Staff of regulatory agency recommends new hearing on controversial Dominion Haymarket line
he staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission is recommending a new hearing on Dominion Energy’s request to build a transmission line in Prince William County, a project that has devolved into a bare-knuckle brawl between the potent utility and one of the state’s most controversial politicians.
“Given the questions raised by the pleadings, staff submits that reopening the record for rehearing is appropriate at this time,” the commission’s staff wrote in a filing Wednesday.
The roughly 5-mile, 230-kilovolt line and associated infrastructure between Haymarket and Gainesville will power an Amazon data center expansion, but also, Dominion insists, provide broad benefits to a rapidly developing area. Amazon is known officially in filings as just “the customer,” since neither the commission nor Dominion will acknowledge the internet giant as the developer behind VaData Inc., the listed owner of the data center.
Despite protests outside the fenced facility in Haymarket, a letter-writing campaign directed at Amazon founder, chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos, and nearly two years of intense media coverage, Amazon has maintained silence on its role in the project.
However, opponents contend, lawyers for the company said at a meeting earlier this year that Amazon may not complete the buildout of the data center, which they claim would negate the need for the transmission line.
And Prince William County, led by its outspoken conservative Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, who narrowly lost the GOP gubernatorial primary and is now running for the U.S. Senate, has successfully blocked two routes for the line that were approved by the commission earlier this year.
Stewart has blasted Dominion as a corporate thug, and Dominion has taken out ads and op-eds taking Stewart to task, accusing him of “political showmanship.”
Richmond Times Dispatch – Robert Zuilo – 08.31.2017
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