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Neighbors unite with power line plan
Donald and Gretchen Kuney moved from Reston to 27 acres on Dry Mill Road west of Leesburg in 1998. They wanted, Donald said, to look out their windows and see deer and horses, not a neighbor's front porch or kitchen window. Over the years, they turned down developers' offers to buy all or some of their land. The new neighbor they -- and the 10 to 12 horses they board – could look out on a year from now may be a Dominion Virginia Power transition station that will bring a 230-kilovolt electric transmission line from underground back above ground to finish its journey to Purcellville.
The station alone will be nearly a third of an acre in size, and Dominion may need three acres or more of the Kuneys' land and some from their neighbors' land. Their front two pastures combined measure a little more than half an acre.
Dominion engineers are at work figuring out how to put the transmission line underground along the W&OD Trail from just east of the Shenstone subdivision to the point to the west where the trail crosses Dry Mill Road just before the Route 9/Route 7 Bypass intersection. A bill put forward by Del. Joe May (R-western Loudoun) that requires Dominion to put underground about 1.8 miles of the 12-mile line from east of Leesburg to Purcellville passed both houses of the General Assembly without a single dissenting vote in early March.
It still awaits the signature of Gov. Tim Kaine (D). Kaine said at a town meeting in Loudoun March 31 that putting lines underground makes “great sense” but he has not yet seen the bill.
The company will need to build transition stations where the line goes underground, and where it comes back up. Each station will be at least 80 feet by 180 feet, and more land will be needed for landscaping, screening and access.
The plan the company put before the State Corporation Commission last summer, Dominion's John Bailey said, puts one transition station just east of Shenstone, just south of the trail, to put the line underground for its trip past Shenstone. The line will then go under Dry Mill Road to a second transition station, Bailey said.
Along that curve in Dry Mill Road, just across from the trail, live the Kuneys, James Presgraves, and Johnathan and Elizabeth Miller. The Millers offer a retirement home to retired and abused thoroughbred horses. Visitors come from miles away to feed Presgraves' donkeys.
“We've tried to do the right thing since we moved here,” Donald Kuney said. “We built a log addition to the farmhouse, we built a timber frame barn rather than a cheaper metal one, we put all the electrical wires for the barns and the [riding] ring underground.”
The Kuneys, Presgraves, and Johnathan and Elizabeth Miller say they will offer Dominion free easements across their fields to keep the line underground past their farms to the top of the hill. Dominion still would have to buy that property, Johnathan Miller said, but it has lain fallow for years, and is adjacent to the Dry Mill Road/Route 7 Bypass intersection. The lines could come back above ground there without permanently impinging on any of their properties.
Bailey said Dominion will consider all offers made by property owners, but the offer contemplated by the Dry Mill Road owners may differ from the terms of the bill passed by the General Assembly.
That bill calls for the underground line – previously approved by the State Corporation Commission to run overhead “upon or immediately adjacent to” the W&OD Trail – to be “located within the boundaries of such existing right of way upon land owned by the regional park authority.”
The Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority owns the W&OD. The power company retained its rights to an easement along the trail when it sold the property.
“We must comply with the original SCC order [approving the overhead line for the whole 12 miles] and the bill,” Bailey said. The SCC, he said, as per May's bill, will decide where the two stations will go.
May said the offer from the three property owners makes sense, and that he does not think the language of the bill will prevent it from being considered.
“I hope and expect this to be relatively low profile,” May said. “[The offer of the easement] makes sense to me.”
Donald Kuney said he hopes Dominion finds a way to accept the easement offer. “I could use money like everyone else,” he said, “but I prefer the scenic value.”
Contact the reporter at ssollinger@timespapers.com .
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