After the Caroline County Board of Supervisors decided to remove the term “industrial cooling” from its Virginia Department of Environmental Quality permit application to withdraw water from the Rappahannock River, State Sen. Richard Stuart (R-Westmoreland County) said he would assist the county’s efforts to bring drinking water to its citizens.
“It is my understanding that the county is now seeking a permit for drinking water for the citizens, and yes, I absolutely support that and will help them every way I can to accomplish that,” Stuart told the Free Press in November.
But county officials are confused by Stuart’s definition of “help.”
The state legislator, who represents Caroline in the General Assembly, introduced a bill on Jan. 6 that would effectively end the county’s pursuit of water from the Rappahannock.
The supervisors abruptly halted their meeting Tuesday night after just 20 minutes to head to Richmond to speak out against Senate Bill 923, which would prevent any locality from withdrawing surface water and releasing it into another major river basin.
Caroline’s plan called for it to construct a water intake facility along the Rappahannock River and release water into the Mattaponi, which is part of the York River basin.
When Caroline’s supervisors arrived in Richmond Tuesday, they learned that Stuart was sick and not in attendance. His bill will now go before the Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources next week.
County Administrator Charles Culley said during Tuesday’s meeting that Stuart’s bill was not on the state’s Legislative Information Systems website (LIS) and that Director of Public Utilities Joey Schiebel located it on another site.
“It was not on the General Assembly’s LIS where you can track bills by numbers,” Culley said. “We didn’t know anything about it.”
Stuart did not return an email seeking comment.
He said in November that he would wait until the last minute to introduce any bills impacting water usage as a way to combat potential data center development (although Caroline had removed industrial cooling from its permit application).
“Unfortunately, [some data center companies] have hired every lobbyist in the state, it seems,” Stuart said. “And the minute they know what you’re going to do, they’re all swarming around like bees trying to kill your bill. So, I’m not going to introduce it until the very last minute.”
Senate Bill 923 states that “notwithstanding any other provision of law, the [DEQ] shall not issue a Virginia Water Protection Permit for a surface water withdrawal if more than 5% of the non-consumptive volume of the withdrawal will be returned to a different major river basin. For purposes of this subsection, ‘major river basin’ includes the Potomac-Shenandoah River Basin, the Rappahannock River Basin, the York River Basin, the James River Basin, the Chowan River Basin, the Roanoke River Basin, the New River Basin or the Tennessee-Big Sandy River Basin.”
The law would not apply to any water withdrawals existing before July 1 of this year.
Caroline’s supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution Tuesday night strongly opposing the bill. Jeff Sili, who represents the Bowling Green District, said that citizens in his district would be directly affected since town officials received a notice in August detailing violations of the Public Water Supplies law.
“This would inhibit our water withdrawal from the Rappahannock since we can’t discharge,” Sili said.
Port Royal District Supervisor Nancy Long, who was elected chair Tuesday, initially considered suggesting that two board members and two staff members head to Richmond, but other supervisors believed it would make more of an impression if all six showed up united. The board elected Long as chair and Clay Forehand vice chair, approved the consent agenda and conducted one presentation before dashing out the door.
“I’m going to apologize to everyone who showed up,” Long said. “However, this bill being thrown out like this on a night that we are holding a meeting on a project that this county has been working on heavily for many years is just not right. We need to stand up for you guys because we all need water to survive.”
Culley wrote in a letter to Dean Lynch of the Virginia Association of Counties expressing his concern about Stuart’s bill. Culley noted that the county has actively sought a water withdrawal permit from DEQ to obtain water from the Rappahannock for more than 10 years.
“We have a draft permit and have spent many millions of taxpayer dollars preparing all the necessary studies to obtain said permit,” Culley wrote. “This proposed bill will prevent Caroline County from ever obtaining any surface water. The county does not have a discharge permit for the Rappahannock, nor do I believe we would ever be given a discharge permit. I have been told that there are four of these inter-basin transfers in existence today and two of them are major amounts of water.”
The timing of Stuart’s bill also coincided with a Jan. 13 letter from DEQ to Schiebel, the director of public utilities, requesting additional information about the county’s plan to discharge into the Mattaponi and Polecat Creek. Eric Seavey, manager of the Office of Water Withdrawal Permitting, wrote to Schiebel that when the county removed industrial cooling and lowered its anticipated withdrawal from a maximum of 13.9 million gallons per day to 9 million gallons per day, no update on salinity modeling was provided.
Seavey informed Schiebel that DEQ contacted the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and determined that the new modeling could be done in less than a month and cost no more than $20,000. The county has 60 days to complete it. Seavey said the public hearing on the permit application will remain suspended until the modeling is complete.
“The updated modeling is necessary to accurately depict predicted changes in salinity based on the updated withdrawal and discharge volumes to determine if any impacts are predicted when compared to historical values,” Seavey wrote.
