Dominion Open House Tonight, Over Proposed Underground Power Lines

An open house is scheduled for the community tonight (Wednesday) in Del Ray to look over Dominion Virginia Power’s proposals for a new transmission line between Dominion’s Glebe Substation, located at the intersection of S. Glebe Road and S. Eads Street, and Pepco’s Station C Substation at the intersection of Slaters Lane and E. Abingdon Drive.

The open house will take place tonight from 5 to 8 p.m. at Mount Vernon Community School, 2601 Commonwealth Ave. in Alexandria.

The city-appointed working group is characterizing Dominion’s community outreach efforts about the proposals as “haphazard and unnecessarily short” and said its schedule “does not take seriously the profound impacts we expect this proposed project to have on existing neighborhoods, planned development, businesses, parks, city right-of-way and overall quality of life,” The Washington Post reported.

According to Dominion, current reliability studies have determined that by summer 2018, the existing transmission facilities in the City of Alexandria and Arlington County will no longer adequately meet demand and mandatory North Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) reliability criteria. Demand on existing infrastructure is forecasted to exceed 100 percent capacity by summer 2018.

Residents who attend the open house Wednesday night will see a Dominion-style trade show, with stations set up with maps and proposed routes for the project, according to Dominion spokesman Chuck Penn. Dominion engineers and consultants will be on hand to answer any questions residents might have, he noted.

There are eight different underground routes and one underwater route being proposed, Penn said. Dominion will choose a route based on feedback from the community and government officials. (See each proposal in this Dominion document, starting on Page 12.)

The choice will be made “with an eye to find a route that has the least amount of impact on residents, the environment and traffic,” Penn said.

Dominion answers some common questions about the proposals on its site here.

And if residents and the City of Alexandria feel they are being rushed through the process? “Perception is reality,” Penn said. “But what’s driving this is deficiencies in the area. We’re under the tyranny of the clock.”

Read more about the proposals on the City of Alexandria’s DVP Proposed Transmission Line page.

Dominion plans to file an application with the Virginia State Corporation Commission between the fall of 2014 and early 2015.

Dominion map shows various routes being considered for the underground transmission lines; for a bigger view go here: https://www.dom.com/about/electric-transmission/glebe/pdf/proposed-route-map.pdf