HARRISBURG — Two Pennsylvania judges have dealt a setback to efforts by power companies to build a major new Pennsylvania-Virginia power line, saying the line is unnecessary and that alternatives should have been considered.

The $1.3 billion project proposed by Allegheny Energy Inc. and Dominion Resources Inc. has run into fierce opposition in Western Pennsylvania, although the power companies say the new line is needed to satisfy growing demand for electricity and help avoid blackouts.

In a recommendation released Thursday, the administrative law judges for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said the agency should deny an application to build the power line.

The recommendation is not final. Allegheny Energy, which would build the portion of the line in Pennsylvania, will have a chance to respond to it before the utility commission considers the matter.

The utility commission has no prescribed time frame in which it must issue a decision. However, rejecting the proposal could put Pennsylvania on a crash course with a 2005 federal law.

The law, which is being contested by Pennsylvania's utility commission, allows the federal government to override state regulators for power lines that are deemed to be critical to the nation's electric power needs and fall into specially designated corridors. Such approvals could, in theory, include the use of eminent domain law to compel private owners to sell their property.

The 500-kilovolt transmission line would run 240 miles from Washington County, Pa., across West Virginia to Loudoun County, Va., in an effort to supply more power to mid-Atlantic states.

But in their decision, judges Michael Nemec and Mark Hoyer said approving such a line would reward a lack of foresight and substandard maintenance of existing lines, while serving only to move cheap coal power from Appalachia to the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard.

Alternatives that do not include building the transmission line were not considered, and the line's construction could pave the way for the construction of more power plants in Western Pennsylvania, the judges said.

Opponents say the power lines are being peddled by power companies that get lucrative federal incentives to build them, and leave environmental devastation in their wake.

Power customers in the mid-Atlantic region would pay the construction costs.