Goochland Hosts Valley Link Transmission Open House at Central High Complex

Residents gathered Monday evening at the Central High Cultural and Education Complex on Dogtown Road as Valley Link Transmission brought its county-by-county open house tour to Goochland, presenting corridor proposals for a roughly $1 billion, 115-mile high-voltage transmission line that could cut through the western edge of the county.

Valley Link, a joint venture between Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission, LLC, and Transource Energy, LLC, is planning the Joshua Falls-Yeat Transmission Line Project at 765 kilovolts, the highest-capacity power lines in the state and the nation. The project is intended to transmit electricity from Joshua Falls in Campbell County to areas with higher electrical demand north of Goochland at Yeat in Culpeper County. There are a couple of route corridor scenarios that may route the project through Goochland in the western part of the county in District 1.

"What we're trying to do with this project is really bring a new backbone, a new interstate of power through the heart of our system," said Adam Maguire, Dominion's Strategic Project Advisor within the Electric Transmission Team. If constructed, the project would clear thousands of acres, impact hundreds of property owners, and irreparably change an entire region, according to the Piedmont Environmental Council, which has characterized it as primarily serving Dominion Energy's growing queue of data centers.

The Goochland open house, held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 2748 Dogtown Road, was the latest in a circuit of public meetings that have drawn sizeable and at times combative crowds across central Virginia. The Louisa County session on March 12 at the Betty J. Queen Center drew more than 500 community members. Goochland County advised residents to carpool to Monday's event due to anticipated traffic concerns.

Transmission line projects are considered for approval by the Virginia State Corporation Commission after project developers gain input from the public. Goochland County does not have a role in the project's routing or permitting. The county encouraged citizens to speak directly with Valley Link representatives at the open house and to submit comments to the SCC independently.

Valley Link has already sent out letters to about 120,000 people across the route and is hoping to form relationships with landowners to obtain their land through voluntary easements, offering compensation at "fair market value" depending on the piece of land. As a last resort, Valley Link says it will work to obtain land through eminent domain.

The Joshua Falls-Yeat project is still in early development and Valley Link has not yet determined the type of structures that will be used; typical steel-lattice towers that support high-voltage transmission lines range from 135 to 160 feet tall, roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty. The project would require clearing a 200-foot corridor along the entire route, much of which cuts through forested and agricultural areas.

The regulatory road ahead is long. Valley Link plans to file an application with the Virginia SCC to obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the project in the summer of 2026, following its public engagement timeline. Under state law, a transmission line of this size cannot be constructed without that certificate. Valley Link's representative outlined a process of digesting feedback from the March open houses, incorporating it into a proposed route, conducting another round of open houses, and then ultimately submitting a final recommendation to the State Corporation Commission in September 2026. SCC Communications Director Greg Weatherford confirmed that approval processes like this one "take at a minimum months, probably considerably longer in a complex case" once the application lands.

Valley Link will also hold follow-up community meetings in June 2026 to discuss any route adjustments made in response to public feedback. Residents can view proposed routes and submit comments and questions through the Valley Link project website. The project also offers GeoVoice, an interactive mapping tool that allows anyone along the corridor to place comments directly onto the proposed route maps, and a 3D visualization tool to preview what the towers would look like from ground level.

Fluvanna County Supervisor Mike Goad, who represents Fork Union, captured the limited leverage local governments hold when he wrote on Facebook in February: "This is really a top-down thing that we're looking at here. That's not to say that the County won't issue statements or do what it can to address concerns of folks as best as we possibly can." Following the public feedback period, the project will make its way to the Virginia State Corporation Commission for review and approval in the third quarter of 2026 after a final route has been selected.