Culpeper Gives Power Company More Time

By Donnie Johnston, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

Sep. 8–Culpeper County supervisors has given Dominion Virginia Power 30 more days to work with farm owner Laura Campbell to possibly shift the route of a power line on her property off State Route 3.

During a marathon session by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night, the Campbell family complained the longest and loudest about Dominion’s plan to replace the present 50-foot-high wooden poles with 80-foot metal poles and add a second 115-kilovolt line.

That extra height requires a county use permit.

Laura Campbell and her daughters, Margaret and Desy, complained that higher poles would be an even greater eyesore than the present H-pole configuration.

“Eighty-foot poles would be a slap in the face to all residents and visitors,” said Laura Campbell, who, along with several other speakers, asked the county to demand that Dominion bury the lines along the route.

Margaret Campbell also said that virtually every member of her family, including two dogs, had gotten cancer because of the proximity of the present line to their home.

Dominion’s plan, along an existing 100-foot right of way purchased in 1928, would modernize the 5.2-mile power line from the village of Stevensburg to a soon-to-be-built substation near Culpeper National Cemetery.

Attorney Bob Yeaman, representing Dominion, said the second line is needed to meet the growing demand from residential development and to supply Teremark, a highly touted new Internet company moving to the area.

Letters read into the record from Merillat, Continental Teves and SWIFT–three of Culpeper’s major employers–reiterated the need for more electricity. A spokesman for Merillat, a furniture manufacturer, said his company has experienced more than 50 power interruptions since 2005, including one Tuesday.

Robert Ellis, speaking for the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, which buys part of the electricity Dominion Power sends down the line, said Culpeper’s demand is already on the verge of exhausting the supply.

“We were very close to being at capacity that day several weeks ago when the temperature hit 104,” Ellis said. “Dominion is proposing to improve the reliability of the system coming to Culpeper.”

Yeaman told supervisors that while the monopole upgrade would cost Dominion about $8.4 million, burying 5 miles of high-voltage lines would cost about $50 million. “Underground is not an affordable option,” he said.

Yeaman also reminded the board that Dominion needed no county permission to replace the present wooden H-pole configuration with a metal H-pole system of the same height. The company could also add more voltage without the supervisors’ permission.

He added that the monopoles would be spaced about 200 feet farther apart than the present H-poles and would not need guy wires.

The supervisors, who had earlier unanimously approved the new substation near the Teremark site, tabled action until October to give Dominion and Campbell time to work out a plan to shift the power-line route on Croftburn Farm. Donnie Johnston:

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