Pa. complicates

A Pennsylvania advisory panel last week recommended denial of the state’s portion of a proposed, 240-mile electrical transmission line that also would cut through Virginia's northern Piedmont and West Virginia.

Two Pennsylvania administrative judges deemed the line unnecessary and concluded that the applicant, TrAILCo, failed to consider alternatives to the line.

West Virginia approved its portion of the contentious 500,000-volt line.

In Virginia, a State Corporation Commission (SCC) hearing examiner recently recommended approval of the state’s 65-mile portion of the line, which would link a substation near Winchester to one near Arcola in Loudoun County.

The Virginia SCC hearing examiner said his recommendation is conditioned upon the project’s approval by West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The three-member SCC board will make a final decision on the hearing examiner’s recommendation.

Virginia’s portion of the line, which would be attached to steel towers up to 150 feet high, would track an existing power line corridor.

In addition to Loudoun, the line would pass through Frederick, Warren, Fauquier, Rappahannock, Culpeper and Prince William counties.

TrAILCo, a subsidiary of Allegheny Energy Inc., and Dominion Virginia Power are co-applicants for the Virginia segment.

Allegheny spokesman Mark Nitowsky said the utility would limit comment on the Pennsylvania decision to its prepared statement.

"We are extremely disappointed" by the ruling, "which runs counter to the evidence presented" to the two administrative judges," Allegheny President Paul J. Evans said.

But "we intend to vigorously pursue construction of this line with the commission," Evans said.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission will make the final decision on the proposed line.

The TrAILCo statement stressed that the Pennsylvania administrative judges’ decision "is a recommendation only."

Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson declined to say whether the Pennsylvania recommendation represented a setback.

"The bottom line is the Pennsylvania recommendation is just that," Anderson said.

Dominion believes the "evidence" and "information" it presented to the public and SCC clearly demonstrate a need for the line, she said.

"The need for the line is real, for Northern Virginia but also for customers outside of the Northern Virginia area," Anderson said.

The Pennsylvania recommendation "doesn’t change that in any way," she said.

The Warrenton-based Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) has fought more than two years to defeat the project, arguing that a range of alternatives to the line would permit Dominion to meet Northern Virginia’s long-term energy needs.

Without the line in place by summer 2011, Northern Virginia customers would possibly suffer rolling blackouts, according to the utility.

"It’s good news from everybody’s perspective," PEC spokesman Bob Lazaro said of the Pennsylvania recommendation. "Their findings are consistent in many respects with what we’ve been saying. There are other ways [to satisfy energy demand]. The modeling [to justify the line] was flawed."

Lazaro characterized the proposal as a "grandiose scheme to solve a non-existent problem."

E-mail the reporter: ddelrosso@timespapers.com