I wrote about how the State Corporation Commission postponed hearings on Dominion Power's proposal to build 82 towers 110 feet tall along the W&OD trail from Leesburg to Purcellville and how that would require removal of most of the tree canopy (and you know how I feel about trees). That meeting has been rescheduled for Monday, June 19th.
The Western Loudoun Transmission Line Stakeholders, in addition to winning the prize for the least sexy advocacy name, has proposed a special tax district to pay the $8 million it will cost to bury the power lines.
All the groups with a stake in the final route agree that the line should be placed underground, not overhead, as the power company has insisted, in large part because it is less expensive in terms of capital costs. Closing the funding gap has always been seen as an imperative.
I've said it before, but the line should absolutely be placed underground. The last stretch of the W&OD, along South Four Mile Run Drive, runs beneath similar power towers - and it's pretty ugly.
In addition, when life-cycle costs are considered, Sloyan said, there would be a saving of 25 percent to 35 percent in reduced maintenance costs. Underground is also safer, more reliable, invulnerable to storm damage and greatly reduces harmful radiation from electromagnetic fields, he said.
This is one of those common sense proposals that one can only hope the government is smart enough to listen to.
In other W&OD news, a task force set up to study how to give trail access to people living in southern Leesburg learned about the South King Street Trail, a fully funded and designed connection from Governor’s Drive north to Davis Avenue.
Several members focused on the lack of a guardrail or defined separation between the planned asphalt trail and South King Street and asked if the design could be restudied to include more safety measures.
In the same article, they discuss several other Leesburg bike and ped issues.
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