Category: Property rights
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Pipelines Offer Hope, Provoke Despair
Recent articles have highlighted rural communities that stand to win and lose from proposed natural gas pipeline mega-projects crossing the state. On the hopeful side, the Daily Press reports that Isle of Wight County economic development director Tom Elder would like to build a lateral line off the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to supply…
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The Cooter Controversy as Window into the New Class/Culture War
by James A. Bacon Ben Jones, the former actor and Georgia congressman, has built a small retail empire around the character Cooter he played in the “Dukes of Hazzard” television series. In addition to his Cooter’s store in Rappahannock County, Va., he has opened stores in Nashville and Gatlinburg, Tenn. But Jones has to contend with a…
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Haymarket Project More than Amazon’s “Extension Cord,” Dominion Says
Dominion Virginia Power would have to upgrade its electricity distribution system to the Haymarket area of Prince William County sooner or later, even without the development of a data-center campus, testified Mark R. Gill, an electric transmission planning engineer with Dominion, in State Corporation Commission testimony filed yesterday. “Without the request for service to the Haymarket…
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Who Should Pay for Haymarket Transmission Project, Amazon or Ratepayers?
by James A. Bacon Dominion Virginia Power wants to upgrade its electric grid to serve a new data center campus in the Haymarket area of Prince William County. Residents are up in arms about the potential loss to property values, and the cost of the project could range between $51 million for the least expensive alternative…
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Pipelines Don’t Hurt Home Values, Study Says
A month after foes of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline issued an economic study showing that the natural gas pipeline would diminish property values along the proposed 550-mile route by $141 million, Dominion Energy has fired back by citing a study claiming that gas pipelines have no impact on residential property values at all. Analyzing property values in…
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Putting a Price on the Priceless
How does the state put a dollar value on historic, cultural and environmental assets threatened by eminent domain? by James A. Bacon In its high-stakes effort to win regulatory approval to build a 500 kV electric transmission line to the Virginia Peninsula, Dominion Virginia Power proposed in December to spend $85 million to mitigate the project’s impact…
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Clash of Competing Values
Virginians need pipelines and transmission lines to keep the economy humming. But we also value our historical, cultural and historical heritage. The trade-offs are getting harder and harder. by James A. Bacon In the 1970s engineers at Dominion Virginia Power envisioned the need to increase the supply of electric power to the Virginia Peninsula one day.…
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Why T.J. Deserves a Place in Our Pantheon of Heroes
by James A. Bacon Students at the College of William & Mary have carried on a long tradition of festooning the campus statue of Thomas Jefferson with accouterments ranging from woolen scarfs to party hats. The latest fad is to append the effigy with sticky notes denouncing the founding father as a slave holder, a…
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“Cultural Attachment” the Latest Barrier to Infrastructure Projects?
by James A. Bacon Landowner and environmentalist groups have advanced a number of arguments against building more gas pipelines (see previous post), but among the more novel is the idea that the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) will disrupt the “cultural attachment” rural landowners feel for the land that would be traversed. What foes are contending here is…
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The Rule of Firsties
by James A. Bacon I was chatting the other day with a friend, a William & Mary professor living in Williamsburg, about the Surry-Skiffes Creek transmission line project (see “An Intractable Dilemma“). Despite the high stakes involved, he said, he hadn’t paid much attention to the controversy, finding it hard to generate sympathy for a…
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Why Doesn't Virginia Have More Wind Power?
Why hasn’t Virginia made more progress in generating energy from wind power? This map from the National Renewable Energy Lab highlights the problems we face. Unlike the plains states, where almost every square mile is wind blown, Virginia has few suitable locations. Wind power is practical only offshore and on scattered mountain ridges. Putting windmills…
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Why Doesn’t Virginia Have More Wind Power?
Why hasn’t Virginia made more progress in generating energy from wind power? This map from the National Renewable Energy Lab highlights the problems we face. Unlike the plains states, where almost every square mile is wind blown, Virginia has few suitable locations. Wind power is practical only offshore and on scattered mountain ridges. Putting windmills…
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Circuit Court Judge Upholds Pipelines' Right to Survey
A circuit court judge in Montgomery County dealt a setback to foes of the Mountain Valley Pipeline yesterday by finding constitutional a controversial state law allowing natural gas companies to survey private property without an owner’s permission. Turk said that the Virginia law allows a natural gas company to enter private property for surveying even…
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Circuit Court Judge Upholds Pipelines’ Right to Survey
A circuit court judge in Montgomery County dealt a setback to foes of the Mountain Valley Pipeline yesterday by finding constitutional a controversial state law allowing natural gas companies to survey private property without an owner’s permission. Turk said that the Virginia law allows a natural gas company to enter private property for surveying even…
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A Plethora of Pipelines
Four companies are talking about building gas pipelines through Virginia. How many are needed — and who decides?