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along Interstate 66.
The second battle
RLEP had won the battle against Pepco, but it had not won the war against new power line corridors in the county.
The Virginia Electric and Power Company (Vepco) proposed a different corridor in late 1971, while RLEP was still battling Pepco.
Vepco’s proposal called for a 111-mile 500,000-volt transmission corridor to be built between the Mount Storm coal-fired power plant in West Virginia and the Morrisville substation in Fauquier County en route to connecting with the North Anna nuclear power station in Louisa County .
Irwin thought Vepco would be able to do the same thing Pepco did: upgrade existing facilities to avoid cutting any new corridors.
But the company did not agree. Vepco executives said a new corridor was necessary to avoid massive blackouts in case a natural disaster knocked out power on existing lines.
Vepco’s victory was not easy. RLEP waged a fiveyear, $110,000 campaign, including an appeal with the Virginia Court of Appeals, against the proposed corridor.
Irwin and three other RLEP supporters even went to the effort of going up in an airplane in August 1972 to take photographs that demonstrated the damage wrought by power line corridors in the Blue Ridge and Piedmont regions.
“In retrospect, it was fuh,” Irwin said in an interview Dec. 21. “It wasn’t fun when we were doing it, because we were dead serious.’’
The campaign resulted in a law from the General Assembly that required the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to issue a statement of public convenience and necessity for
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