GOOCHLAND, Va.—Deborah Blackburn leaned on her cane in a line to enter the Central High Cultural and Educational Complex, angst-ridden over a giant transmission line proposal for reasons that are common refrains here: It’s all to benefit data centers in Northern Virginia, and it will disrupt the rural character here outside Richmond.
“We don’t want it,” Blackburn said about the Valley Link transmission project. “I kept as much of my acreage natural. I like seeing my deer, even though they eat my hosta plants.”
Valley Link is a 765-kilovolt system of transmission lines to be hung from towers the height of 12-story buildings by Dominion Energy, Transource and FirstEnergy. Transource is a transmission company jointly owned by American Electric Power and Evergy.
Up for public discussion in Goochland at the recent meeting Blackburn attended was a segment that would start at the Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County, about 115 miles west of Richmond.
From there, several cables and dozens of giant towers will run northeast over 100 miles through the state’s agricultural Piedmont to deliver electricity to the proposed Yeat substation in Fauquier County just outside Northern Virginia. That portion of Valley Link is called Joshua Falls to Yeat.
