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Louisa County staff to advertise comprehensive‑plan addendum guiding electric transmission siting
Summary
Staff presented a draft comp‑plan addendum and accompanying CUP/zoning options to steer electric transmission siting away from residential areas and large agricultural parcels, prioritize existing corridors and recommend undergrounding where feasible; commissioners asked for thresholds and drafting changes and voted to take the item to May work‑session/public hearing.
Louisa County staff on April introduced a proposed comprehensive‑plan addendum intended to guide the siting of major electric transmission infrastructure and asked the planning commission to authorize advertising the document for public hearing.
Staff said the draft prioritizes use of existing corridors, seeks to avoid routing through established residential areas and large agricultural parcels, recommends minimizing visibility from scenic rural roadways and asks applicants to justify new corridors rather than create new rights‑of‑way. The draft also expresses a policy preference for undergrounding where technically and economically feasible and recommends coordination with VDOT during access and construction.
Commissioners raised legal and practical limits: staff emphasized that the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SEC) retains authority to approve transmission lines under state law, so local policy is mainly a guidance document that the SEC must consider alongside state authority. Commissioners suggested drafting refinements including lowering an applicability threshold (a suggestion to consider 69 kV rather than 115 kV), substituting the word ‘‘structure’’ for ‘‘pole’’ in visual standards, and recording a county preference to limit new rights‑of‑way to no greater than 500 kV, while acknowledging a county preference may have limited legal force.
After discussion, the commission voted to include the transmission comp‑plan addendum and related CUP/zoning items on the May work session and to advertise the comp‑plan item for public hearing at the May regular meeting so the Board of Supervisors could review it afterward.
Staff will work with legal counsel to incorporate commissioners’ drafting suggestions and return the item to the commission for review and formal advertisement.
