By KAFIA HOSH
Stafford County supervisors and area residents who oppose the route of a proposed transmission line in the county looked at alternative options for the Dominion Virginia Power project Thursday night.
Supervisors Paul Milde, Mark Dudenhefer and Bob Gibbons met at the Shelton's Run home of Buddy Secor, the team leader of Towering Concerns, a group of Stafford residents who are fighting the power line route.
The county supervisors and Towering Concerns brainstormed to prepare for the Virginia State Corporation Commission's public hearings on the project in January.
The planned line runs five miles westward from Aquia Harbour to Mountain View Road and will connect to a proposed substation off Garrisonville Road.
The energy company says the substation would bring the area a more reliable source of power.
But local residents say the high-voltage line will cut right through their dense communities, and they want Dominion to find other routes for the line.
"Our best avenue is rerouting," Gibbons said.
Still, Secor and the supervisors were careful about proposing to reroute the line, because it could affect other neighborhoods.
"We're opposed to flipping this to somebody else," Secor said.
But a new route is not a likely option, said Dominion spokesman Karl Neddenien.
Dominion bought the right of way for the line in the 1960s.
The current project is for one power line, but Dominion has the right of way to build two more lines to accommodate growth in the county, Neddenien said.
"We can't positively say when" the additional lines will be built, "but if development continues the way it has, we do expect two more lines there," he said.
The Towering Concerns team and the supervisors also looked at proposing an underground line.
If a bond referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot to widen State Route 630 passes, supervisors might propose that Dominion build an underground route beneath the corridor.
Neddenien said while industry standards show underground lines cost ten times as much as overhead routes, Dominion has not estimated the price of building an underground line.
"It's really a moot point, because we have an overhead line and we've done all the planning based on that," he said. "So long as we have an overhead easement we would be expected to use that."
However, Neddenien said, one thing Dominion may consider is building shorter towers, since residents fear that the 130-foot-high structures will degrade the aesthetics of their community.
Towering Concerns and the county supervisors may propose that Dominion construct less-invasive, monolithic towers that are 90 feet high.
"The subject of tower height could certainly be discussed during the SCC hearing process. So that door is open," Neddenien said.
But he warned that shorter towers could mean more towers.
"They wouldn't be able to span the same distance between more towers," Neddenien said.
While shorter towers can be less intrusive, Secor said, that does not factor in the electromagnetic fields the line could emit and the line's proximity to local schools.
"That helps aesthetics, that helps property value, but that doesn't help health," he said.
Dominion provides power to about 32,500 Stafford residents.
The company wants to build the transmission line and the Garrisonville substation by 2009 to prepare for population growth toward the western part of the county.
The SCC will hold two public hearings in Stafford on Jan. 25 to discuss the proposed transmission line.
The supervisors, who have obtained outside legal counsel, and the Towering Concerns group plan to apply formally as respondents at the SCC hearings.
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To reach KAFIA HOSH:
Email: khosh@freelancestar.com