MARL Price Tag Climbs Toward $1.46 Billion After Loudoun Reroute and NextEra Cost Doubling

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — The Mid-Atlantic Reliability Link corridor into Data Center Alley is getting more expensive — and Loudoun’s own routing politics are part of the reason.

According to cost notes prepared by Loudoun resident Theresa Ghiorzi and dated around January 2026 PJM Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee materials, the MARL / Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek line’s cost has roughly doubled since PJM’s December 2023 approval posture. Between December 2023 and August 2024, she writes, the project rose by about $167 million — a 20 percent jump — to accommodate a Loudoun County government routing preference. She and her father, Alfred T. Ghiorzi, filed a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission complaint over that reroute, docketed as EL25-72.

Then the NextEra segment itself ballooned. Between August 2024 and January 2026, Ghiorzi’s notes say, NextEra’s share doubled from about $440.95 million to $844.80 million, while the FirstEnergy segment stayed near $616.15 million, bringing the overall package to approximately $1.46 billion. The project carries a stated return on investment of 9.8 percent; NextEra’s return on equity for costs above the original estimate drops to 0 percent under the note’s description, but the company would still seek to recover what it spends. Ordinary customers do not get a 0 percent option on the portion that still flows through rates and regional cost allocation.

That cost path tracks a July 31, 2024 letter Ghiorzi sent to the PJM Board of Managers opposing 2022 Window 3 scope changes for the 502 Junction–Woodside–Aspen 500 kV and Doubs corridor projects. She told Chairman Mark Takahashi and then-President and CEO Manu Asthana that the scope change raised cost by at least $167.48 million, left existing rights-of-way, and newly impacted properties in two counties of a neighboring state plus additional crossings of the C&O Canal — the 16th most-visited national park unit, with more than five million visitors a year, according to the Canal Trust figures she cites.

At the July 9, 2024 TEAC meeting, she wrote, FirstEnergy confirmed it would need to expand existing right-of-way onto previously unaffected parcels. Expanding an easement, she argued, is still greenfield siting — “greenfield parallel to existing lines” — plus a pure greenfield Maryland segment to dodge congestion at Doubs. Public talking points that the alternate route stays “within existing transmission line rights-of-way,” including remarks attributed to PJM’s Augustine Caven in local coverage, were false and misleading in her view. MARL, she wrote, would not have been pushed into Mid-Atlantic National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor processes if developers did not intend to use eminent domain.

Ghiorzi also challenged the claim of successful collaboration with “stakeholders and community members.” NextEra, she said she confirmed at TEAC, had not posted siting maps, alternate routes, community meetings, or comment cards in Loudoun County. Property owners along the existing Woodside–Doubs path — including her own household beside the easement — were not brought into the closed-door talks she says involved Piedmont Environmental Council and Waterford Foundation–aligned groups, the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance, the Board of Supervisors, and state representatives. The Board passed a routing-preference resolution, she wrote, without notifying owners along the existing lines or counterparts in Frederick and Montgomery Counties, Maryland.

Energy justice, in her letter, means you cannot keep forcing more infrastructure onto the same easement hosts. FirstEnergy right-of-way rules already bar buildings, pools, decks, sheds, septic systems, and wells inside the corridor. Adding another 75 to 100 feet beside existing 200-foot 500 kV and 100-foot 138 kV easements can create a 400-foot swath across lots measured in a few acres. Meanwhile Supervisor Mike Turner’s own white paper, which she attached, concedes Route 7 as a viable path into Data Center Alley that need not rely on eminent domain — a shorter highway-aligned option she estimated around 43 miles from the Loudoun border into the alley, avoiding multi-county greenfield takings in West Virginia and Maryland and two C&O Canal crossings.

The political backdrop is the same one All Virginia News has tracked on Golden-Mars and Line #514. Democratic majorities on the Loudoun Board spent years approving and grandfathering data centers that now demand interstate 500 kV imports. When those same local power centers then steer the import route to protect preferred viewsheds, the bill does not disappear — it grows, from a $167 million scope premium toward a $1.46 billion corridor. Ghiorzi urged PJM to reject the scope change and open a new competitive window so solutions that minimize private-property impacts could be scored on the same performance, cost, and risk criteria as the original Window 3 bids. Whether FERC, PJM, and state commissions treat MARL as reliability steel or as generation delivery for a Democratic-built data center boom will decide who pays — and whose land hosts the towers.

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,