By Don Del Rosso Rappahannock News Staff Writer The

By Don Del Rosso

Rappahannock News Staff Writer

The three landowners want to stop Dominion Virginia Power dead in its tracks.

lb do that, George M. Chester Jr., John McCarty and Bill Semple decided to put conservation easements on their farms near Delaplane sooner rather than later. A potential path for Dominion’s proposed 500,000-volt transmission line passes through the Chester, McCarty and Semple properties.

Easements prohibit Or limit development of land. But it remains unclear whether they could be used to stop a power line.

Nonetheless, the county Board of Supervisors last Thursday approved easements from six applicants to protect 1,547 acres that lie in potential alignments. Another easement the board accepted appears to protect 76 acres near Linden that lie adjacent to a potential alignment.

Besides Chester, McCarty and Semple, the supervisors on Dec. 14 accepted easements from Mt. Joy Farm LP, Law Family Partnership, Cedar Hill Seven LLC and Montana Farm LLC.

lb take effect, easements must be recorded in the Fauquier County clerk’s office. In exchange for sacrificing development potential through easements, landowners receive federal and state tax credits and deductions.

The Chester, McCarty and Semple families emphasized they had considered protecting their land with easements long before Dominion revealed its intentions last summer to build a line through northern Fauquier. Now, easements may provide them the protection they need to thwart Dominion.

Pre-Dominion, the families said they had wanted to permanently preserve cherished countryside and a rural way of life. “It’s a place you know,” Ann McCarty said of land that has been in her husband John’s family for six generations. “You know where the deer are bom and nurse.”

Even so, the power line proposal “focused the mind, cer