After reevaluating plans to clear more trees throughout the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail corridor in the spring, Dominion Energy is revving up its chainsaw once more.
The utility shared yesterday (Thursday) that its forestry team has “identified several areas” along the 45-mile trail in Fairfax, Arlington and Loudoun counties where tree removals will be necessary to preserve the electrical grid.
“We have met with arborists and forestry personnel from the impacted jurisdictions, as well as representatives from [trail owner] NOVA Parks, and toured the identified areas,” said Aisha Khan, Dominion’s community relations manager for Northern Virginia. “The walkthrough was designed to provide clarity on the safety and reliability concerns driving this effort and outline our long-term vegetation management approach.”
Trees could interfere with power lines, Dominion says
A total of 129 trees have been marked for removal, including 58 cedar, Virginia pine and mixed hardwood trees in the Herndon area of Fairfax County near Fairfax County Parkway and Herndon Parkway, Dominion Energy’s Electric Transmission Forestry Manager Amanda Keyes said in a June 5 letter to NOVA Parks Executive Director Paul Gilbert.
In Loudoun County, 67 trees will be removed, and four dead trees will be cut down in Arlington near the intersection of South Oxford Street and South Four Mile Run Drive.
Crews will also remove bamboo near Glencarlyn Park in Arlington and mow invasive vegetation along the trail in Herndon — requests made respectively by Arlington County and NOVA Parks, Keyes wrote.
Scheduled to begin on June 16 and take three to four weeks, the maintenance work is necessary to address trees that either do or could potentially threaten Dominion’s power lines, the letter to NOVA Parks says:
As we expect these transmission lines to reach peak load capacity during the summer months, and as the weather gets warmer, the conductors, or wires, will sag more. This will bring the trees and the conductor in closer contact which is a clearance risk. As you may know, the context behind clearance needed between vegetation and our transmission lines is nuanced depending upon many factors, including tree species and how tall they may grow, topography of the environment in which the trees/vegetation are growing, height of the transmission structures and clearance of the conductors at maximum sag.
We maintain a wide clearance – sometimes up to fifty feet or more – along our transmission power lines because high-voltage transmission lines can affect larger areas and have greater consequences, as evidenced by the August 14, 2003, northeast blackout (fifty million people without power, 1.5 million without water).
In the summer – warmer weather is on its way – when the air is hot and our customers demand a lot of electricity, the flow of electricity heats the power line and it expands, sagging as much as twenty feet or more on the higher-voltage systems. We plan for this sag to occur, so our service is still safe and reliable. But we must make sure that a sagging power line doesn’t come into contact with any vegetation.
On such high-voltage lines, electricity can arc, or travel through the air, even going from power line to tree limb. This arcing affects the safe, reliable operation of our system. On low-voltage lines, such as those outside your home (e.g. distribution lines), limbs and branches would actually have to touch the power line to affect the electric service.
Also, because we maintain our transmission line rights-of way on a scheduled cycle, we must account for anticipated growth. We also have to estimate the effects of wind on the position of trees and lines. There are many factors which lead to a determination of tree removal.
According to Keyes, the Herndon trees are all “directly underneath” the power lines, measuring between 4 and 10 inches in diameter, and 31% of them were deemed “undesirable vegetation” in a now-defunct 2005 vegetation management agreement with NOVA Parks.
NOVA Parks questions tree-cutting plan
Though Dominion’s letter suggested that it had collaborated with NOVA Parks on its new tree-cutting plan, a memo sent to the utility this morning (Friday) shows the regional park authority is less-than-enthusiastic.
According to Gilbert’s memo to Keyes, NOVA Parks staff requested assistance with managing invasive plants, particularly in the 4-mile stretch in Vienna and Dunn Loring where Dominion recently cleared swaths of trees in conjunction with a transmission line replacement project.
However, those staff “did not request or support any tree cutting,” Gilbert said, expressing concern about the scope of the newly proposed removals and the absence of a commitment to replantings outside of the four dead trees in Arlington.
“Dominion aggressively cut almost all the trees in a four-mile section of the W&OD Park from November 2024 to March 2025,” Gilbert wrote. “That area is now being overrun with invasive plants that will be increasingly hard to manage in the years ahead, because it was cut to the ground without a restoration plan. Without preventative measures, the new round of cuts will have similar impacts.”
Gilbert also noted that the timing of the upcoming cutting could interfere with the bird nesting season, among other potential environmental impacts.
Backed by local government officials in every jurisdiction along the W&OD Trail, NOVA Parks has spent months pressing Dominion to agree to a new memorandum of understanding that will limit future tree removals, require cleared areas to be replanted and commit the utility to helping manage invasive species.
Gilbert reported to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Vienna Town Council on May 21 that Dominion appeared receptive to a draft that NOVA Parks sent in late April. Meetings to discuss the proposal will “commence shortly,” Dominion’s letter said.
“I am confident, through constructive dialogue, we will come to a mutually beneficial outcome,” Keyes wrote.
In addition to working on the MOU, NOVA Parks has a separate team of arborists developing a plan to restore the Vienna and Dunn Loring sections of the trail where trees were already cleared, Gilbert told FFXnow.
“The end result of all of this needs to be a robust restoration of the damaged areas, and a process that makes cutting in the future selective and followed by restoration,” he said. “I am hoping with continued work, we can get to this point.”
