Maybe now is the time to make the stand

“Maybe now is the time to make the stand.” - Vice Chair Mike Turner, Board of Supervisors Business Meeting, May 19, 2026

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day!

Several people have asked over the last few days about the Aspen Substation and how it relates to Golden to Mars. Here is the latest.

Why this matters

What is being decided right now - one substation at a time, one transmission line at a time - is what our community looks like for the next generation. Our homes. Our schools. The protected open space and streams that drew people here. Once these decisions are locked in, they do not get unlocked. That is why we keep showing up. And it is why everyone in Loudoun has a stake in this - whether you are next to a proposed line, a proposed substation, or you just live here.

What happened at the vote

Last Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors considered Dominion’s Special Exception application for the Aspen Substation. Aspen ties into the broader Dominion “Data Center Alley Local Solution” of which Golden to Mars is one piece.

The motion to approve Aspen initially passed 5-4. Supervisor Briskman read findings for denial she had asked staff to prepare in advance - findings on insufficient screening and inadequate mitigation of environmental impacts to forested and floodplain areas.

Minutes later, Vice Chair Turner moved to reconsider. In his words:

“I am tired of being backed into a corner and not consciously and adequately addressing the phenomenon that we have going on right now. This will precipitate that kind of a serious discussion about what’s going on.

That’s why I’m doing this.”

Vice Chair Turner is right.

The reconsideration passed 6-3. Turner then moved to deny, using Briskman’s findings. That motion tied 4-4, with Chair Randall abstaining to preserve the option of a closed-session legal briefing first. The application returns to the Board on Tuesday, June 2.

Dominion on the record

Dominion’s answers during the Board’s questioning were more candid than we are used to in these forums.

Asked by Chair Randall what portion of current load growth is driven by data centers, Greg Mathe, Dominion’s Director of Electric Transmission Engagement, Permitting and Land, said “all of it.”

Pressed further, he backed up to roughly 90%, with the remainder attributed to aging infrastructure, electrification, and generation retirements. The reason we are building substations across Loudoun, the reason 500 kV transmission lines are being run through residential communities - is data centers.

Dominion also confirmed, on the record, that planned transmission through 2032 is “probably not” going to be enough to meet demand. That Loudoun is on track for approximately 2,500 megawatts of additional load “without doing anything” - without the Board approving a single new data center. Asked directly whether the current plan is sufficient, Dominion told the Board: “there’s probably going to be more projects coming, to what extent I’m not quite sure.”

And on Aspen itself, Dominion’s own engineering contractor acknowledged the substation is being built to serve load that is “not there yet” - additional capacity for future growth.

That is from Dominion. There is no emergency. There is a forecast.

More projects. More substations. More transmission lines.

If Dominion knows we are going to need more, don’t we deserve to know what, when, and where?

How can the County say yes to what is in front of it now when we are not informed what is planned next?

Filing these projects one at a time forces the County to evaluate each in isolation - because presented together, the full scale would not be acceptable to anyone.

What we have actually said

To characterize any of us as just protesting data centers is oversimplifying and not correct.

And, we are not saying this infrastructure must be undergrounded everywhere.

We have never said that.

These positions keep getting mischaracterized.

What we have said is that infrastructure of this scale belongs where it is appropriate - in commercial and industrial corridors, not through and in residential neighborhoods and schools. For example, the Route 606 corridor is the commercial and industrial path that connects point A to point B for Golden to Mars. That is where transmission of this scale should run.

What we have had to react to is the binary framing Dominion presented - through residential or nothing. When the only viable path forces a line through residential areas, the right response in those segments is underground. Right tool, right place. The Board of Supervisors have said themselves that Dominion Energy should bury any transmission lines planned to pass closer than 500 feet from any residence or public school.

Remember, Dominion selects the routes that are presented to the SCC. Dominion has years to plan where these will go. Residents who are told Dominion has decided to run industrial high-voltage power lines through their community have relatively little time to react. This isn’t just us saying this, the SCC staff said it on the record.

Dominion compresses the timeline from revelation to decision - and then presents the case you have to react to. Communities do not have the expertise or the resources to push back at the pace Dominion dictates. We are still pulling back the layers and uncovering more each day, even months after the initial SCC proceedings concluded. The more we peel the onion, the more we realize how much it stinks.

This isn’t just our view. The SCC’s own staff, in the Golden to Mars case, concluded that Dominion’s urgency was “at least in material part, self-created” - and that by sequencing its filings the way it did, Dominion “effectively ensured that its overhead routes are the only viable options.” That is not our framing. That is the SCC’s staff.

We have seen a pattern: manufactured timelines, escalating threats, and engineering conclusions rewritten to fit a preferred result. At the SCC, Dominion's witness refused to acknowledge findings from the General Assembly's nonpartisan JLARC study - that without data centers, projected load growth is effectively zero.

Reliability matters. So does credibility.

Why does it seem Dominion’s preference is to route through residential? Residential property, and especially undeveloped HOA open space, is cheap for them to acquire or encumber. School property is cheap for them. But it is incredibly valuable to the rest of us. The route Dominion supports through Golden to Mars is 8.3 miles through neighborhoods and schools. When Dominion needs land for the substation itself, it pays industrial prices for an industrial parcel - recently $6 million an acre. They have said they only underground when required by regulators - when they are forced. The rest of the time, they route through whoever or wherever is cheapest.

What we have asked for

What we are asking the Board to do on June 2 is to defer. Not to deny. To defer. To use the time to require Dominion and the data center industry to come to the table with the County and the community and produce a plan we can all see - one that lays out what is coming, where it is going, and how it gets built in a way that works for everyone. Once that plan is in place, this community supports moving forward on the infrastructure that is genuinely needed. That has been our position from day one.

From that first day, we have said we are willing to work with Dominion. What we have been met with is not partnership, but notification of what they intended to do to our community. When we have pushed back on Dominion’s preferred plans, Dominion comes back with new routes, each worse than the last, presented as the new fail-safe if we did not accept what was already in front of us.

A SPEX - “special exception” - is exactly what the name says. By definition, it is a request to build what is currently not allowed. The County is not obligated to grant those exceptions. Pushing back on legitimate land use grounds, at least until sufficiently mitigated, is the County doing its job. And sufficiently mitigated should be more than going to Meadows Farms for a few plants. That is not obstruction.

We should thank Supervisors Briskman, Glass, Saines, and Chair Randall, who voted against the initial motion to approve, and Vice Chair Turner and Supervisor TeKrony, who joined them on the motion to reconsider.

Supervisors on both sides are very engaged with this issue, and each side made valid points. Finding a better path forward would benefit all parties.

Chair Randall said it directly to Dominion:

“I don’t think you’re being a good partner, I don’t think you’re being a good neighbor.”

That is the Chair of the Board of Supervisors speaking to the regulated monopoly serving our county.

Dominion needs to fix that.

The community has reasonable expectations

When residents of Loudoun Valley moved here, we were told about the planned expansion of Loudoun County Parkway. We were told about the residential developments going up around us. We were told about the commercial land on the other side of Broad Run, and Dulles Airport beyond that. We were also told the open space between us and any of that was protected. That is why the County required the developer to create and reserve those areas.

We were not told about the potential of 185’ high-voltage transmission lines through our communities. We were not told about substations being placed where they do not belong.

The county-required protected areas, the proffers, the conservation easements - these were not decorative. They were what residents bought into when they chose to live here. They were what the developer agreed to, and what the County required as the condition of the entire arrangement.

What Dominion has proposed treats those protections as cheap land available for the taking - using good-faith planning against the very people it was designed to protect.

The same is true for our schools. The School Board is being asked to consider decisions about routes that should never have been on the table - routes that put high-voltage transmission on or next to land set aside for our children’s schools. That is not fair to them. The School Board did not create this problem, but like the rest of our neighborhood, they are being told to absorb it. We are continuing to engage with school board members because they are part of the community that has to live with what gets built.

We need a plan

Dominion and the data center industry have a plan. They have the data. That plan has long-term impacts on the entire community. They know what is coming. They choose not to share it with us. That is wrong.

We are here because Dominion and the data center industry are operating in coordination - via Electric Service Agreements, PJM submissions, NDA-bound load forecasts - while the County and the affected communities are kept outside the room. Dominion knows what it is planning. The data centers know what they are planning. They will not share it with us.

And we are at a tipping point.

As Vice Chair Turner said on May 19, the demand is exponential and the grid is constrained: “There is simply no way that we can build out of the projected demand that’s coming to this grid.”

Loudoun is on track for approximately 2,500 megawatts of additional load without the Board approving a single new data center. And right now there are more queued up. Approving applications one at a time, on the applicant’s terms, with no shared plan, is the path to outcomes none of us want.

Because we are in a crisis, we need short-term emergency intervention - all parties at the table, including the community , deciding together how to address the projects that are genuinely needed in a way that does not delay them by years under the current path.

That delay and uncertainty is ultimately not good for the data center industry, Dominion, the County, and not good for the communities. But that is the path we have been put on. Therefore, we need to act now.

Deferring Aspen on June 2 is about creating that opportunity to act. The Board has the authority to defer. The Board should use it.

And until all of Loudoun has its own transparent plan, every community in this county should be asking the same question we have been asking for the last couple of years: will we be next?

Where do we go from here?

Aspen returns to the Board of Supervisors at the next business meeting on Tuesday, June 2. If you are around that night, come out. If it is anything like last time, it could be interesting.

The right outcome on June 2 is to defer. Not to deny. To defer - to create the time and the pressure to require the plan we need.

This is one meeting but an important one. But until we have a plan, there will be others. The Petition for Reconsideration on Golden to Mars is still in front of the SCC. The next substation application will come. Until there is a plan that works for everyone, we keep showing up.

The agenda and instructions for participating will be posted to the County site in the days ahead, and we will make sure to circulate them.

More to come.