At its evening meeting on February 5, 2018, the Nelson County Board of Zoning Appeals dismissed seven of Dominion’s eleven requests for variance to Nelson’s floodplain ordinance for lack of standing, and granted deferrals for a hearing on the remaining four. “Lack of standing” means that Dominion requested variances on properties it does not own or for which it has no legal right or easements; Virginia law does not permit such requests.

Dominion had requested deferment of the public hearing on all 11 properties through which they propose to route the ACP.  The BZA voted unanimously for both the seven dismissals and the four deferments.

Read Dominion’s January 31, 2018, request to defer the public hearing to a later date. (Note that the letter is addressed to Nelson County’s former Director of Planning, who left the position in spring 2017, not to Sandy Shackelford, the county’s Director of Planning for the past eight months. But we all know that Dominion documents are error-prone.)

There will be no public hearing on February 12, 2018, and at this time no future hearing has been scheduled.

Also at the February 5 meeting, Draper Aden, the engineering firm hired several weeks ago by the BZA to advise them on floodplain matters, admitted it had a conflict of interest after working with Dominion in the past.  At Draper Aden’s suggestion, the BZA retained Maryland-based engineering, consultation, and construction firm KCI Technologies for further engineering and technical review of the variance applications.