Dominion briefs board on proposed 765 kV transmission line that could significantly impact Louisa County; BOS roundup: Board talks budget, oks funding for tourism map and more
Engage Louisa is a nonpartisan newsletter that keeps folks informed about Louisa County government. We believe our community is stronger and our government serves us better when we increase transparency, accessibility, and engagement.
This week in county government: public meetings, Feb. 23 through Feb. 28
For the latest information on county meetings, including public meetings of boards, commissions, authorities, work groups, and internal county committees, click here.
Tuesday, February 24
Human Services Advisory Board, 114 Industrial Drive, Louisa, 10:30 am.
Wednesday, February 25
Dry Cask Storage Committee, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 2:30 pm.
Comprehensive Plan Open House, Louisa County Middle School Forum, 1009 Davis Highway, Mineral, 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm.
County officials will host their final open house focused on an upcoming review of the Comprehensive Plan, a long-range planning document that lays out a vision for the county’s future. The events provide residents an opportunity to learn more about the Comp Plan process, ask questions in an informal setting and offer feedback on development, growth management, county services and more.
Fill out the Comp Plan survey here.
Thursday, February 26
Finance Committee, Administration Conference Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 8:30 am.
Quote of the week
“I think it’s important to preserve the Ag and Forestal Districts as much as possible in the county. I know the board doesn’t have anything to do with routing transmission lines. However, if the board is really serious about the whole land preservation effort that they have going on right now—with the centerpiece of it being Ag and Forestal Districts—then, [to] whatever extent the county can exert any influence on this whole transmission line thing, they ought to be looking out for people who are in Ag and Forestal Districts so that we can preserve that land for what it’s intended to be.”
-John Disosway, who owns a farm in one of the county’s Agricultural and Forestal Districts (AFD) that could potentially be impacted by a proposed 765-kilovolt transmission line. Disosway, who chairs the Louisa County Planning Commission, urged the board of supervisors at its February 17 meeting to do what it can to protect the county’s AFDs, a key component of local land preservation efforts. Read more in the article below.
Dominion briefs board on proposed 765 kV transmission line
Representatives from Dominion Energy on Tuesday night briefed the board of supervisors on a proposed ultra-high voltage power line that could slice through Central Virginia and significantly impact Louisa County. (meeting video)
Dominion and its partners, FirstEnergy Transmission and Transource, operating as Valley Link Transmission Company, plan to build a 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission line, stretching 115 miles from the Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County to the proposed Yeat substation in southeastern Culpeper.
The line would be one of the biggest ever constructed on the east coast, carrying three times the power of a 500 kV line, currently the largest in Dominion’s system. It would connect with an existing 765 kV line at Joshua Falls, operated by American Electric Power (AEP), delivering bulk electricity from the Ohio River Valley to power-hungry users across Northern and Central Virginia. AEP, the parent company of Appalachian Power, is a partner in Transource. It has operated 765 kV lines in the Midwest since the 1970s.
“The Joshua Falls to Yeat project enhances electric service reliability and ensures there will be enough reliable power to meet Virginia’s growing needs for decades to come,” Dominion Senior Siting and Permitting Specialist Lane Carr said.
Dominion expects the demand for power in Virginia to double over the next 20 years, driven, in part, by data center development. Northern Virginia is home to the largest concentration of the power-guzzling facilities in the world. For its part, Louisa County has green-lit three data center campuses. At full buildout, the facilities are expected to require far more electricity than the 1.9 gigawatts (GW) generated at Dominion’s North Anna Power Station.
PJM, the regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or part of 13 states, including Virginia, approved the line as part of a competitive bidding process last year, citing the need for more power in the region. The State Corporation Commission (SCC), which regulates Virginia’s utilities, has the final say on whether and where the line is built.
Valley Link in mid-February released two preliminary routes for the line and a handful of potential variations, which cross nine counties. In the coming months, the company will gather feedback on the proposed corridors before submitting a preferred route to the SCC, likely in September.
If the commission approves the project, the line could be in service by mid-2029 and cost $1 billion, according to preliminary information on PJM’s website.
Developing the proposed routes and community engagement
Carr and Roya Smith, a member of the project’s routing team, shared details on how Valley Link determined its preliminary routes and how the public can engage in the process moving forward.
When the company initially started planning the line, it considered a study area covering all or part of 19 counties, from eastern Albermarle to western Hanover and southern Fauquier to northeastern Campbell. Carr said the team evaluated some 12,000 miles of potential routes.
Through hours of what Smith described as “desktop research,” the routing team gathered reems of information from public databases and considered everything from the location of dense residential areas and conservation easements to growth areas and industrial sites. In the world of transmission line routing, the former are generally considered constraints and the latter opportunities.
The team also considered environmentally sensitive area like wetlands and river crossings and factored in the cost and feasibility of construction, including how property would be accessed and whether there’s enough open space to accommodate a large transmission line.
“Engineering is a very important consideration when we develop conceptual routes because which ever route is finally approved, ultimately by the SCC, we need to ensure that it is constructible,” Carr said.
The team narrowed the proposed routes to the corridors and variations unveiled earlier this month. Now, they’ll begin the public engagement process, gathering feedback directly from potentially impacted landowners and other stakeholders. Carr emphasized that Valley Link is still early in the routing process and there’s no favored corridor.
“Everything you see here is being equally weighted and evaluated and we’re seeking input on every segment,” Carr said.
Carr said Valley Link sent 130,000 letters to property owners within a mile of the routes. Over the next month, the company will hold at least 10 in-person open houses to engage with residents, including a March 12 event in Louisa County. The company will also hold two virtual open houses and accept comments via GeoVoice, an interactive mapping tool on the project website.
Carr and Smith said the public engagement process offers community members an opportunity to share site-specific impacts of the proposed routes that might not be documented elsewhere, like the presence of a family cemetery or a local historic site.
‘We really look to the community to help identify things that might not be recorded at the state level,” Smith said, adding, “We know Louisa County has a very rich history, and we know that everything is not always evaluated as it’s surveyed.”
Valley Link will consider community feedback as it revises the initial routes, likely eliminating some sections from consideration, before returning for a second round of open houses in June then submitting a preferred route to the SCC later this year.
The SCC will consider the route and potential alternatives and solicit input via a formal public approval process, including a public hearing and comment period. The commission will evaluate the line based on a variety of factors—from public need to cost—before deciding whether to green-light the project and determining where it’s built.
Proposed routes through Louisa
Smith provided an overview of the path the two preliminary corridors take through Louisa and why they make sense to the routing team.
Corridor One, represented by an orange line on Valley Link maps, travels through the county for about 17 miles and directly impacts 129 parcels. Smith noted that the proposed route enters the county just west of Ferncliff in a designated growth area.
“In the county’s Future Land Use Plan, that is a growth area that’s been identified for several different types of uses and could be a potential opportunity area when it comes to transmission line routing,” she said.
The line goes north from there, travelling to the west of Route 208 before skirting the western edge of Dominion’s 88-megawatt Belcher Solar Facility. Smith said the facility provides an opportunity to co-locate with a compatible use.
“Solar and other industrial type uses can be a transmission line routing opportunity in the sense that people often look at those as industrial uses,” Smith said, adding that Dominion’s Louisa substation is also located in the area.
The line crosses Route 22 just west of the Town of Louisa then travels through several large tracts of timberland, Smith said, which minimizes the number of impacted landowners.
Smtih also pointed out opportunity areas on Corridor Two, represented by a blue line on project maps. The corridor traverses Louisa for about 19 miles, crossing 109 parcels. Smith noted that the corridor enters the county at the Shannon Hill Regional Business Park where EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure plans to develop some 1.1 gigawatts of data center capacity.
“They are a similar type of land use [that] a lot of people associate with an industrial nature,” Smith said.
The corridor travels north from there, crossing three large tracts currently included in the county’s Technology Overlay District (TOD). Those include Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) North Creek Technology Campus south of Route 33, where the tech giant plans to build at least 18 data center buildings; the Fisher Chewning tract on the other side of 33, which AWS purchased earlier this year; and the Cooke Rail Park, which lies north of Route 22 and east of Chopping Road and is mostly owned by the Louisa County Industrial Development Authority.
“Not only is this an opportunity [to locate] where the future growth might be in the county, it also [offers] the ability to minimize the effect of the project on number of landowners,” Smith said.
After crossing the TOD, Corridor Two runs northwest across timber and farmland, eventually converging with Corridor One just south of the Louisa-Orange County line.
Smith didn’t provide a detailed overview of the potential variations, depicted on project maps by a dashed yellow line.
Building the line
Once the SCC green-lights the line and selects the route, Smith said that Valley Link would begin negotiations with landowners to acquire easements.
If Valley Link is unable to reach a compensation agreement with a landowner, the company would have the power to use eminent domain. Eminent domain refers to the ability of the government and certain other entities to seize property without an owner’s consent provided it’s for public use and the owner is fairly compensated.
“[Eminent domain] is the absolute last resort. [It’s] nothing that we want to go through…But there is the power of eminent domain with all of our public utilities,” Smith said.
Carr said that 765 kV lines are typically supported by steel lattice structures, measuring between 135 and 160 feet tall and requiring a 200-foot right-of-way. Two hundred feet equals about 66 yards or two thirds of a football field.
Valley Link’s website includes four possible tower styles, including guyed Y and Vee lattice towers and self-supporting delta and horizontal structures. Carr said the company hasn’t decided what style would be used in this project. Smith noted that 500 kV lines—like the line that travels from Gum Spring to North Anna—and 765 kV lines often look similar.
Dominion representatives said that one of the advantages of building a 765 kV line—sometimes referred as a transmission “super-highway”—is its ability to carry a vast amount of power over long distances, lessening the need for multiple substations along the way and additional smaller lines.
Community concerns
Both supervisors and community members raised concerns about the proposed routes, including how they could impact rural preservation efforts; one route’s proximity to the Louisa County High School/Middle School campus; and how close the line might go to existing homes.
During the public comment period, John Disosway, chair of the county’s planning commission, expressed concern that a variation of Corridor Two crosses his farm, which is in an Agricultural and Forestal District (AFD). The AFD program is a conservation tool that allows landowners to voluntarily prohibit development on their property for 10 years. County officials have said that enrolling parcels in the program offers some protection from the encroachment of utility infrastructure like large transmission lines.
While Disosway acknowledged that the board has no formal role in the routing process, he urged supervisors to do what they can to protect the county’s AFDs, referencing the central role the districts are expected to play in a land preservation initiative currently being developed by county staff.
“I think it’s important to preserve the Ag and Forestal Districts as much as possible in the county. I know the board doesn’t have anything to do with routing transmission lines. However, if the board is really serious about the whole land preservation effort that they have going on right now—with the centerpiece of it being Ag and Forestal Districts—then, [to] whatever extent the county can exert any influence on this whole transmission line thing, they ought to be looking out for people who are in Ag and Forestal Districts so that we can preserve that land for what it’s intended to be,” Disosway said.
Michael Richmond, whose family owns a farm off Mt. Airy Road that could be impacted by the project, echoed Disosway.
“[We’d like to understand] what steps Louisa County is taking, within its authority, to protect its Ag and Forestal Districts and Louisa’s rural character,” Richmond said, noting that a potential variation of Corridor Two runs across his family’s property while the primary corridor traverses AWS’s North Creek Tech Campus, which, in his view, makes more sense.
Smith said the routing team has taken steps to avoid conservation easements and considered AFDs in plotting its proposed routes. But she noted that, due to other constraints, AFDs can’t always be avoided.
Louisa District resident Adam Combs expressed several concerns about the proposed line—from its potential health impacts to the towering structures that would support it. He contended that the line would be far more imposing than other transmission infrastructure in the area and negatively impact the quality of life of neighbors.
“Imagine someone who is new to the area building a home, investing in infrastructure, to find this line being built [next to] their investment that they’ve saved up for their entire lives to build,” Combs said.
Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams, whose district would be impacted by any of the potential routes, raised concerns about Corridor Two’s proximity to the Louisa County High School/Middle School campus and an adjoining 90-acre parcel where the division is considering siting a new elementary school. He called it an “area of concern.”
“If I were on your side of the table, one of the very first notes I would make [would be] ‘stay away from schools,’” Adams told Smith.
Dominion External Affairs Manager Andre May emphasized that the upcoming open houses offer community members an opportunity to raise their concerns.
“We do appreciate all the information that you have been giving us, but this is the purpose of us having the open houses,” May said, adding, “There’s a specific course of action that we take so that we can ensure that we’ve looked at every available option to us and then done what we feel is the best course of action for the project.”
Smith suggested that the public engagement process likely wouldn’t prompt significant changes in the proposed routes but could lead to tweaks that make the line less impactful to specific parcels.
“Could we find a new route that we clearly missed? Hopefully not. But could there be changes that we can work with engineers and construction teams to help better the route on folks’ property? I hope so,” Smith said, noting that the routing team feels confident that they’ve presented corridors that avoid constraints like major historic sites and dense residential areas and meet the criteria that the SCC is looking for.
Residents and board members also said they’d like to see improvements to the interactive map on Valley Link’s website with a couple community members complaining that parts of the map are blurry.
Smith said that Valley Link would try to address those concerns and potentially add more information to the map, including parcel boundaries. She also emphasized that more detailed information about the routes would be available at the open houses.
The proposed transmission line has raised concerns far beyond Louisa County. The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), a regional conservation group that has sounded the alarm about unbridled data center development, warned last week that Valley Link’s plan is the first step toward potentially significant land use changes in Central Virginia.
“What they’re showing in this one project is just the beginning of a potentially massive transformation of Central Virginia, as we try to feed electrons on this new super highway. The potential for that to trigger a whole round of development of data centers, of new generation projects, is very real,” PEC President Chris Miller told NBC 29 News. “This is not a marginal conversation about how you feel about aesthetics. This is about an investment in heavy infrastructure that’s going to change the landscape of Virginia, and if we’re moving in that direction, we’ve got to get it right.”
Joshua Falls to Yeat public engagement opportunities
In-person Open House, Thursday, March 12, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the Betty Queen Center, 522 Industrial Drive, Louisa: Valley Link will hold an in-person open house to share information and gather community feedback on the transmission line’s potential routes.
Because the meeting conflicts with the March meeting of the Louisa County Planning Commission, county officials have asked Valley Link to schedule a second open house. At publication time, the company hadn’t announced an additional in-person meeting in Louisa. (For a full list of open houses, click here).
Virtual Open Houses, Thursday, March 5, 12 pm to 1 pm, and Monday, March 16, 12 pm to 1 pm: Valley Link will hold two virtual open houses focused on the project. Click here for more information.
Online Comments: Community members can provide comments on the proposed routes via GeoVoice, Valley Link’s online mapping tool. Click here to visit Valley Link’s website and access the map.
BOS roundup: Board talks budget, trash, tourism map and more
Aside from hearing a presentation from Dominion Energy on the potential routes of a proposed 765-kilovolt transmission line, the Louisa County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday took up other public business. Here’s a recap of supervisors’ budget work session and regular meeting. (work session video) (regular meeting video)
Supes tentatively agree to give Fluvanna-Louisa Housing Foundation $50,000 for essential repair program
The board of supervisors on Tuesday afternoon held its second budget work session of the Fiscal Year 2027 cycle, spending most of the hour-long meeting discussing how to spend about $110,000, less than a tenth of a percent of the county’s proposed $188 million operating budget.
Supervisors mostly focused on whether to provide the Fluvanna-Louisa Housing Foundation with $50,000 to help fund its essential home repair program. They also discussed whether to give the Louisa County Arts Center the same amount it got last year--$60,000—and where that money should come from.
In the end, the board tentatively agreed to fund FLHF’s request, tacking on the $50,000 to the $134,450 preliminarily approved at its last work session. Supervisors appeared poised to flat fund the arts center and pull that money from tourism support funding, but didn’t formally vote on the allocation.
The board’s decision to directly support FLHF’s essential repair program came after a brief presentation from Executive Director Kim Hyland. Hyland told the board that the initiative currently serves about 50 residents a year, calling it the organization’s most successful program.
The program typically provides up to $5,000 grants for essential home repairs to residents making less than 50 percent of the area’s median income. Many participants are elderly and could face homelessness if their homes aren’t improved, Hyland said. The grants cover half the cost of the repairs with the organization offering loans to pay for the rest.
“[This program] serves the people who live here. They own homes. Generally, they’ve lived here their whole lives. The average age is about 68, so it’s about keeping our seniors in place,” Hyland said.
Hyland said the program, which draws support from federal and private grants, has faced funding constraints in recent years. She noted that funding from the Housing Preservation Grant Program, administered by the USDA and aimed at repairing or rehabbing homes owned by low-income residents in rural areas, has decreased dramatically over the last three years. The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, which distributes the funding locally, received $212,000 from the program in Fiscal Year 2023, Hyland said, but just $60,000 this year.
“Louisa County has been receiving the lion’s share of those funds each year. We have a really good model for utilizing funds that are available like this...[The decrease in availability] leaves us a bit of a gap,” she said.
After hearing from Hyland, supervisors reversed course on their previous decision not to fund the program. Cuckoo District Supervisor Chris McCotter said that, when crafting its budget, the board must prioritize “wants versus needs,” and FLHF’s program “may be a need.”
Green Springs District Supervisor Rachel Jones, who serves on FLHF’s board of directors and asked her colleagues to invite Hyland to the work session so she could talk about the program, emphasized the importance of supporting some of the community’s most vulnerable residents.
“These are our most vulnerable population—our seniors—and homelessness is just a hair away for so many people, especially people in [this] program],” Jones said.
After some discussion, the board appeared ready to earmark $60,000 for the Louisa Arts Center—the same amount the organization received last year, but $20,000 less than it requested. They could pull that money from the county’s tourism support fund instead of its general fund.
The county derives its tourism support money from the transient occupancy tax, a seven percent levy tacked on to visitors’ bills when they stay the night at a local hotel, bed and breakfast or short-term rental.
Per state law and county guidelines, a portion of the revenue generated by the tax must be spent on tourism-related initiatives, especially those aimed at increasing overnight stays. The Tourism Advisory Committee, a citizen-led panel mostly comprised of stakeholders in the local tourism industry, reviews applications for the funds and makes recommendations to the board on their allocation.
Board members said that if the committee determined the arts center’s request didn’t meet the criteria for tourism support money, its funding would be pulled from the general fund. But the board agreed to wait on more information about how often the arts center can apply for tourism funding to ensure the non-profit can submit applications for more than $60,000 if it wants to.
Supervisors will hold their next budget work session on March 2 at 3 pm prior to their regular meeting. They’ll hear from representatives of Louisa County Public Schools, the sheriff’s office and the Fire and EMS Department. Spending on schools and public safety typically comprises more than two-thirds of the county’s annual operating budget.
To learn more about the Fiscal Year 2027 budget process, click here.
Coon briefs board on proposed changes to landfill permit
As solid waste intake increases at the Louisa County Landfill, the county’s asking the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to approve updates to its Solid Waste Management Plan, including green-lighting a new space to store waste and increasing the amount of trash the facility can accept daily.
Deputy County Administrator Chris Coon briefed the board on the proposed changes on Tuesday night. Coon said the county has been planning to open a new cell—a large, lined enclosure used for storing solid waste underground—for a number of years because it needs more room. In addition, the county has opted to simultaneously ask for an increase in its daily intake limit—from 75 tons per day to 300 tons per day—to accommodate current and future growth.
“This permit increase has always been assumed, and [we’ve known] that we’re going to have to move forward with it. It was planned with the cell expansion. It’s just with population growth, instead of starting this in ‘28 or ‘29, we need to start a little bit earlier,” Coon said.
The county will hold a state-mandated public hearing on the proposed updates at the board’s March 2 meeting. In addition, Coon said citizens can provide written comments through March 14. (See below for more information).
Coon noted that the landfill has seen a significant uptick in intake in recent months, attributing the increase to school construction and “some other county projects.”
In response to citizen inquiries, Coon added that the uptick isn’t related to construction at AWS’s data center campuses by the Northeast Creek Reservoir and Lake Anna. He noted that the landfill had accepted a significant amount of fill dirt from AWS, which didn’t cross it scales and doesn’t count as part of the county’s daily weight limit.
“That soil [was used] to replenish dirt from the borrow site,” Coon said.
The landfill has been a hot topic of late as the board of supervisors last December agreed to spend about $4 million to acquire 450 acres adjacent to the facility for future expansion. The county is expected to close on the property in April, per a purchase agreement.
How to comment on the proposed updates to the county’s Solid Waste Management Plan: Written comments may be submitted at any time during the comment period (Feb. 12 to March 14) to Anderson Woolfolk, General Services Director at County of Louisa Dept. of General Services, 669 Industrial Drive, Louisa, Virginia 23093. Comments must include the name and address of the person commenting as well as a brief statement regarding the interest of the person commenting and how the operation of the facility may affect the citizen. Oral and written comments will be received at a public hearing on Monday, March 2 in the Public Meeting Room at the Louisa County Office Building.
Supes approve funding for Louisa County Visitor Map
Supervisors voted 6-0 to green-light the Louisa County Chamber of Commerce’s request for up to $7,438 in tourism support funding to print and distribute a Louisa County Visitor Map. Jackson District Supervisor Toni Williams was absent.
The full-color, double-sided foldout map will highlight destinations across Louisa County and include panels focusing on The Towns of Louisa and Mineral, Lake Anna and Zion Crossroads, per the approved resolution.
The map was developed in partnership with the towns and the county’s tourism marketing initiative, Visit Louisa. It will feature the Visit Louisa logo and a QR code linking to its website.
“We won’t call out specific businesses but major areas we’d like to direct people to like the towns, Zion Crossroads and the lake. That way, people understand where they need to travel to when they visit Louisa County,” Louisa County Community Engagement Manager Cindy King said.
The chamber intends to use the tourism support funding to cover the cost of printing 20,000 maps and to distribute the maps to welcome centers across the state, local lodging partners and tourism-related businesses, among other venues.
The county draws its tourism support funds from the transient occupancy tax, a seven percent levy tacked on to visitors’ bills when they stay the night at a hotel, bed and breakfast or short-term rental. Per state law and county rules, a portion of the revenue generated by the tax must be used for tourism-related initiatives, especially those aimed at increasing overnight stays.
The Tourism Advisory Committee at its January meeting recommended that the board approve the request.
Supes ok decrease in budget supplement for off-site utilities project supporting data center development
Supervisors in late 2025 infused $16.36 million into the Fiscal Year 2026 budget to cover the potential cost of rock removal along an 11-mile waterline that the county’s building from the Northeast Creek Reservoir to Amazon Web Services’ data center campus near Lake Anna. AWS is paying for the line, which is expected to cost more than $100 million and is necessary to provide cooling water for the campus.
The board on Tuesday night voted unanimously to approve a resolution decreasing the rock allowance allocation by $650,000 to reconcile the allocation with the contracted cost of rock removal.
Click here for contact information for the Louisa County Board of Supervisors.
Find agendas and minutes from previous Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings as well as archived recordings here.
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