Block Valley Link

10/12/2026

**Campbell County Supervisors, consider this your gentle reminder to reject the relocated Joshua Falls substation, much like Culpeper’s supervisors wisely resolved to bury the Yeat proposal before it could become the scenic and environmental masterpiece Valley Link was clamoring for.**

The ever-energetic Campbell resident, Shelly Evans, has gone and set up a petition so the board can be formally notified that local residents actually have opinions about what gets built in their county. Shocking concept, I know. Anyone can sign, but the voting citizens of Campbell County might want to prioritize it, on the off chance the people they elect occasionally consult the people who elect them. Click the link below to sign the petition.

https://forms.gle/JDdA9Kh2jC6MZakR7

Get those signatures in before the process moves forward at the usual careful, deliberate pace.

10/09/2026

The March for a Moratorium in Culpeper this Sunday has been postponed because high winds and thunderstorms might pose a hazard to the living. Piedmont Environmental Council's data-center guru Sarah Parmelee delivered the update this morning. Stay tuned for a date when the weather is more cooperative. The freshly bulldozed ground right next to Culpeper National Cemetery, of course, remains on schedule to sluice mud downhill the moment it rains, here’s hoping those silt fences hold better than the schedule.

10/07/2026

Valley Link just bought the farm. Literally. And it did not bother to wait for Culpeper county to say yes.

On September 9, Valley Link closed on the entire Culpeper County tract eyed for its proposed Yeat substation, paying $4.5 million with no contingency tying the sale to a rezoning or conditional use permit. That is not how a careful buyer usually handles land that is still zoned agricultural and still needs local permission before it can become an electrical substation. The ordinary path would have been a contract that dies if the Board of Supervisors refuses the use. Valley Link skipped the parachute.

Culpeper’s Board of Supervisors has already told them, in writing, not to expect a soft landing. On April 7 the board voted 6–1 to oppose both the Joshua Falls–to–Yeat 765-kilovolt line and the Yeat substation planned near Richardsville. The resolution cites damage to farms and forest, lost property value, and a rural landscape being asked to host infrastructure whose main beneficiaries sit in Northern Virginia’s data-center belt. Staff were directed to intervene at the State Corporation Commission. Later comprehensive-plan work has been aimed at the same problem: make new high-voltage lines harder, not easier, to justify inside the county.

Public reporting from earlier in the year already had Valley Link in the process of buying roughly 448 acres off the Eleys Ford Road area, with something on the order of 85 to 127 acres actually needed for the substation and its immediate development. The parcel had been timberland, owned by a Pardee Resources subsidiary, sitting in an A-1 district where a utility facility needs a conditional use permit. Local government, not the SCC, is the body that normally decides whether that substation gets built. The SCC picks the route of the line. Culpeper picks whether the endpoint is allowed to exist.

So why write a $4.5 million check with no zoning escape hatch after the board has already passed a resolution saying no?

A few possibilities, none of them especially flattering.

One is simple confidence that “no” is temporary. Resolutions are not zoning denials. A future board, a narrower application, a promise of buffers and tax revenue, or a sufficiently exhausting process can still produce a permit. Buying the land now removes the seller, freezes the site, and lets the company tell regulators the endpoint is no longer theoretical. Sunk costs have a way of becoming arguments.

Another is leverage. When company representatives were asked in May what happens if the SCC approves the line and the county still refuses the substation, the answer was that Valley Link would look at whether the SCC, rather than the county, could assert authority over the substation itself. Owning the dirt makes that argument cleaner. You are no longer a hopeful contract purchaser. You are the landowner asking a state body to override a local zoning refusal. Whether that theory survives contact with Virginia law is a separate question. Previous attempts at something similar were smacked down by the Virginia Supreme Court. The purchase suggests someone is willing to fund the experiment.

A third is that $4.5 million is pocket change next to a project Valley Link prices around a billion dollars, with towers in the 135-to-175-foot range and a cleared corridor on the order of 200 feet wide running across roughly 115 miles and as many as nine counties. Ratepayers across PJM’s footprint are the ones expected to carry the transmission bill. Against that spreadsheet, an uncontingent land buy in Culpeper is a rounding error, and a useful one: it signals to PJM, to the SCC, and to every landowner along the route that the company is not treating local opposition as a reason to slow down.

There is also the less subtle reading. The board said it would not approve the rezoning. Valley Link bought the property anyway, in full, with no dependency on that approval. That is either a bet that the board will fold, a bet that someone above the board will step in, or a bet that owning the site is worth more as a bargaining chip than the risk of sitting on timberland you cannot use. None of those bets required asking Culpeper’s permission first.

Residents near Richardsville have already organized. Neighboring counties have passed their own opposition resolutions. The line, if built, would be among the highest-voltage transmission in the country, built largely to move power toward data-center load that Culpeper does not host. The company can call the site well buffered. The board has already called the project a bad trade for the county.

Valley Link now owns the land. It still does not own the zoning. The $4.5 million purchase without a rezoning contingency reads less like prudence and more like a decision exposing the hubris of a for-profit private company with deep-pocketed investors.

Receipts and full story here: https://www.blockvalleylink.org/post/valley-link-bought-the-farm

10/07/2026

Campbell County finally joined the club last night. Four to three, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution opposing the Valley Link 765 kV line, the billion-dollar corridor that would turn rural Campbell into a high-voltage extension cord for Northern Virginia’s data centers and a bulk energy distribution hub with a massive new substation. Supervisor Matt Cline put the resolution on the table and carried it. Every other county on the proposed path had already said no. Campbell was the last holdout. It is no longer.

The resolution does what resolutions can do and no more. It tells the State Corporation Commission, Valley Link, and anyone else listening that Campbell County does not want to be the pass-through. It opposes the Joshua Falls–Yeat line as currently drawn, objects to the county being used as a utility corridor so Loudoun can keep the lights on for server halls, and urges the company and the SCC to abandon the project and find an alternative that does not land on local farms, forest, and viewsheds. Structures on the order of 160 to 170 feet, a permanently cleared right-of-way, and a massive new substation footprint would start at the relocated Joshua Falls. The power would keep going. Campbell would keep the towers.

Residents showed up to say the obvious out loud. Shelly Evans warned that the line would erase farmers’ memories of the past and families’ plans for the future. Beckie Nix asked why the county should deface its landscape to feed Northern Virginia. Meghan Leatherwood said the substation and lines would wreck the character of the place. Rick Summy put it more bluntly: electricity moved from West Virginia through a rural community to Northern Virginia, with no benefit he could see for his property or the county. A petition with 446 names sat alongside them. None of this was subtle. It did not need to be.

Valley Link’s response, delivered through AEP spokesman George Porter, was the usual tutorial. Communities that object, he suggested, simply need to be educated about the benefits. The area needs more power, the company says. What it does not say is that the load growth driving a 115-mile, 765 kV project is concentrated in Northern Virginia’s data-center cluster, not in Campbell’s fields. Education, in this telling, means explaining why other people’s demand should be met on your land. The board, or at least four members of it, declined the lesson.

Cline’s hope, stated after the vote, is that the SCC will take the resolution, and the fact that all nine counties on the route have now opposed the project, seriously enough to deny it. That is the correct hope and also the limited one. The county has no zoning authority over the route. Valley Link still has three paths under consideration and plans to file one with the SCC this fall as the preferred route. A 4–3 vote is a message, not a veto. It is also the message the earlier call for a clean, unsoftened resolution was written to produce.

The line vote is not the only lever the county has, and it is not the strongest one. AEP wants to relocate and expand the Joshua Falls substation onto roughly 500 acres of timberland at Stage Road and Paradise Hill Road in Concord, because the existing site cannot handle Valley Link and because the company has bigger plans for the new one. That site is not zoned for power transmission. Unlike the line itself, which the SCC controls, the relocated substation needs a special use permit from Campbell County, with hearings at the Planning Commission and then the Board. Supervisor Cline has already said as much. A resolution rejecting that substation would not be another polite note to Richmond. It would be the county using authority it actually possesses. Denying the permit, or stating in advance that the board will not grant one, would be a harder stop than any resolution aimed at a route the county cannot zone. If four supervisors were willing to object to a line they cannot block, they should be willing to take up the facility they can.

The fight, as neighbors noted on the way out, is not over. Filings, hearings, and route tweaks are still ahead. What changed on October 6 is that Campbell is no longer the county that stayed quiet while everyone else objected. The line is still proposed. The data centers are still hungry. The difference is that the last local government on the map has now said, in writing, that it would rather not be the extension cord. The next question is whether it will say the same thing about the substation, where the answer actually counts.

10/03/2026

Campbell County is finally putting opposition to the Valley Link 765 kV line on the record. On Tuesday, October 6, the Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution that does what neighboring counties have already done: reject the idea that Campbell should be carved up as a pass-through corridor so Northern Virginia data centers can keep the lights on.

The draft is blunt. It should pass. Residents should be in the room, and on the phone, to make sure it does.

The resolution, requested by Concord Supervisor Matt Cline after the September 1 meeting, is titled “Resolution of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors Opposing Proposed Valley Link Transmission Project.” County staff notes that every other locality along the proposed route has already acted against the project. Campbell is the holdout. That changes Tuesday, if the board follows through.

Both proposed paths for the Valley Link monstrosity start at the Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County and require a significant, permanently cleared right-of-way.

The resolution states the obvious about who this line is for. The primary driver is bulk power for rapidly increasing demand in Northern Virginia, driven largely by data center development and load growth outside this region. It “provides no direct energy benefit to the residents, businesses, or agricultural operations of Campbell County,” while asking this community to bear the construction and the permanent presence of the line.

The board’s findings match what landowners have been saying for months. Residents have raised financial, environmental, visual, cultural, historical, and health concerns.

The board finds the project would damage quality of life and property values, and cause irreparable harm to the county’s natural beauty, rural character, scenic viewsheds, agricultural heritage, and working forestlands. It also restates the board’s duty to protect the health, safety, property rights, and quality of life of its citizens.

The resolved clauses are the part that matters for the State Corporation Commission:

** The board formally opposes construction and routing of the Joshua Falls–Yeat 765 kV line as currently proposed.
** It strongly objects to using Campbell County as a pass-through utility corridor built to serve Northern Virginia at the lasting expense of local residents, property owners, and agricultural producers.
** It urges Valley Link and the SCC to abandon the project, reject the proposed route, and fully explore alternatives that do not harm the welfare, economy, health, and beauty of Campbell County.
** Copies go to the SCC, Valley Link, the Governor, and Campbell County’s members of the General Assembly.

Timing is the point. The final route has not yet been filed with the SCC. Staff is clear that the county does not control the route through zoning; this vote is an expression of local opposition meant to inform the SCC before the utility locks in a preferred path.

Dominion and its partners have already been adjusting routes in other counties. A unanimous, or even a strong, Campbell vote, sent before the filing, is harder to wave away than silence.

Five residents are already scheduled to speak on the item: Rick and Cheryl Summy, Becky Nix, Meghan Leatherwood, Shelly Evans, and Rob Mann. They should not be the only ones the board hears from.

Show up Tuesday.

Campbell County Board of Supervisors
Tuesday, October 6, 2026, 6:00 p.m.
Board room, lower level, Haberer Building
47 Courthouse Lane, Rustburg, VA 24588

The meeting is open to the public. A view-only Zoom link is posted with the agenda in the county Agenda Center. Call County Administration at 434-332-9525 or email [email protected] if you need the link or want to confirm public-comment procedure for this item.

Call or email your supervisor before the vote and tell them to support the resolution as written. Ask them not to soften the language that calls for the project to be abandoned and the route rejected. While you're at it, mention that pesky new Joshua Falls substation and ask them to oppose that also.

Tom Lawton, Chairman, Altavista — 434-509-9293 — [email protected]
Charlie A. Watts II, Vice-Chairman, Brookneal — 434-942-0840 — [email protected]
Matt Cline, Concord — 434-515-1346 — [email protected]
Jon Hardie, Rustburg — 434-525-3857 — [email protected]
Kenny Brown, Spring Hill — 434-546-3101 — [email protected]
Paul E. Dowdy, Sunburst — 434-660-4792 — [email protected]
Justin Carwile, Timberlake — 434-363-2226 — [email protected]

You can also write the full board through [email protected] or the Office of the County Administrator, P.O. Box 100, Rustburg, VA 24588.

The draft resolution is on the October 6 agenda packet, link here:

https://www.campbellcountyva.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_10062026-727?html=true

Read it. Then make sure the board hears, before it votes, that Campbell County is not a spare right-of-way for someone else’s data centers.

09/29/2026

New Alternate Route In Louisa
Evidently the folks at Valley Link woke up yesterday, stared at a map of Louisa County, and decided five extra miles of alternate route would look nice right in the middle of it. No memo. No rationale. No “oops, we forgot a school.” Just a new line on the map, as if transmission corridors appear by divine inspiration.

We pinged their favorite spin artist, Rob Richardson, plus the official Valley Link contact page. The silence has been majestic. Crickets would at least have the courtesy to chirp.

Remember the July letter? Crystal clear: pick preferred routes from the ones already shown, then hold a triumphant webinar so everyone can clap. Instead we get a mid-game rewrite with zero explanation. Will there be more surprise detours next week, or is this the last improvisation before they lock it in?

Two theories present themselves, neither flattering.

Theory one: Louisa County officials noticed the original path was practically high-fiving Louisa County High School and the site of a future elementary school. Perhaps someone in government got mildly irritated. Valley Link has said, repeatedly and with a straight face, that there are absolutely no health issues outside the 200-foot right-of-way. The school sits a comfortable 1,500 feet away. Our back-of-envelope EMF math puts that in the 1–5 mG neighborhood. Studies keep finding effects; Valley Link keeps calling them rumors. Convenient. Legal teams might enjoy that particular discovery file.

Theory two is more entertaining. The current primary 'blue' route slices directly through the middle of two large AWS (Amazon) parcels, not convenient for data center land usage. Follow the new alternate and it suddenly just kisses the edge of an Amazon parcel, freeing up the two that were bisected. Dominion has never hidden its affection for co-location, especially when a gigantic industrial customer is waving a checkbook and says they want co-location, just not too much co-location. How nice of Valley Link to make this accommodation. We saw the same gravitational pull in Orange County: routes that somehow keep drifting toward planned data-center campuses. Orange Chairman Bryan Nicol denied any such connection with impressive volume at a public meeting. Maps, unfortunately, do not blush. The pattern is getting hard to dismiss as coincidence. As we know from FOIAs, the data center folks don't like it when their land is consumed with a transmission line, rather have it just next door on peasant land.

The likely-to-be-chosen alternate now sails within a few hundred feet of ordinary houses. Welcome to the club, membership is not optional. Those homeowners may get to enjoy a 24/7, 365-day soak in 10–25 mG of EMF for the rest of their lives. Is the reason they will have a new neighbor so that Amazon has more land for their data center campus?

Health effects remain, according to the people drawing the lines, just rumors. How reassuring.

09/18/2026

The president of Preserve Rural Virginia passed along the latest briefing Goochland County Administrator Dr. Raley received from Dominion on the Valley Link Joshua Falls-to-Yeat line. Apparently Dr. Raley has regular check-ins with Dominion about the FOUR transmission projects the utility intends to carve through the county (for clarification, 2 of the 4 lines are rebuilds or underground on existing ROW, 3rd line is 230 kV West Creek Loop new build but entirely in a business park, and the 4th is Valley Link). This week’s call produced the following schedule:

- End of September: residents get a postcard announcing a virtual public meeting
- Mid-October: routes appear on GeoVoice and letters go to affected landowners
- Early November: virtual meetings on the routes and the SCC process
- Mid-November: SCC filing

The mid-November SCC filing is harder to swallow. Citizen advocate Mike Regan already punctured the timeline at an earlier PJM TEAC meeting by politely asking how Valley Link can be in service in 2029 when the relocated Joshua Falls substation is slated for 2030. It took a resident to pose the obvious question. That was enough to wake up a developer planning to hook a new power plant into Valley Link in 2029, who then asked the same thing. The result: another round of TEAC “readings” and approvals for this particular monument to transmission planning.

Those approvals would normally come before an SCC filing. Bureaucracies do not suddenly discover haste. So the mid-November date looks less like a deadline and more like a hope.

09/16/2026

How Much EMF Will You Be Subjected To ?

Anyone still pretending they don’t know how much EMF this 765 kV Valley Link monument to industrial progress is going to pour over their house? Wonder no more. We made a map (link below). Because nothing says “personal perspective” quite like watching a color gradient crawl across your kitchen.

The numbers are not subtle. At the edge of the 200-foot right of way, the field is an eye-watering 204 mG (milligauss). It does not politely stop there. It tapers all the way to 1 mG at a majestic 1,900 feet from the centerline. For those keeping score at home, typical rural background is about 0.1 mG. So yes: the “you’ll barely notice it” zone is measured in football fields, not backyard fences.

Read the full story at the link below including access to the map, health effects at varying distances, references, etc. Plop in your address to see how much EMF you'll be bathed in 24x365.

https://www.blockvalleylink.org/post/how-much-emf-will-you-be-subjected-to

09/14/2026

A Virginia-born, Virginia-bred, still-Virginia-living bluegrass singer has just handed Valley Link the one thing no 175-foot tower can drown out: a chorus.

“Shame on You Valley Link” is now streaming on Spotify, with other platforms close behind. You can also download the freely available MP3 on our web site, link below. We can’t print the artist’s name, contracts being what they are, but if you know the sound of this state, you won’t need a press kit. Central Virginia will recognize the voice. And the story.

The song is about a 115-mile industrial scar dressed up as “reliability”, a 200-foot-wide clear-cut through farms, forests, and historic ground so Northern Virginia data centers can keep humming. Valley Link calls it progress. Folks watching the slow motion apocalypse crawl across Campbell, Appomattox, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Louisa, Orange, Goochland, and Culpeper have another word for it.

If you’ve sat through the open houses, read the revised routes that somehow still find the same family land, or watched a century-old farm get treated like a convenient right-of-way, you already know the plot. The singer just put it in three-part harmony.

Shame on you, Valley Link. Play it loud.

Click here to play on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/track/4jXRNlQSt6uB6C2i504lHR?si=qwrFWwqYRQq1NRn5nAMJmQ

Click here to download the MP3
https://www.blockvalleylink.org/post/shame-on-you-valley-link

09/03/2026