URGENT
The deadline for submission of comments to PJM is tomorrow, Monday, December 4, 2023. Many of our neighbors have already sent emails. And they are getting the same "boiler plate" response as the one I posted earlier. While it may seem like your voice is being ignored, it's not! The more of us that clog up PJM's inbox, the more they will have to take us seriously! I've made it clear in my messages that WE are going to FIGHT this. The more voices that echo this, the more likely they will take us seriously. We have one more day. Keep sending them your "input".
Please send your emails to both email addresses below:
Dave.Anders@pjm.com
David.Souder@pjm.com
An earlier blog post (How you can help) has the email addresses for many of our elected officials. Also, if you haven't done so already, please add yourself to the mailing list:
https://www.freelists.org/list/savewloudoun
This makes it easier for us to disseminate announcements like this one to those of you who actually want them. I will do my best to ensure that this list does not become a source of spam, but instead stays an important means of quickly disseminating relevant information. Finally, I implore you to post and re-post links to this blog on Facebook, Instagram, X, and other social media platforms.
The following is the email I sent to PJM.
To
whom it may concern:
I'm vehemently
opposed to your proposed buildout of a massive new power project literally in
our backyard. In your final solution recommendations, you chose NextEra
proposal 853 to build 500kV transmission towers to bring electricity
from as far away as Ohio to meet the future needs of the current and proposed
data centers in Northern Virginia. The use of legacy coal and gas generation
capacity in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and
Ohio is not a sustainable solution. It's a step backwards from our
state's commitment to sustainable power for two reasons. First, this imported
power has to be transmitted over hundreds of miles, resulting in 6-10% of it
being wasted before it is even delivered to its consumers. This is tremendously
inefficient and has net result of increased fossil fuel consumption despite a
significant buildout of wind farms. Second, the tremendous loss of beautiful
countryside while increasing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution is a
terrible disservice to the environment.
NextEra proposes building transmission lines that will carry
13.3 gigawatts of power at half a million volts through the scenic countryside
of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. This transmission project
will require hundreds of towers to be built, roughly one every quarter mile.
Much of this is "Greenfield" construction, requiring new towers and
the clear cutting of 200 feet of trees and vegetation, permanently scarring the
countryside on their long journey to Ashburn, Virginia. Clear cutting the countryside,
building huge transmission towers, and wasting gigawatts of fossil fuel
generated power is not a green solution. It's a nightmare that can't be undone
once it's built out. Ten years ago, our neighbors in West Virginia fought and
stopped the buildout of the PATH project (http://stoppathwv.com/index.html).
I applaud their efforts to stop that and document the environmental cost of all
this. Now, it's our turn. We are raising the awareness of our neighbors, local
and urban, that this is a terrible solution. It destroys the places our urban
neighbors utilize to take a day trip to for a quick escape from the city. We
all lose the scenic and historic places where we can hike, bike, and drink
local wine.
There is also a significant national security problem here. A
quick perusal of the map of power transmission corridors shows that a loss of
even one of the main transmission corridors will cause a significant loss of
power to large swaths of the eastern seaboard. This corridor, when built, will
become one of the biggest, making it a prime target for an enemy who wants to
disable power delivery to DC. Reliance on this huge amount of imported power,
in essence, is a threat to our National Security given the number of
strategically important assets in the Washington DC area.
You've
stirred up a hornet's nest. The opposition to this is growing exponentially and
will include many of the 400,000 citizens of Loudoun County as well as
many of the 7 million people in the Washington DC area. We have put our
Federal, State, and Local politicians on notice. We have alerted our federal
politicians of the national security issues of this. Several of them have shown
up at our town hall meetings. If you choose this, we will fight you every step
of the way. You can expect local zoning problems limiting your ability to build
towers. You can expect lawsuits against any attempt to utilize eminent domain.
You can expect protests at every one of your meetings, including the one on
December 5. You can expect a tidal wave of resistance during the approvals
process with the State Corporation Commission. To be frank, we will make this
very hard and very expensive for you.
It's
difficult to understand why you chose a solution proposed by a non-local
utility provider. Dominion Electric knows better than to even propose this in
their distribution area. Were they considered for any solutions to this? My
hope is that you didn't fully understand the environmental impacts of a
greenfield expansion into Western Loudoun county and that you will choose
another solution with a provider that understands the local area impacts.
We are not unreasonable. Many of us are willing to work with you
find more palatable solutions in both the short term and long term. I
personally believe the solution to this problem is multi-faceted. Perhaps, we
can we assess the feasibility of restoring local generation capacity. Where
renewables such as wind and solar are feasible, we can lobby our federal,
state, and local governments to incentivize building them. Renewables are only
part of the solution, though. They have proven to be unable to supply the
baseload power needed in our electrical grid. We need to be open to building
new or expanding existing nuclear plants if we are to achieve fossil fuel
independence locally. Our local nuclear facilities, Calvert Cliffs and Lake
Anna Power stations, have both been denied expansion requests. We
need to reassess the closed down powerplant sites that are still zoned for
industrial use and build new, cleaner, power plants. In the short term, this
may require us to consider natural gas plants on these sites until renewable
alternatives become available. While not ideal, it is greener than
wasting 10% of fossil fuel generated power imported from afar. Finally, we need
to ask ourselves the really hard question of whether we incur the cost of
building out local power infrastructure versus limiting development, both
residential and commercial.
Daniel R. Tejada
(703) 554-7622
dan.tejada@cantada.com
