Valley Link Proposed Transmission Line Project Cuts Across Virginia
In May 2026, Preservation Virginia named the nine-county corridor targeted for Valley Link’s proposed 765 kilovolt transmission line project (aka Joshua Falls-Yeat) to its list of Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places for 2026. The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and American Battlefield Trust made the nomination with eight other partners across the Commonwealth: Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, Central Virginia Land Conservancy, Fluvanna Historical Society, Friends of Buckingham, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, Historic Germanna, Preservation Piedmont and Scenic Virginia.
The impacts are enormous. Over 2,500 acres of land that is currently forested, farmed, providing critical wildlife habitat and contributing to the rural economy and character of the region would be cleared and converted to utility right-of-way. At least nine historic districts, and numerous other historic resources (both listed and eligible) within the path and/or the viewshed of the proposed project, are likely to be impacted.
The Joshua Falls-Yeat line is one of several new transmission lines Valley Link, a collaboration between energy companies Dominion Energy and FirstEnergy, is proposing to bring more power to Virginia’s data centers.
The Valley Link lines would include 200-foot-tall towers and a 200-foot-wide right-of-way. Intruding on the rural landscape of some of the most hallowed ground in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Below; you can read a letter by Christopher Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
Miller: The Valley Link lines are the most disruptive power projects in Virginia history
The headlong rush to build out energy infrastructure for data centers has created a crisis by contract. Dominion and other utilities claim an obligation to serve the unrealistic requests from data centers, which are not reviewed by any state agency. They justify multiple transmission lines — as many as 20-30 over the next two decades — requiring thousands of miles of new and expanded corridors. This would impact Virginia landowners, ratepayers, communities and natural resources in almost every county. Imagine 20-30 new highway corridors, all being planned and built within a compressed period, not by public agencies but by private companies based on contracts they have negotiated in secret with the data center industry.
The two proposals from the Valley Link co-conspirators Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission and Transource (jointly owned by American Electric Power and Evergy) plan one line cutting through central Virginia from Joshua Falls in Campbell and Amherst County to an undefined and unpermitted location in Culpeper, where it will link to massive and yet unapproved substations in Fauquier County, and a second cutting through a rural area of conserved lands. Warren, Clarke, Frederick and Loudoun counties would experience devastating impacts lasting for generations. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of Cardinal’s donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy).
The proposals are an archetype of the willingness of the technology industry to break things and disrupt. In this case, Valley Link is breaking and disrupting the plans and policies meant to ensure that communities can sustain and encourage a vibrant rural economy, protect natural and historic resources, and preserve the quality of life of their citizens. As a result, counties from Campbell to Culpeper are joining individual landowners, local civic organizations and groups like the American Battlefield Trust, the Piedmont Environmental Council and others to intervene in the State Corporation Commission (SCC) case in opposition to the proposed transmission lines. The SCC has a statutory responsibility to consider the impacts on communities, the environment, the history and scenic values of transmission line projects, and recommend ways to avoid and mitigate those impacts.
These projects also raise the threat of using eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of private companies. The Virginia constitution clearly prohibits the use of eminent domain to further the purposes of private companies. This project was conceived and designed only because of data centers and must be subject to a rigorous analysis of whether they would be necessary but for the demand requests from the private data center industry.
To detail all the impacts from a 765kv transmission line corridor would fill thousands of pages of reports and testimony. The concerns range from the conflict with local comprehensive plans and the reasonable expectations of landowners to the outright destruction of farms, forests, wetlands and historic sites. The scar on the landscape would be stunning. The Valley Link lines would include 200-foot-tall towers and a 200-foot-wide right-of-way. This industrial construction should never intrude on the rural landscape of some of the most hallowed ground in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
All of this is at risk because of the secret, unreviewed demand requests of the data center industry; it is a crisis by contract. As has been documented by the Peoples Council of Maryland, but for data center demand requests, none of the transmission lines proposed by Valley Link would be necessary. But the process at PJM, which conducts interstate transmission planning under the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has voted to recommend these projects. Voting is conducted by 520 utilities and a few members representing the public. The public has limited access to documents and no meaningful opportunity to offer comment.
PJM’s process is the definition of regulatory capture, which in this case means that PJM is beholden to special interests — monopoly utilities — whose influence drives PJM decision-making and who benefit most financially. Citizens are cut out of that decision loop and pay the price both in billing and overall quality of life.
PJM is a planning body created by an unconstitutional delegation of federal authority over interstate electrical transmission. PJM determines the fate of hundreds of Virginia communities and hundreds of thousands of landowners. The SCC must take the time to responsibly review the demand projections and determine whether there has been adequate consideration of the potential impact of these proposals, but also a full array of alternatives such as undergrounding.
Finally, PEC supports growing calls for the governor to intervene and for the General Assembly to support a Pause to Plan. A pause will allow a full and responsible assessment of what the data center industry has proposed and contracted for in Virginia and determine if these proposals are in the best interest of the commonwealth.
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