Power Line Threatens Northern Virginia's Battlefields

By Deborah Fitts

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — A high-voltage power line that would require a parade of towers across what many describe as one of the most beautiful and historic landscapes in America has preservationists and battlefield supporters gearing up for a major confrontation.

Dominion Virginia Power and Allegheny Power are planning to use new rules under the 2005 Energy Policy Act that would allow them to seize right-of-way by eminent domain when the “national interest” is at stake.

The federal American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) has identified 15 Civil War battlefields within the study corridor, which stretches from south of Winchester, in Frederick County, eastward across the Blue Ridge to Aldie in Loudoun County. The swath is 40 miles long and 20 miles wide and includes the heart of “Mosby’s Confederacy,” the rural landscape dotted by farms and villages where Confederate partisan ranger John Mosby operated.

  Tanya Gossett, preservation planner for ABPP, said the cavalry battles of Aldie, Middleburg, Upperville and Unison are “smack in the middle of the project area.”

Also threatened are Cedar Creek, Buckland Mills, Cool Spring, Front Royal, Guard Hill, First and Second Kernstown, Second Manassas, Manassas Gap, Thoroughfare Gap and Second Winchester. Besides Loudoun and Frederick, the study area extends into parts of Clarke, Warren, Fauquier and Prince William counties.

ABPP supplied information on the battlefields to the utilities, Gossett said, noting that the power companies are still in the “pre-planning stages” and have not yet sought permits.

She said ABPP has not learned whether the utilities would be successful in seeking designation as a “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor” under the new federal regulations — or, if they do, whether such a designation would enable them to override conservation easements, historic districts, federally recognized battlefields and other protections.

“I don’t know how” the utilities can avoid infringing on the many historic properties along the corridor, Gossett said. “That whole area has been a big part of conservation” for decades. Even a distant view of the 125-foot towers, which would be spaced 1,000 feet apart, would affect appreciation of the rolling farmland, which is crisscrossed by streams and stone walls and is home to myriad historic properties.

Dominion Virginia asserts that increasing demand for power in fast-growing Northern Virginia must be met by the new transmission line or the region will succumb to “severe unreliability problems, including the increased potential for blackouts.”

The utilities are expected to file their application with the State Corporation Commission next spring.

Local Congressman Frank Wolf (R), who has been a major supporter of battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley, wrote to the Energy Department asking that the transmission line spare his district.

“The blood that sustained a unified nation is in this land,” he wrote. “This is the land that George Washington surveyed. This is the land that James Monroe walked. This is the land that Chief Justice John Marshall farmed. We must not destroy this land.”

Leading the opposition to the power line is the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), a Warrenton-based conservation group that in recent years has been active in supporting battlefield preservation.

PEC has hired an energy lawyer and engineer for what the organization believes will be the most expensive fight since the successful effort to prevent Disney from building a historical theme park near the Manassas battlefield.

Jolly deGive, PEC’s director of planning services, said her organization was “horribly alarmed” at the prospect of the line. She questioned the utilities’ contention of a looming power shortage.
“We believe this is so that Dominion can sell energy in the Northeast,” where prices are higher and there are greater profits to be made, she said.

DeGive noted that in the project area, 8,000 acres are under conservation easement. “If you look at a map, they will not be able to snake their line without taking some easements.” If under the new federal designation of “national interest” the power line will trump easements, she added, “that could be the end of the easement program.”

Also in the study area are the Appalachian Trail, Sky Meadow State Park, the 15 federally recognized battlefields, and “hundreds of National Register sites and national landmarks.” DeGive urged those critical of the proposal to contact their legislators in Washington.