Settlement Ends Dispute over Haymarket Data Center Power Lines

Dominion Virginia Power and several community groups have reached an agreement that clears the way for new power lines to support a data center project in Haymarket, Virginia, ending a long-running dispute.

Dominion will  bury three miles of a power line to support expansion of an Amazon Web Services project in Haymarket, while the Coalition to Protect Prince William County has agreed to end years of legal challenges to halt or reroute the power line.

The settlement ends an often bitter four-year controversy over the route of a 230 kV power line through Prince William County to support an AWS data center campus. Residents opposed the use of overhead power lines, which Dominion preferred as the most affordable option. Several routes were proposed and then blocked or dropped, and recent efforts by the coalition focused on blocking the expansion altogether, arguing that the additional capacity was unneeded because Amazon was the sole customer.

Instead, Dominion Virginia has agreed to bury a section of the power line that runs through contested areas along Route 66 near Haymarket. In return, the Coalition and the Somerset Crossing Homeowners Association agreed to discontinue legal challenges with the State Corporation Commission (SCC), which regulates Dominion.

“The Coalition and our allies have had one mission: Stop Dominion power towers,” said Coalition executive director Elena Schlossberg. “We concluded that this (agreement) was the best way to fulfill our mission, protect our community, and stop the power towers near homes. After years of dedicated and tireless efforts, the Coalition has achieved the community’s long-desired goal.”

Contentious Dispute Over Routes

The accelerating pace of data center development has prompted a growing number of local disputes, as residents seek to block or revise plans to build new facilities in their town. These NIMBY (Not in My BackYard) disputes involving data center projects have emerged over the years, but saw an upswing in the second half of 2017.

The Haymarket controversy has been the most high-profile of these disputes, featuring a highly-organized resistance effort from a group of residents that employed social media, legal challenges and political maneuvering to combat the power line plans. Although Amazon was publicly identified as the data center end user, Dominion took the lead in advocating for the new power line. A key point in the dispute was whether to use overhead power towers or the more expensive option of burying the line near sensitive areas close to homes and wildlife.

A solution was brokered by state Delegate Tom Horn (R-Fairfax County), who amended a utility regulation bill, adding language to create a pilot program for underground transmission routes in the Haymarket area. Dominion agreed to accept that plan if the community groups would end their legal and political efforts to halt the project. The new bill gives Dominion greater latitude to set rates, which in theory could be adjusted to account for the higher cost of projects using buried lines.

The AWS Haymarket Data Center

While the Amazon Web Services cloud spans the globe, a huge chunk of its Internet infrastructure is concentrated across Loudoun and Prince William counties in northern Virginia. It’s America’s busiest Internet intersection, the place where all the networks meet, anchored by the Equinix interconnection hub in Ashburn.