Buckingham County Community Meeting

The good folks of Buckingham county were kind enough to invite me to their community meeting yesterday afternoon. Cruising through central Virginia’s rolling hills in that perfect early-spring glow was a stark reminder: this isn’t some abstract policy spat—it’s a bulldozer aimed straight at people’s lives.

The turnout was impressive—standing-room-only in a packed community center, with stations for route maps, petitions, sign-up sheets, and ready-made “No Trespassing” templates. Efficient, organized, and quietly furious. Stephanie, one of the organizers there, zeroed in on the Valley Link plan’s Achilles’ heel: the still-unapproved Yeat substation in Culpeper. She made it crystal clear—everyone needs to show up (or at least call) those Culpeper planning commission and supervisor meetings to kill it dead. (Click here for anyone who can’t make the drive.)

Then the mic opened, and the stories poured out: shattered dreams, looming financial ruin, environmental nightmares, and a deep, collective fear. Heartbreaking doesn’t begin to cover it. One theme kept repeating, dripping with bitter irony: back in the rural electrification days, the state actually worked for the people. Now? Virginia’s power is being hijacked to serve for-profit data centers. Rural Virginians aren’t fooled—this isn’t “progress.” It’s corporate greed dressed up as public good.

But one woman’s story hit hardest. She walked up to me trembling, voice shaky, and told me how she and her partner fled the Eastern Shore when it became clear they were living in a cancer cluster—she’d already battled an aggressive form herself. They moved to central Virginia for peace and proximity to UVA. Now they’re staring down a 115-mile transmission line and the health roulette it brings. Everywhere they turn, health is collateral damage. Like every family along this route, they just want the bulldozers—and the profiteers behind them—to leave them the hell alone.

So much raw pain and uncertainty. Rural Virginia isn’t being “served” by this project. It’s being sacrificed on the altar of Northern Virginia data-center profits, one eminent-domain heartbreak at a time.

#BlockValleyLink