Correction to the last entry: we named this project “Greenway to Mars.” Its actual name is Golden to Mars. The record below reflects the correct name throughout.
Vicky Hu is about to lose a third of her property. Not to the highest bidder, not to a route her state’s regulator judged the best available option — to the one it judged worse, on the record, in writing.
“We’ve been sacrificed. Our rights have been sacrificed,” Hu told NBC4 Washington. She isn’t being rhetorical. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) — the body that approves transmission routes — wrote that the route it ultimately chose was “by every objective measure … clearly inferior” to the alternative. It picked the inferior route anyway, because the better one crossed school property, and Virginia law gives a school board the power to block that.
By the numbers
- $513 million — total cost of the Golden to Mars transmission project
- 230 kV and 500 kV — the two voltage classes of line being built
- 185 feet — height of the transmission towers
- 8+ miles — approximate length of the new line
- 100–150 feet — width of the cleared corridor
- ~1/3 — share of Vicky Hu’s property affected by the approved route
- ~400 — trees removed from her property alone
- June 30, 2026 — date the SCC ordered Route 3A to proceed
- 2 — elementary and high schools (Rosa Lee Carter Elementary, Rock Ridge High) that would have sat inside the rejected Route 4’s corridor
Sources: NBC4 Washington, WTOP, Patch
How a “clearly inferior” route won
Virginia’s transmission-siting process runs through the SCC, which issues a certificate of public convenience and necessity before a utility can build. Two things have to happen before a utility can start condemning land for that certificate: the SCC has to approve a route, and — this is the part that decided this case — if that route crosses property owned by a local school board, the school board has to separately approve construction on its land.
In April 2026, the SCC’s preferred route was Route 4. It ran near Rosa Lee Carter Elementary and Rock Ridge High School, which meant Loudoun County’s school board could refuse to let Dominion build there — and it did not grant that approval. Route 3A, by contrast, crosses no school property. It runs instead through Vicky Hu’s backyard and the Loudoun Valley Estates neighborhood.
On June 30, 2026, the SCC ordered Route 3A forward. In doing so it acknowledged — the commission’s own words — that Route 3A was “by every objective measure … clearly inferior” to Route 4. It selected Route 3A specifically because doing so bypassed the one veto point in the process: a school board that could say no.
The eminent domain mechanism, in plain terms
Virginia gives public service corporations — a category that includes Dominion Energy — the statutory power to condemn land. Under Va. Code § 56-49, a public service corporation “may acquire by the exercise of the right of eminent domain any lands or estates or interests therein” needed for its works, following the condemnation procedure set out in Title 25.1 of the Virginia Code.
That same statute carries a specific protection most people never hear about: it bars condemning land within 60 feet of a dwelling house, “except (i) when the court having jurisdiction of the condemnation proceeding finds … that it would otherwise be impractical, without unreasonable expense, to construct” the line elsewhere. The protection exists. It also has a court-supervised exception broad enough that a utility can argue around it whenever the “impractical” or “unreasonable expense” bar is cleared.
Before any of that, Va. Code § 56-265.2 requires the utility to first obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity — the approval the SCC granted on June 30. Condemnation authority doesn’t exist until that certificate does. In this case, the certificate is what green-lit the route reaching into Hu’s yard.
What we’re not saying
Nothing here alleges Dominion Energy or the SCC broke the law. The SCC’s own order acknowledges Route 3A was the worse route by its own criteria — that finding is a matter of public record, not our characterization. What we are not asserting is that the SCC’s decision was outside its legal authority; a Virginia regulator weighing a route against a school board’s statutory veto power is doing exactly what the law asks it to do. The question this raises isn’t legality — it’s whether a process that lets a school board block a route while offering no equivalent protection to an individual homeowner has drawn its lines in the right place.
Where this goes next
Loudoun County’s school board is pursuing an appeal, and the case may reach the Virginia Supreme Court — a separate matter from the court’s February 2026 ruling on a different Dominion project, Aspen to Golden, which we are not conflating with this one. Separately, Virginia’s legislature passed SB 827 this year, signed by Governor Spanberger, authorizing a pilot program letting the SCC approve underground 500 kV lines — a possible future alternative to towers through backyards, though not one that reaches Golden to Mars retroactively.
We’ll keep tracking this alongside the Georgia entry that opened this series, and the Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Indiana cases still to come.
Sources:
- NBC4 Washington — ‘We’ve been sacrificed’: Homeowner may lose 1/3 of her property to high-voltage power line for data center
- WTOP — Dominion’s ‘Golden to Mars’ project in Loudoun could reach Va. Supreme Court
- Patch — SCC Orders Golden To Mars Power Lines Project Forward On Controversial Route
- Loudoun Times — State supreme court affirms SCC decision in Aspen to Golden line
- Va. Code § 56-49 — Powers
- Va. Code § 56-265.2 — Certificate of convenience and necessity required for acquisition of new facilities