Historic preservation groups lost their fight to overturn a key federal permit and stop construction of a Dominion Energy Virginia transmission line over the James River.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Virginia, along with the National Parks Conservation Association, filed lawsuits in July 2017 and August 2017 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The complaints challenged the Army Corps' decision to issue a final permit for Dominion Energy Virginia's 500-kV Skiffes Creek transmission line and 17 associated towers, up to 295 feet tall, across the James River near historic Jamestown, Va.
The groups contended that the Corps granted the permit without preparing a full environmental impact statement as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
After denying motions for a preliminary injunction in October 2017 that would have stopped the project, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in a May 24 order dismissed the case by denying the plaintiffs' motions for summary judgment and granting cross-motions for summary judgment filed by the Army Corps of Engineers and Dominion Energy Virginia.
"We are pleased the judge denied the lawsuit seeking to halt construction of this project that is so critical to our customers who live and work on the Peninsula," Dominion spokeswoman Bonita Billingsley Harris said in a May 25 statement. "Dominion Energy remains committed to building this urgently needed and thoroughly studied project. Construction is going well and on track for completion by the summer of 2019."
The project is near the Historic Triangle sites of Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America.
A nearly eight-mile overhead transmission line will extend from Dominion Energy Virginia's existing switching station near its Surry nuclear plant on the south shore of the James River to a new Skiffes Creek switching station in James City County. The project also involves a new approximately 20-mile, 230-kV line from the Skiffes Creek switching station to Dominion's existing Whealton substation in Hampton, Va.
Dominion Energy Virginia, known legally as Virginia Electric and Power Co., has maintained that the project is critical to the reliability needs of the Virginia Peninsula especially as it planned to shut down its Yorktown coal units. The U.S. Department of Energy in the summer of 2017 and in subsequent actions has ordered the Dominion Energy Inc. utility to be ready to fire up its Yorktown units if regional grid operator PJM Interconnection determines that there is an immediate reliability risk in the region.
