Originally, towers ranged in height from 74 feet to 149 feet.
On November 19, 2012, Dominion filed the application to rebuild the existing transmission with both a 500kV line and a new 230kV line, though the previous build included only the former. The SSC approved it, but at the end of the application process, the power company withdrew it and filed another application a year later.
“In addition, when explaining how the 2013 heights would differ from what was approved for 2012,” Baumann says, “Dominion stated to the SCC that the increases in tower height on average would be two to 14 feet, but tells [the Department of Environmental Quality] that 14 feet would be the maximum increase height, neither of which was factually accurate.”
On September 24, 2013, Dominion’s lawyer, Charlotte McAfee, sent an e-mail that urged the DEQ not to review the second application, which she said would involve only “slight modifications” from 2012 plans and that the “modifications do not change the visual characteristics of the structures.”
In 2015, Dominion produced an Excel spreadsheet to the SCC that showed original tower heights, proposed tower heights in the 2012 and 2013 applications, with one increasing as much as 41 feet, Baumann says. Though it was only recently made available to the public, he says it shows that the company was aware of height discrepancies at the time of filing their applications.
Though the project isn’t finished, the average of the newest constructed towers is 148.5 feet tall, Baumann has concluded from the spreadsheet.
An achievable goal with the lawsuit, he says, is to force Dominion to mitigate the damage it has already done by painting the power lines and towers a darker color. He says he won’t stop fighting the company, which has “deep pockets” and “enormous legislative power.”
“They’re going to try to run me into the ground and anybody else who gets in their way,” he says.
From Kristopher Baumann’s front yard, the top image shows the original, nearly invisible transmission lines. The bottom photo was taken after the rebuild. Click to enlarge. Courtesy of Kristopher Baumann
A gas pipeline marker in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. Courtesy of Aaron Ruby
Locally, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has amassed intense opposition since Dominion Energy formally announced its project plans in September 2014. What some challengers may not know, however, is that more than 2,000 miles of pipelines have sliced through Virginia for several decades, sparking little to no debate.
“I think the fact that most people are unaware of the vast network of existing pipelines that are operating in our communities today says a couple of things,” says Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby, who notes that these pipelines go unnoticed because they operate safely and coexist peacefully with their environments.
Four Williams Transco natural gas transmission pipelines in the same right of way run under Lake Monticello in Fluvanna. Two are 30 inches in width, one is 36 inches and the largest is 42 inches—the proposed width of the ACP.
While only about 1,000 of 10,000 miles of the Transco pipeline—built in the early 1950s—run through Virginia on their way from Texas to New York, the first bout of natural gas pumped through the line was delivered to Danville, according to spokesperson Chris Stockton. About a quarter of all natural gas consumed in Virginia goes through the Transco.
“It really is out of sight, out of mind,”Stockton says.
Like the Transco pipeline, the multi-billion-dollar, 550-mile ACP will also run entirely underground, according to Ruby. As does the 20-inch Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline—gathering gas in the Gulf of New Mexico and transporting it to New York—that runs through White Hall Vineyards in Crozet.
Representatives from the vineyard declined to comment on the effect the pipeline has had on their operation.
“There’s no indication that any of the 2,200 miles of existing pipelines in Virginia have inhibited the development or growth or sustainability of these communities,” says Ruby. “In fact, the opposite has been the case.”
Farmers, he says, grow crops “right on top” of the pipelines, which lay under pastureland and woodland meadows and go fairly unnoticed, except for their vertical, yellow-tipped markers.
Calling Nelson County the “Napa Valley of Virginia,” Ruby points out that the wine mecca in California is one of the most successful tourist regions in the country and that 280 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines run between Napa and Sonoma valleys.
“Those pipelines have not inhibited the tourism industry, residential growth, resort businesses or the wine industry,” he says, and he believes the ACP will have the same effect in Virginia, where there are already more than two and a half times the miles of pipeline—some passing through residential and commercial areas—than interstate highway.
Though the ACP will serve multiple public utilities and what Dominion calls “their urgent energy needs” in Virginia and North Carolina, some opponents say the number of existing pipelines makes for an absence of compelling need for another.
“One of the major objections to the proposed ACP is that any need for this pipeline does not rise to the level that justifies harm to our best remaining wild landscape, intrusion into public conservation lands and state-sanctioned violation of private property rights,” says Rick Webb, the coordinator for the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s determination of project need, he says, is only based on evidence that contracts for natural gas have been secured. FERC will ultimately approve or deny the project.
“We contend that this is an insufficient standard,” Webb says. “Particularly when, as in this case, the large majority of the gas is contracted to subsidiaries or affiliates of the ACP developers.”
