Valley Link Virtual Meeting Highlights

Yesterday at high noon, the Valley Link PR squad held their virtual dog-and-pony show to unveil the shiny new routes, the “minor” tweaks, and to field whatever questions the peasants dared to ask.

Sorry folks, the 'screen' portion of the screen recording didn't work as expected, but the audio is great. I’ve already trimmed the soul-crushing hour down to a much more tolerable 19 minutes of spin. I asked Rob Richardson when the official version would hit the internet. Crickets. He’s probably buried under an avalanche of angry calls from people whose “new routes” just got a lot more personal. Highlight video further below.

Here are the lowlights, in case you missed the performance:

1. The towers are now magically taller—jumping from 135-160 feet to a robust 150-175 feet. Totally unplanned, right? Just an innocent little growth spurt.

2. Fewer than 70 homes within 500 feet? Adorable. I can already name four residences along a single 1,200-foot stretch near my place that laugh at that number.

3. They’ve heroically avoided historic properties by “leveraging large tracts.” Someone should probably alert the new members of that particular club in Orange County—they seem to have discovered some brand-new historic areas the maps conveniently missed.

4. Endless regional benefits! Provided your idea of progress is watching your rural community get turned into an industrial power corridor.

5. No surveys happening right now. They’ll send you a nice letter first, right before they show up on your property. How civilized.

6. Real environmental studies? Those only happen after the route is locked in at the end of the SCC process. Because nothing says “thorough planning” like approving first and studying later. Any “oops” moments will be mitigated… if regulators force them to.

7. Herbicide use will be minimal—just a couple of highly trained professionals with backpack sprayers. Nothing to worry your pretty little heads about, they promise.

8. The noise will be no louder than a quiet office… or maybe a refrigerator on its best day. You won’t even notice the constant 24/7/365 buzzing after a while. Probably.

9. Property values will barely budge, if at all. They have studies. The kind of studies that always say exactly what the people paying for them want to hear.

10. Oh, and they’ll also need extra easements onto your land for construction access. Don’t worry—it’s only temporary. They’ll definitely put everything back exactly the way it was after their heavy equipment has spent months compacting your soil and tearing up your fields.

11. The slide said “Voluntary Easements.” Rob performed Olympic-level verbal gymnastics to avoid the phrase “eminent domain.” Funny how allergic they are to those two little words.

12. They’re extremely sensitive to agricultural land. Those massive towers will be practically invisible to farmers and ranchers. You’ll hardly notice them at all.

13. Everything outside the 200-foot right-of-way is perfectly safe. Dominion has studies that say so. (Reading those studies is apparently optional if you’d rather not see the parts that are slightly less reassuring.)

14. Culpeper’s denial of the Yeat substation? Minor speed bump. They still love that location and will continue “working with” the board until it sees things their way.

15. Have they done any actual environmental studies around Blue Ridge Shores? Mostly just desktop searches of stuff that was already online. Real boots-on-the-ground work only happens after the route is locked in. Then they’ll do their very best to mitigate whatever they discover they should have known about earlier. Efficient, isn’t it?