A five-person judge decided Walton Funeral Home may be compensated around$ 350,000 for a Dominion Energy continuous lease on its home for high voltage power ranges.
The ruling came Thursday at the end of a four-day prominent site test in Virginia Beach Circuit Court with Judge Scott Flax presiding. The test was held because the funeral home user and the energy firm had been unable to reach an agreement on only payment for three high voltage power lines that mix over the house.
“Dominion handled this terribly, ” Frank Walton, who owns the land and operates the funeral apartment, said after the conviction came in. “This is a classic case of corporate greed and excess. ”
Members from Dominion Energy declined to speak with the internet during and after the conclusion of the trial. It was questionable whether the value would appeal.
Dominion Energy built transmission lines for its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project across Walton Funeral Home’s house entrance and driving bit on Holland Road after a determine permitted the company first entry next summer. Dominion even installed large beams adjacent to the house.
As of last August, Walton’s was one of four attributes Dominion was seeking to acquire for the job through the process of prominent area. It’s questionable if the others have been resolved.
Walton Funeral Home has operated at the same place for more than 60 times. Frank Walton’s kids started the business.
Much of this week’s trial centered around testimony from each sides ’ appraisers. Dominion’s appraiser Nancy Dove said she believed Walton’s compensation should be$ 25,700; while Walton’s appraiser Michael Ray said it should be$ 705,000.
“She deeply undervalued the land, ” Walton, 56, said of the power company ’s appraiser.
Walton’s attorney, Stephen Clarke, argued the transfer poles and ranges diminished the serenity of the business house where households come to lament.
The power range building also limits changes Walton you produce to the house. Walton’s park lot may be under the high energy lines, but any expansion of it would involve Dominion’s authorization. Dove said the triangular shaped area would n’t likely be developed anyway and that the loss of trees would n’t affect a future sale.
“Nobody’s going to build something that, ” she said.
But she did say that Dominion’s technology had an impact.
“There is no doubt the house has changed, ” Dove said.
Clarke alleged Dove had a biased view based on information she included in her analysis about possible good aspects of the onshore wind job and her story of conducting evaluation for Dominion Energy.
Dominion’s attorney Michael Lacy tried to discredit Ray’s analysis techniques. An analysis examiner testified that he believed Ray inflated the value of Walton’s property based on the equivalent commercial property sales he used, which were located in higher traffic areas of Virginia Beach.
The judge visited the death home page on Monday.
“We’ve lost every sense of what we had in terms of protection and calm, ” Walton said as he testified Wednesday. “We largely look like an industrial area. ”
He also cited the problems his firm faced when Dominion cleared branches from his home and installed wires and transmitting lines. At one point, Walton cried as he talked about his parents ’ tradition and his own.
Before the judge deliberated, Clarke urged them to consider the impact of their decision.
“You are the words in the community on this topic, ” Clarke said. “You can communicate very violently to Dominion about how Virginia Beach citizens react when Dominion takes a small business owner’s property for a$ 10 billion project and does n’t want to pay what’s fair. ”
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm is being built 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach and will include 176 wind turbine. The$ 9. 8 billion initiative does create energy to power up to 660,000 homes, according to Dominion. Offshore development is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
Underwater cables will provide the wind turbine-generated power onshore at State Military Reservation in Virginia Beach. The cords will remain underwater to Naval Air Station Oceana. From that, above-ground material dipoles and power lines may remain toward Bridge Neck Road, connecting with an existing distribution right-of-way near the Castleton town, according to the city.
The proposed way continues north, overlapping the former Southeastern Parkway and Greenbelt motorway project until only past Lady Anne Road. It finally moves south, crossing Salem Road and the Intracoastal Waterway in Chesapeake. The path turns west toward Battlefield Golf Course before heading north to Dominion’s existing Fentress Substation in Chesapeake.
Walton Funeral Home, located along a area of Holland Road between Dam Neck Road and Nimmo Parkway, sits in the core of the upstream transmission path.
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