Loudoun Democrats Re-Approve Aspen Substation — Sell It as Oxygen-Machine Reliability After Data-Center Boom

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — Loudoun’s Democrat-majority Board of Supervisors re-approved the Aspen substation after briefly pulling the project back for another look — and the public argument Democrats put on the record was not “we recruited the load,” but “homes need air conditioning and oxygen machines.”

Coverage of the re-approval, preserved in resident notes circulating with the research packet, quotes county materials putting Aspen among roughly 95 existing or proposed substations in Loudoun, with another 30 to 40 more on the drawing board. That density is the physical footprint of Data Center Alley: every hyperscale campus eventually shows up as switchgear, transformers, and new high-voltage taps.

Supervisor Kristen Umstattd (D-Leesburg) cast her yes vote in reliability language. “That grid is not just for a data center or many data centers; it is for homes in the county—people’s houses losing power. It’s apartments losing power. It’s businesses, small businesses losing power. And for me, that is persuasive,” she said, while acknowledging screening along the W&OD Trail.

Chair Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) went further, saying she had only recently understood Aspen as a link for the East Coast grid, not merely local service. She cited a recent eastern Loudoun outage after a pole was damaged and worried about residents without air conditioning in extreme heat and people who depend on medical devices or refrigerated medicine. “The reliability of electricity is a health and safety issue,” Randall said. “When it comes down to it, and people don’t have power at three in the morning, and they have an oxygen machine or a ventilator or medicine, they need to have power. It literally becomes a life issue.” She called it “immoral” to oppose a critical regional link that could put people in danger.

That framing is the political tell. Democrat supervisors spent years approving data centers that pull multi-hundred-megawatt loads onto Dominion’s system. When the substations arrive, the same board sells them as humanitarian infrastructure for households that already had power before Loudoun hosted on the order of 200 operating data centers. Aspen sits on the Data Center Loop conversation — Aspen–Golden and related 500/230 kV work — not on a sudden discovery that Leesburg needs a new tap for porch lights.

A supervisor is quoted in the same record stating the rule Democrats themselves made inevitable: if you approve a data center, you are approving a substation and a power line. Dominion has said as much. The board has no SCC authority to certificate transmission, yet its land-use votes obligate the wires fight and socialize the hosting cost onto neighborhoods and ratepayers.

Republican Supervisor Caleb Kershner (R-Catoctin) backed better industry screening and landscaping as a way to reduce community friction — shrubs and nicer fencing as the consolation prize for living next to the ninety-something-th substation. Resident rebuttals in the packet call that cosmetic: mesh-fence upgrades do not change who caused the load or who pays for the steel.

Theresa Ghiorzi’s notes cut through the oxygen-machine rhetoric. Homes were not losing power in a systemic Data Center Alley sense before the county and Dominion connected the campus fleet; Aspen is part of serving that fleet. Asking which substation Democrats have actually denied, she suggests, answers how serious the “we won’t approve every one” caveat is.

For SCC intervenors and voters, the Aspen re-approval is a clean exhibit. Democrat reliability speeches admit the grid stress. Democrat land-use history created the stress. Re-approving Aspen after a pause shows the board will not strand the campuses it entitled — even when residents hear life-safety language used to justify the next industrial substation in Ashburn.

Aspen will not be the last. With 30 to 40 more substations already described as on the board, every future legislative or grandfathered data-center square foot writes another line item in the same script: approve the load, then call the wires a moral duty. Loudoun Now’s account of the companion votes sits in the same packet thread, and PJM TEAC charts keep adding supplemental projects month after month.

Email the Leesburg City Council at: council@leesburgva.gov,
Mayor Kelly Burk — kburk@leesburgva.gov,
Vice Mayor Todd Cimino-Johnson — tciminojohnson@leesburgva.gov,
Council Member Zach Cummings — zcummings@leesburgva.gov,
Council Member Nicholas Krukowski — nkrukowski@leesburgva.gov,
Council Member Kari Nacy — knacy@leesburgva.gov,
Council Member Neil Steinberg — nsteinberg@leesburgva.gov,
Council Member Patrick Wilt — pwilt@leesburgva.gov,

Email the Board of Supervisors at:
Phyllis J. Randall (Chair, At-Large) – Phyllis.Randall@loudoun.gov,
Michael R. Turner (Vice Chair, Ashburn District) – Mike.Turner@loudoun.gov,
Juli E. Briskman (Algonkian District) – Juli.Briskman@loudoun.gov,
Sylvia R. Glass (Broad Run District) – Sylvia.Glass@loudoun.gov,
Caleb Kershner (Catoctin District) – caleb.kershner@loudoun.gov,
Matthew F. Letourneau (Dulles District) – Matt.Letourneau@loudoun.gov,
Kristen C. Umstattd (Leesburg District) – Kristen.Umstattd@loudoun.gov,
Laura A. TeKrony (Little River District) – Laura.TeKrony@loudoun.gov,
Koran Saines (Sterling District) – Koran.Saines@loudoun.gov

Email the Loudoun County School Board:
April Chandler, april.chandler@lcps.org,
Anne Donohue, anne.donohue@lcps.org,
Deana Griffiths, deana.griffiths@lcps.org,
Ross Svenson, ross.stevenson@lcps.org,
Kari LaBell, kari.labell@lcps.org,
Jon Pepper, jonathon.pepper@lcps.org,
Lauren Shernoff, lauren.shernoff@lcps.org,
Sumera Rashid, sumera.rashid@lcps.org,
Amy Riccardi, amy.riccardi@lcps.org,