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“Ignoring community input and calls for better routes is eroding the public’s trust in regulators, utilities, this entire public engagement process, and even transmission infrastructure itself.” - U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, in a letter to the State Corporation Commission detailing concerns about Dominion Energy’s proposed Golden to Mars transmission line.
Transmission lines for a data center in Prince William County, Va. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
By Shannon Heckt
The debate over the final path for Dominion Energy’s controversial high-voltage transmission line project in Loudoun County continues, with U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, now urging the State Corporation Commission to consider three new routes that avoid cutting through residents’ yards and encroaching on two schools.
The Golden to Mars transmission line project is the final piece of a “reliability loop” in Loudoun designed to send more power to Data Center Alley in Ashburn. Residents of the Loudoun Valley Estates neighborhoods have fiercely opposed the 500-250 kilovolt project, which would partially transverse some private properties.
This coal transfer terminal in Newport News sits close to many homes in the majority Black East End neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Cornell Watson for the Southern Environmental Law Center)
COMMENTARY
By Roger Chesley
Coal dust, a decades-long scourge for thousands of residents of Hampton Roads cities where mammoth coal terminals operate, could be less of a menace in Newport News if local officials and businesses follow the recommendations in a new study.
But getting funding from the wealthy terminal operators? Don’t hold your breath.
By Tim Henderson
Measles cases for the calendar year surpassed 4,000 for the first time in decades, with as many as five deaths in Pennsylvania, as the federal government steps in with financial help for states but also fans vaccination fears and skepticism.
According to the Oct. 9 Centers for Disease Control report, there have been 178 reported cases of measles in Virginia in 2026.
By Jacob Fischler
The Trump administration’s order to allow import of Russian diesel violates a 2022 law banning Russian energy imports while the country’s war with Ukraine is ongoing, according to a bipartisan group of U.S. senators.
Following an Oct. 9 call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control lifted sanctions against the “import sale, delivery, offloading, or importation” of Russian diesel. Prices of diesel have skyrocketed in recent months during Trump’s war in Iran.
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