Dominion, Stewart go to war over power line
A DISPUTE over a proposed power line route in Virginia that threatens a historic African-American enclave has morphed into a broader battle between the state’s politically influential electric company and its most controversial Republican politician.
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, who is running for the US Senate, is calling Dominion Energy “a corporate bully” for its plans to build a six-mile-long transmission line through a small community in Haymarket that was founded by freed slaves.
Dominion, already battered by recent opposition to several pipeline and coal-ash pond projects, has swung right back at Stewart, accusing the recent gubernatorial candidate of misrepresenting his own role in setting the power line route.
“Why is Corey Stewart putting politics over people?” reads a Dominion advertisement in several Prince William County newspapers that highlights Stewart’s role in blocking an alternative power line route. “The residents of Carver Road should look no further than Corey Stewart for the reason their community was selected.”
An opinion piece by Dominion executive Robert Blue published in The Washington Post says Stewart is jeopardising reliable electric service for the people he was elected to serve. Blue oversees Dominion operations in Virginia and North Carolina.
Stewart - who says his bid to unseat Sen Tim Kaine, D, will be partially based on challenging corporate interests like Dominion - is citing the attacks in his fundraising appeals.
“If I were to choose an enemy, this would be the one I would have chosen,” said Stewart, who nearly upset Ed Gillespie in June’s GOP gubernatorial primary after campaigning on a platform of protecting Confederate monuments and disrupting the political landscape.
“It’s bringing in people and donors who otherwise wouldn’t support a Republican candidate,” Stewart said. “There are a lot of people in Virginia who are victims of Dominion’s heavyhanded tactics.”
Virginia’s State Corporation Commission decided in June to locate Dominion’s new 230,000-volt power lines along Carver Road near Haymarket, where descendants of Livinia Blackburn Johnson have lived for at least 118 years.
Dominion says the lines are needed to serve a data centre complex and the growing residential communities around it.
Residents who oppose the lines question whether that much capacity is needed. Two residents’ groups have appealed the commission’s decision, and the panel is reconsidering.
Dominion originally wanted to place the lines along a nearby freight railroad line, which would have required using 55 acres of wetlands owned by the nearby Somerset Crossing residential development.
Other options - including a “hybrid route” along Interstate 66 that would involve partially burying the power lines - were rejected by the state commission as too expensive or too intrusive to surrounding communities.
With the 528-home Somerset Crossing community opposing the railroad route, Stewart engineered a land agreement that enabled the county to acquire the wetlands property as protected open space.
That meant Dominion could not seize it through eminent domain.
Dominion petitioned the county for use of the land, warning Stewart and other county officials behind closed doors that the historic Carver Road route was the only other viable option. Stewart later called the conversation “an attempt at blackmail.”