foreseen delay. A different sort of unforeseen delay is

foreseen delay.

A different sort of unforeseen delay is a lawsuit. That was the grounds for granting an extension to Potomac Edison for a special use permit to build the transmission line from Page County to Sperryville.

PotEd officials maintained—and former BZA member Charles Estes verified—that the original permit was granted with no expiration date. However, a search of the written records didn’t show any reflection of that intent.

PotEd representative ^Kenneth Nichols explained that^~\the open-ended agreemenC was- made because the BZA understood at the time of application that construction would take longer than a year, the normal time limit for a permit. Nichols said the line is intended to be 14 miles long, with six miles of easements needed in Page County. The line will cross the mountains, he said, and all the normal equipment is being used plus helicopters.

“Mules, too?” quipped chairman Bird. But the board was sympathetic to the problem. Saying that a lawsuit from landowners in Rappahannock was “an unforeseen obstacle” that had halted construction due to a permanent court injunction, the BZA granted an openended extension on the special use permit. The vote was 3-0 with Bird and Swindler abstaining. Bird announced that he was “presiding only and not participating” due to a possible conflict of interest and that the vote concerned the permit only and was “not a question of the merits of the line.”

Finally, the BZA reversed the revocation of a building permit by Zoning Adminstrator David Konick. Konick had revoked Timothy Robinson’s building permit to add an apartment to the back of his Flint Hill house after Konick learned that the area was within a flood plain. However, Robinson appeared before the BZA with documents to show that he had conferred