The Waterford Foundation Relinquishes Leadership of LTLAThe Waterford Foundation has been the lead organization in the formation and operation of the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance (LTLA). Since early 2024 Abigail Zurfluh, Historic Preservation Director of the Foundation, has provided a great deal of the staff support for LTLA. Abigail was featured in the May 16th edition of Happenings Around the Blue Ridge. The Waterford Foundation, under the leadership of its board president, Susan Manch, led the citizens’ campaign, affected organizations joined together to form the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance (LTLA), to reject the PJM initiative to build a 500kV transmission line from West Virginia, across the Blue Ridge and bucolic and historic landscapes in Loudoun County to supply power to data centers in central and eastern Loudoun County. This line, designated the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL), was to be built in two segments, the one from a substation located east of Short Hill Mountain, creating a new transmission corridor crossing rural landscapes and historic properties from this substation northward to supply power to data centers in eastern and central Loudoun, clustered around Ashburn. The other segment was proposed to follow westward from this substation along the corridor used by an existing 138kV line that leads across the Blue Ridge into West Virginia. The LTLA, of which Friends of Blue Ridge Mountains is a member, has been surprisingly successful in convincing PJM that it would not be prudent to pursue further its plan to build a new transmission line corridor across the many small specialty farms, conservation easement lands, and properties of special historical significance which cover much of western Loudoun County. Rather, PJM now proposes to upgrade existing transmission lines in Loudoun County to supply the Ashburn data center complex, but to move ahead with its proposed new line across Short Hill Mtn and the Blue Ridge to the west. Several LTLA organizations met at the Waterford Old School on September 4th to review this new development, be apprised of remaining transmission line challenges anticipated in the near- and longer-term future, and to discuss what organizational changes are indicated for LTLA’s member organizations to meet these challenges. In preparation for this meeting Ms. Maunch announced that the Waterford Foundation needs to relinquish its leadership staffing role for LTLA and encouraged “an environmental organization” to take on this role. She stressed the concern that using its limited staff resources to combat transmission line proliferation in Loudoun County took too much away from the Foundation pursuing its original mission. But Ms. Maunch also emphasized Waterford Foundation’s intention to remain as an active member of whatever form of alliance that LTLA might take, and to share in the necessary work that organizations must undertake to support LTLA in achieving its objectives. Organizations represented at the meeting were appreciative of the contribution that the Waterford Foundation has made in this early phase of dealing with the MARL challenge. In light of the major transmission line challenges, both near and longer term, being driven by accelerating data center growth in Loudoun, attendees at the meeting agreed to keep LTLA as a functioning alliance, albeit modified in form, and to assemble a steering committee to chart a path forward, including managing the citizens’ concerns with MARL’s western segment that would cross over Short Hill Mtn, through the Valley Between the Hills and Sweet Run SP, cross over the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Shenandoah River, and thence westward across the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny Mtns to a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia. Friends of Blue Ridge Mountains remains committed to protecting the Blue Ridge from all ill-advised developments, including further inappropriately sited transmission line corridors. |
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.