Another Nail in the Yeat Superstation Coffin

Quite the morning at the Culpeper Board of Supervisors meeting.

Mike Regan opened with a brutally clear-eyed takedown of the Yeat super substation’s sordid backstory. From Fauquier County’s “complications” that conveniently shoved the project onto Culpeper, to the fresh redesign by Valley Link and Dominion engineers that quietly erased every last scrap of local benefit. He laid it out plain: the thing is being rigged as a giant bulk-energy transfer corridor—multiple 765 kV lines roaring in, multiple 500 kV lines roaring out. Zero upside for Culpeper residents, but a guaranteed multi-year eminent-domain bonanza for Dominion so they can pipe power to every data center other counties keep rubber-stamping.

The real question isn’t whether killing Yeat costs Culpeper some mythical windfall—spoiler: it doesn’t. It’s whether Culpeper wants to become the regional doormat for everyone else’s power-hungry ambitions.

After watching Mike eviscerate the plan with documents in hand, what really made my blood boil was Dominion’s PR team two weeks ago, solemnly telling the supervisors all this energy being bulldozed through 9 counties was “for them.” Meanwhile their own engineers had already gutted any local benefit. Do these people ever speak to each other, or was it just a calculated snow job hoping nobody would check the fine print? Nice try, guys. Thanks, Mike.

The short video below includes clips from both meetings. Watch for the cameo appearance of none other than Lane Carr, part of the duo on Dominion Energy's PR team at the very end!

Then Frank Twomey of the Richardsville Coalition stepped up and painted the picture of what actually happens if Yeat gets built: 95 miles of new 500 kV and 230 kV lines slicing across the county, 420 acres ripped from private owners, and 298 shiny new towers marching through the landscape. The room looked like it had just seen a ghost.

Within minutes the board did what needed doing: they unanimously approved a crisp letter to PJM telling the grid overlords, in the politest bureaucratic terms possible, that the Yeat monstrosity is a hard no.

The crown jewel of the Valley Link project has officially been "Culpepered".

Hey, Dominion “leadership”—you’ve got a problem, and it’s growing by the day. Central Virginia’s rural folks are wide awake, the anger is real, and it’s spreading fast. When you roll into our counties demanding our land, this isn’t going away.

And Governor Spanberger—maybe go ahead and cancel those cozy little “working sessions” with Google’s data-center overlords about clearing “roadblocks.” A whole lot of the people who voted for you are absolutely seething right now.

#BlockValleyLink