Valley Link Hype Machine Finally Cracked a Window for Some Actual Dissent

Oh, look at that—the Valley Link hype machine finally cracked a window for some actual dissent instead of the usual Dominion-scripted fluff. This Cardinal News piece (March 12, 2026) lays out the basics of the $1 billion, 115-mile, 765-kV beast from the Lynchburg area (Joshua Falls substation) to Culpeper (future Yeat substation). It’ll stomp across nine counties—Appomattox to Spotsylvania—with 135–160-foot rusted steel lattice towers every 1,200 feet, 200-foot-wide rights-of-way, and the charming possibility of eminent domain if landowners don’t roll over nicely. Purpose? “Interstate highway system for electricity,” per Valley Link/Dominion spokesman Craig Carper, because nothing says “reliability” like tripling the juice to feed Northern Virginia’s exploding data-center appetite (Dominion’s demand supposedly doubling by 2035). But here’s the refreshing part the previous articles somehow “forgot” to mention: real opposition quotes made it in. Piedmont Environmental Council’s Michael Barber drops the hammer—“clear thousands of acres, impact hundreds of property owners and irreparably change an entire region—all to deliver power to Dominion Energy’s growing queue of data centers.” He even nails the secondary scam: these lines are “new superhighways” that’ll trigger more substations, generation, and yet another wave of data-center sprawl within miles on either side. Louisa County supervisors went full unanimous “hell no” on March 2, planning a formal resolution for the 16th. Supervisor Rachel Jones, whose husband’s family farm got bisected by I-64 back in the day, deadpanned: “We couldn’t imagine living in Louisa County without I-64, but land was taken for that… Louisa County has lived this before.” Oof. The company line is still the same—“we’ll negotiate, eminent domain is the absolute last resort, trust us”—while they spam 120,000 property owners within a mile of the corridor and schedule community meetings. But at least this time the press let the peasants speak. Progress! Or, you know, the bare minimum.