Trees and Trains on the W&OD Trail

The fight with Dominion Power over power lines and trees continues. On the one hand DP has instituted a "right tree in the right place" program

whereby trees that could threaten the lines in the future were removed and replaced with trees that would not grow tall enough to be a threat...six hundred such trees were replaced, and an additional 1,000 trees were planted

This sounds like a good common sense approach.

But the fight over new power lines is where things really get messy. Del. Joe May has led the fight to force DP to install underground lines which until recently has included the Save the Trail Alliance and the Save Scenic Loudoun Legal Defense Fund. But the two groups have recently begun to fight one another.

The Save Scenic Loudoun Legal Defense Fund, comprised of homeowners living along a proposed alternate route west of Leesburg, has always insisted that the W&OD Trail must be considered because the SCC  [State Corporation Commission] must require the power company to consider  any route on which it owns an existing easement. The SCC agreed, and several months ago ruled that Dominion must re-include the trail as a possible route. Recent finger-pointing includes accusations by Save the Trail representatives that the Save Scenic Loudoun Legal Defense Fund will claim in its testimony before the SCC that trail users are happy to use the trail without trees, thereby refuting the organization’s claims that the loss of 26,000 trees will be irreparable. That accusation is absurd, according to SSLDF representative Bob McKew, who called the suggestion “absolutely false.”

The original position of the May-led coalition was that the lines should be buried under Route 7, but recent inspections of that road have forced them to change their preferred route to run underneath Harmony Church Road and Route 704.

In only slightly related news, you can now buy a video about the W&OD railroad upon whose right-of-way the trail is built. Profits go to the Friends of W&OD.