Reader says there are 'hidden drawbacks' with power line
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Make no mistake: There would be no underground high voltage line in Loudoun County if it were not for the foresight, perseverance and influence of Del. Joe May (R-western Loudoun, Clarke). In what May called his most difficult negotiations ever, he got Dominion Virginia Power, the State Corporation Commission and the Virginia Assembly to approve burying a small portion -- 1.8 miles -- of a new 12-mile-long 230,000-volt transmission line in western Loudoun.
May’s backroom give-and-take, which included the Board of Supervisors, produced a compromise that will make Loudoun one of four pilot program sites where burial techniques used successfully for decades around the world will be tested in Virginia.
As with most backroom compromises, there are drawbacks hidden from public view. Here are a few:
a) Despite endorsement of the May compromise by the Save The Trail organization, the deal will install the high voltage line beneath the path of the Washington & Old Dominion used by 2 million hikers, bikers and horse riders every year. They all will be right on top of potentially dangerous electro-magnetic fields (EMF) just 36 inches below. Donald Koonce, Dominion’s expert on underground transmission lines, warned the SCC that it was “wishful thinking” to say burying the cable would eliminate the EMF radiation. Koonce testified that the EMF absorbed by humans depended on their distance from the source.
b) A large number of mature trees along the W&OD Trail will be destroyed by Dominion work crews using an 80-foot to 100-foot construction zone to access the path with heavy equipment. The company estimated $222,600 for tree removal while work closes the trail section for more than six months. Prior to the compromise, Dominion corporate leaders had publicly pledged to avoid using the W&OD for the power line, even though the corporation bought the old railroad bed’s right of way in 1968. Public protests in 2006 of plans to clear-cut the heavily wooded trail for the high voltage line resulted in Dominion’s promise.
c) Dominion estimated that 1.8-mile underground line would cost an additional $25 million, a sum passed along to ratepayers. In Arlington County, however, Dominion used cost estimates for an identical 230KV underground line that were much lower. If Dominion rates for Arlington were applied to the Loudoun project, it would cost Dominion only $17 million -- $8 million less billed to Loudoun residents.
d) One reason Dominion’s cost estimates are $8 million higher in Loudoun is that the power company wants to double the size of the underground line compared to Arlington. While Dominion insists the technology -- plastic-wrapped copper wire called XLPE -- is reliable enough for a single line in Arlington, the power company has argued that XLPE is too unreliable for use in Loudoun where a second backup cable must be installed.
Dismayed? Hold on.
There is an option that would really save the trail, keep 2 million users from being exposed to EMF, preserve the W&OD canopy of trees and save rate payers $8 million. Again, the answer comes from Dominion’s 230KV project in Arlington.
New overhead high-voltage lines are banned in Arlington so Dominion was forced underground. The burial site: beneath some of the busiest streets in northern Virginia, including Fairfax Drive. Instead of a 100-foot work zone that Dominion wants on the W&OD Trail, the high voltage line for Arlington will be tucked within a 20-foot construction zone. The actual cable trench is only 42-inches wide.
The same approach would fit easily beneath Dry Mill Valley Road, which parallels the W&OD where the May compromise would now bury the 230KV line. And, the road is an existing public right of way.
Using Dry Mill Valley Road is just one option that should be considered by Loudoun’s Supervisors at a public hearing on the May compromise.
But because Scott York -- chairman of the Loudoun Board of Supervisors -- signed off on the deal, his aides say chances of an open airing were “slim to none.”
However, such a hearing could also take a look at Dominion’s conflicting advice on the health effects of EMF. To Loudoun residents, the radiation from high voltage presented no health threat whatsoever -- none said an Alabama professor hired by Dominion to testify before the SCC.
But in Arlington, Dominion was far less certain. “Some epidemiological studies have suggested small statistical associations of possible health risks,” Dominion said in documents submitted to the SCC. The power company also cited one British study that set off public health alarms bells in 2005.
The Oxford University study found children living near high-voltage lines raised the risk of contracting leukemia by 69 percent. The blood cancer is the most common cause of death in children compared to other malignancies. Reviewing health records from a 30-year period, the Oxford study of more than 29,000 children with cancer, including 9,700 with leukemia, matched birthplaces with children without cancer.
Children living within 1,968 feet -- three quarters of a mile-- of high voltage lines in England and Wales had a 23 percent higher risk of leukemia. Children living within 656 feet of the EMF from power lines had a 69 percent higher risk of the blood disease, according to the Oxford study.
Ten miles of high voltage lines strung more than 100 poles close to Loudoun neighborhoods will be radiating EMF night and day, forever. There are at least 720 Loudoun homes within 500 feet of the planned overhead route, according to the SCC. On the W&OD, trail users would be only three feet from the buried high voltage line.
Perhaps Loudoun’s Department of Public Health could comment on the number of children who live within three quarters of a mile of Dominion’s proposed 230,000-volt line. Or the exact level of EMF exposure and the threat to future users of he W&OD trail along the 1.8 miles now planned for underground installation.
Then again, government silence on the potential threat to Loudoun children and other health issues may be part of the backroom deal.
Patrick J. Sloyan Sr.
Paeonian Springs
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