DONNIE JOHNSTON: On the Joshua Falls-Yeat Transmission Line
"If we accept the benefits of progress, we must also live with its adverse effects."
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
It is hard to fight progress. Still we try.
The residents of several area counties, including Louisa, Orange and Culpeper, are now involved in a battle to prevent Valley Link—a partnership between Dominion Power and other energy entities—from building a 765-kilovolt power line through their neighborhoods.
These people are predictably upset, expressing health, economic and aesthetic concerns about the possibility of having 160-foot-high towers and high voltage lines near their homes.
It is the same old story. Dominion says the 115-mile line (which originates in Campbell County near Lynchburg) is needed and the residents say, “That might be, but build it somewhere else—not in my backyard!”
To that end, affected residents have held meetings, written letters and flooded social media with protests to persuade the powers-that-be to change the proposed route of the Joshua Falls-Yeat transmission line.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors has been particularly vocal about keeping the power line from spoiling the rustic scenery of its county, while Culpeper County supervisors have taken only a half-hearted and token stand against the $1 billion project.
Why? Because several data centers have been approved in that county and data centers demand an inordinate amount of power. This is one reason the Yeatts substation, the northern terminal of the project, would be located near Richardsville.
Data centers are not the only reason why more electricity is needed in Northern Virginia and all along the East Coast. In case you haven’t noticed, new homes and new subdivisions have been popping up everywhere for the past two decades.
New homes individually don’t require as much power as a data center, but collectively they eat up a lot of juice. These are not the old days when a home only had a few lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling and a plug to power the icebox. Now we have heat pumps, computers, 55-inch TVs, numerous other household appliances, electric cars, and lights that often stay on 24 hours a day.
And more homes require more services which leads to more stores and restaurants being built. And they all demand electricity.
Still, data centers are the reason for more electricity being required as quickly as it can be produced. But data centers are a double-edged sword. True, they soak up electricity like a sponge, but they also provide hefty local tax revenues, which helps keep individual property taxes down.
And unlike many industries, data centers don’t bring in a lot of workers with families that require schools and other services. Data centers even provide their own security forces, which keeps the pressure off local police budgets.
But despite their selling points, data centers do use a lot of electricity and transmitting power to these facilities requires infrastructure. This leads to another complicated scenario.
Data centers must be built close to high tension lines and power companies, for obvious reasons, try to keep these high voltage lines in rural areas, away from highly populated regions where right-of-way costs are much higher and complaints are much louder.
Amid concerns about data centers—which are inextricably connected to the Valley Link power line project—is the argument that these facilities, if built in our area, will increase electricity costs to residential customers.
I have news for you. No matter WHERE they are built, they will—because of the infrastructure requirements—increase electricity costs for everyone. The East Coast is essentially on one huge power grid and what affects one will, at least to some extent, affect all.
It is the same old story. We want artificial intelligence to help us create cute little caricatures and turn on our lights with the clap of our hands, but we don’t want those big nondescript buildings. We want the 10,000 pictures on our cell phones stored securely in the “cloud,” but we don’t want those ugly power lines.
Unfortunately, we can’t have it both ways. If we accept the benefits of progress, we must also live with its adverse effects.
No, the proposed power line is not in my backyard. But a decade ago my peace and quiet was shattered forever with the construction of a highway along my back property line. Now, instead of deer running across my back field, I see police car lights and hear semi-tractor trailers groan as they climb a steep hill.
But I understand that the highway was needed and that it was necessary to give up something for the benefit of all. I didn’t complain and I didn’t fight it.
It took but a few weeks for me to get use to the road, but now I hardly notice that it is there.
Humans are a very adaptable species and in time the Valley Link power line, if built, will become part of the scenery, like existing power lines and the new road is in my back field.
Understand too, that those who protest this power line would scream bloody murder if their electricity went out for a week or there were rolling blackouts.
Progress always comes at a price, but the cost is seldom as high as we anticipate.
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