Virginians Will Pay for Amazon’s Power Lines

Citizens of Gainesville, VA, are reportedly being made to pay for Amazon’s $172 million power line installation, after local protesters successfully fought the lines being installed through their properties and a Civil War battlefield.

“For a little while earlier this year, it seemed as though 87-year-old Rosie Thomas and her neighbors in the small town of Gainesville, Va., had beaten Amazon. Virginia’s largest utility, Dominion Energy Inc., had planned to run an aboveground power line straight through a Civil War battlefield—and Thomas’s property—to reach a nearby data center run by an Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary,” reported Bloomberg. “After three years of petitions and protests in front of the gated data center, skirmishes punctuated by barking dogs and shooing police, Dominion agreed to bury that part of the line along a nearby highway, at an estimated cost of $172 million.”

“Within a month, however, the utility and state legislators had passed on the cost to Thomas and her fellow Virginians. The state’s House of Delegates approved Dominion’s proposal to raise the money needed for the Amazon line with an as-yet-unannounced monthly fee,” Bloomberg continued.

Upon hearing the news, Thomas, who is struggling to pay for her own monthly electricity bills, reportedly declared, “Lord, have mercy.”

Thomas is also reportedly concerned that it “may cost her the house she’s live in for half a century.”

“Amazon’s got all the money they ever needed,” she proclaimed. “They don’t need any more.”

This month, it was revealed that Amazon paid less than £4.6 million tax in the United Kingdom last year, despite tripling their profits.

Last year, President Trump called out Amazon for “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”

“Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt,” President Trump expressed. “Many jobs being lost!”

Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017