The Caroline County Board of Supervisors and state Sen. Richard Stuart (R-Westmoreland County) appeared to reach a compromise Tuesday night.
Stuart presented a revised version of Senate Bill 923, which was initially designed to prevent inter-basin transfers from one major body of water in the state to another.
After some confusion over whether the bill would allow 3 million gallons of water per day to be discharged into another river basin, the final version permitted up to 6 million gallons of water per day to be discharged.
That would allow Caroline to proceed with a Virginia Department of Environmental Quality permit application requesting to withdraw 9 million gallons per day from the Rappahannock River and to discharge 5.8 million into Polecat Creek, which flows into the Mattaponi River.
Stuart’s bill was approved unanimously by the Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee and was referred to Finance and Appropriations. It still must be passed by the full Senate, House of Delegates and signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“What I’m trying to do is find a balance where Caroline can do what they need to do and the folks who are worried about this will believe they have some proper protections in place,” Stuart said.
The DEQ public hearing on the matter is suspended, but Caroline officials are hoping it will be reopened now that there is more clarity on Stuart’s bill.
Brent Hunsinger, river steward of Friends of the Rappahannock, spoke in favor of Stuart’s proposal.
Hunsinger told the committee that major inter-basin transfers are “very real and a present-day threat to the Rappahannock River.”
“In order to ensure that major river basins have adequate water for all beneficial uses of water, we feel that all water taken from the Rappahannock should be returned to the Rappahannock,” Huntsinger said. “Our hope is this bill will help certain permit applicants to make that decision for themselves.”
Representatives from the Virginia Farm Bureau Association, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the James River Association, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Virginia Conservation Network and League of Conservation Voters spoke in support of the bill.
Chris Pomeroy, a representative from the Virginia Municipal Drinking Water Association, spoke in opposition.
Pomeroy said the topic of limiting inter-basin transfers has been prevalent in the General Assembly for decades, noting that it was considered extensively in the 1980s by the state’s water commission and again in the 90s when Virginia Beach was planning a large transfer of 60 million gallons per day, which now supports the southern Hampton Roads water supply.
Pomeroy said that Hanover County is served by an inter-basin transfer that discharges into the York River, and that there are likely many more transfers in the state that the DEQ has not examined.
He said Stuart’s bill will have significant implications.
“I can’t think of a larger water supply policy change over the past few decades,” Pomeroy said.
The Virginia Association of Counties and the Virginia Municipal League also sent representatives to speak out against the bill.
Caroline supervisors Jeff Sili and Reginald Underwood also spoke out against the bill, but that was before it was amended to allow 6 million gallons of water to be discharged. Sili noted that the water in Bowling Green is currently undrinkable because of a high rate of gross alpha emitters.
“We live in a small, rural community. We’ve been working on a water permit for 10 years,” Sili said. “We’ve spent millions. We had a permit [request] in for five years. We got a temporary permit in March, and we have not finished our permit currently. We need this to actually go do the withdrawal.”
After SB923 was heard, Stuart presented SB1448. That bill seeks to provide another level of regulations on the data center industry, which he and many others fear will consume much of the state’s natural resources such as water and power.
The bill passed the committee 10-4 and is now pending in Finance and Appropriations.
The bill directs DEQ to develop a required permitting process for the construction and operation of a Resource Intensive Facility (RIF). Stuart wrote that the purpose of the bill is to “protect the Commonwealth’s natural resources, environment and public health.”
It requires the DEQ to consult with state agencies and stakeholders to assist in the development of any conditions and standards for an RIF.
“All this bill does is it sends this to DEQ, so they can do what I would call a siting permit,” Stuart said … “I’m not trying to stop data centers. I’m not trying to run them way.
“I understand that in the information age, they are a necessary evil. I understand Virginia wants to be the capital of the world for data centers, but I also understand that we’ve got to put responsible parameters around that.”
Hunsinger, representing Friends of the Rappahannock, also spoke in favor of this bill, saying that, “as 10s of millions of square feet of these resource-intensive facilities are coming into the Rappahannock watershed, it’s imperative that we begin to get a framework in place to help us handle the environmental impact from these.”
However, DEQ director Mike Rolband was not sold. Although Stuart hopes to task his organization with regulating the data center industry more thoroughly, Rolband did not seem interested.
He cited a report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission that did not find significant issues with data center oversight.
“So, adding another permit layer is sending the wrong message,” Rolband said. “What we should be sending is what we’re doing is working. We’re doing a good job. We’re protecting our water resources. We are protecting our air quality.
“So, I don’t think that the benefit of having DEQ to issue a new permit on top of the permits we already issue, hiring more staff to do more review, is going to make things better. That’s why we oppose this bill.”
