Following a similar action by Goochland County last month, the Louisa County Board of Supervisors (BoS) approved $250,000 in funding to support legal expenses associated with the Valley Link Transmission Line project at the May 4 meeting.

Louisa is one of 8 other counties impacted by the 115-mile 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission line that is planned to extend from Campbell to Culpeper County. Valley Link is a $1 billion joint venture between Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission and Transource with the stated goal to meet Virginia’s growing energy needs.

In March, the Louisa board voted to approve a resolution in opposition to the project. Now, the board is allocating a quarter of a million dollars with funding coming from the general fund balance, matching the amount that Goochland pledged to fight Valley Link last month.

“I think we’ll see several counties follow suit very quickly to match this type of appropriation,” Mineral District Supervisor and Chairman Duane Adams said.

Louisa hosted a summit in April for the nine impacted counties and their respective leadership to come together to address their concerns with the Valley Link project; Adams said the “vast majority” are taking a regional approach.

“We think that we’re stronger working as a collaborative group than we are as individual counties,” Adams said. “I think it’s very clear that this board has heard our citizens and engaged with our citizens and understands our citizens’ concerns about Valley Link’s potential project. We are listening. We are working. We are taking action. We are being collaborative. We’re doing the things that I think we need to do to make sure that we can have an impact on this project that reflects the concerns of our citizens and I think reflects the concerns of everybody sitting around this table.”

On May 1, Louisa County joined Culpeper, Fluvanna, Goochland, and Orange County in a joint filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The docket number is ER26-1563-001. Adams said the filing does two things — seeks to put the five counties into the case as parties that have a right to be heard and objects to “three specific gaps” in PJM’s Interconnection proposed new “Expedited Interconnection Track” — a program that would fast-track up to 10 large power plants per year through the approval process in about ten months instead of the usual three to four years.

PJM approved the Valley Link Transmission Project as a public necessity in February 2025. The project has partial FERC approval while it awaits the State Corporation Commission (SCC) review and approval; Valley Link will not submit for SCC approval until September of this year.

“We are asking FERC to make three narrow fixes before approving the program,” Adams said. “Recognize Virginia counties as siting authorities where state law gives us that role. Require developers to notify and give host localities 30 days to comment before their applications are deemed complete. And require PJM to publish after each annual application window a summary of where the new generation is being proposed and what transmission route it will require.”

Adams stated that this filing does not challenge any specific transmission line, and that decisions on the routing and approval still remains with the SCC where Louisa will “continue to participate fully.” Moving forward, Adams said they expect FERC to act before PJM’s requested effective date of July 31.

`“…I want to assure our citizens that Louisa County will continue to protect its residents at every level, local, state and federal,” Adams said.