Engage Louisa is a nonpartisan newsletter that keeps folks informed about Louisa County government. We believe our community is stronger and our government serves us better when we increase transparency, accessibility, and engagement.
For the latest information on county meetings, including public meetings of boards, commissions, authorities, work groups, and internal county committees, click here.
According to Louisa County’s website, there are no county meetings in the coming week, June 22 through June 27.
Other meetings/events
Tuesday, June 23
Valley Link Transmission Company, Open House, Betty Queen Center, 522 Industrial Drive, Louisa, 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm.
Valley Link will hold an open house to discuss with community members revised proposed routes for its Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line. This is an open house with no formal presentation. Community members will have an opportunity to talk with Valley Link representatives individually and share information about their property. Click here for more information about the project and a detailed map.
“I recognize there were some hiccups with this particular project with some of the communication and coordination. Moving forward, I want to focus on the future and look for ways to improve our coordination with the county.”
-VDOT Residency Administrator Craig Simpson during a presentation to the board of supervisors last week. Simpson was referring to the six-week closure of Route 33 to allow a private contractor to perform work around Amazon Web Services’ North Creek Technology Campus. Residents didn’t find out about the closure until signs were installed a week prior.
EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure is expected to produce its own power for a sprawling data center campus in southern Louisa County, according to a member of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors.
During an appearance on Real Talk with Keith Smith last Friday, Louisa District Supervisor Manning Woodward said EdgeCore’s data center campus at the Shannon Hill Regional Business Park will be “behind the meter,” generating its own power as opposed to drawing it from the grid.
Woodward suggested the company could build a gas-powered facility on site, but he said the county hasn’t received any plans. He also suggested the company could deploy small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) though he noted “those are way off.”
There aren’t any SMRs currently producing power for commercial use in the United States. A growing number of data center developers are turning to behind-the-meter gas generation, in part, to bypass interconnection logjams in power-crunched markets.
EdgeCore didn’t immediately respond to questions about how it would source its power. In a press release announcing the campus last June, the company indicated it would work with Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC), which provides electricity to the area.
In the release, REC CEO John Hewa said the company, along with its affiliate, Hyperscale Energy, looked forward to working with EdgeCore “to power this project and build the infrastructure that enables its success.”
EdgeCore acquired the 697-acre Shannon Hill property from the Louisa County Industrial Development Authority for $42 million a year ago. It plans to develop a 1.1-gigawatt (GW) data center campus on the site, which sits just north of Interstate 64 in south-central Louisa. The campus will feature six data center buildings, covering 3.1 million square feet, according to EdgeCore’s website. The company said it plans to invest more than $17 billion in the facility.
When supervisors rezoned the property for industrial development in 2019, they approved “utility service major” as a by-right use, meaning EdgeCore can build an energy generation facility without a local public approval process. Depending on what type of generation it pursues, EdgeCore would still have to obtain state and, potentially, federal permits.
Woodward said during an interview on Smith’s show that EdgeCore “will bring its own power,” but insisted he isn’t sure of the company’s specific plans. He said height restrictions at the site prevent the construction of large cooling towers, which are incorporated in many gas-fired plants, but the company could build smaller facilities or, potentially, deploy SMRs down the road.
“I would assume that they’ll maybe be smaller gas plants or something, maybe small modular reactors,” Woodward said.
As County officials marketed the site for industrial development prior to its deal with EdgeCore, they touted the availability of gas as a selling point, highlighting its proximity to a Columbia Gas transmission line.
Columbia is considering expanding a section of the line through western Louisa, according to letters to impacted landowners. A preliminary map included in the agenda packet for a recent board of supervisors meeting shows the potential expansion area between Boswells Tavern and Shannon Hill.
“The end of the expansion has not been finalized, but the purpose is to serve increased demand along the line’s route,” Louisa County spokesperson Cindy King said in an email last month in response to questions about the map.
Per the map, the project is part of the TCO Connector, a $300 million expansion green lit by Columbia’s parent company, TC Energy, in late 2025. The project is designed to “provide capacity to serve new natural gas-fired power generation supporting forecasted electric generation growth, including expected data centre growth,” according to TC Energy’s website.
Data centers are giant warehouse-like facilities that house servers and computer chips that power artificial intelligence and cloud-based services, requiring a vast amount of electricity to keep their equipment humming. Their voracious demand for power has emerged as a key concern in Virginia, the global epicenter of the industry, where residents say the facilities are pushing their power bills upward and prompting a buildout of industrial energy infrastructure, like large transmission lines that slice through farms and neighborhoods.
Louisa County is in the path of Valley Link Transmission Company’s proposed Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line, an ultra-high voltage power line that, if approved by state regulators, would harness power from the Ohio River Valley mostly to feed data center development in Northern Virginia.
A corridor initially proposed for the Valley Link project crossed EdgeCore’s property, but a revised proposed route runs just to the west. The campus isn’t currently served by a large transmission line, which would presumably be necessary to deliver power should EdgeCore tap the grid.
Data center developers are embracing a bring-your-own-power approach to relieve strain on the grid and skip lengthy interconnection queues. On-site generation, powered by natural gas, is an increasingly popular option.
According to an analysis by Bloomberg News Energy Finance, two gigawatts of behind-the-meter gas generation are currently powering data centers worldwide, but another 114 GW are planned across 115 projects. About 90 percent of the projects are in the United States.
Critics of unconstrained data center growth see that as an alarming trend, arguing that building gas-fired facilities to power individual data center campuses will exacerbate climate change, thanks to increased carbon emissions, and contribute to harmful air pollution in surrounding communities.
Small modular reactors are being touted as a potential long-term and carbon-free power source. As the name suggests, SMRs are smaller, simpler versions of traditional nuclear reactors, which harness nuclear fission—the process of splitting atomic nuclei into smaller nuclei—to produce energy. SMRs typically produce up to 300 megawatts (MW) of power, about a third of the generation capacity of one of the twin Westinghouse reactors operating at Dominion’s North Anna Power Station.
While the technology has only been deployed for commercial generation in Russia and China, SMRs are in various stages of development in the United States. For decades, the US military has used a version of the technology to power nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) two years ago announced a partnership with Dominion to explore building an SMR at North Anna. AWS is building a data center campus on 150 acres adjacent to the plant. Dominion officials have offered few specifics about their efforts to advance the technology, but they’ve suggested an SMR could be in operation within the next decade.
There are other options for behind-the-meter power, including fuel cells and renewables like solar and wind combined with battery storage. In some cases, data center developers use behind-the-meter power as a bridge until they can connect to the grid. Some data center campuses have deployed microgrids, which allow them to offload power to the grid at peak demand, according to the website Data Center Knowledge.
Could Louisa County build another reservoir?
Aside from the insatiable demand for power, the data center industry consumes a lot of water, which cools the computer equipment inside the facilities. Woodward also touched on that issue during his appearance on Smith’s show.
In response to a question submitted by a Lousia resident, Woodward said the county is confident there’s adequate water in the Northeast Creek Reservoir to meet the needs of a pair of AWS data center campuses under development in the county’s Technology Overlay District. The complexes—one next to North Anna and the other across the street from the reservoir in central Louisa—will draw raw water for cooling from the 187-acre impoundment.
At full buildout and peak demand, the campuses could pull as much as seven million gallons of water per day from the reservoir, according to water service agreements between AWS and the county. But county and company officials insist their actual water use will be far less, noting that peak demand refers only to the hottest days of the year.
“They only have to use water for cooling when it reaches 88 degrees or higher, so most days [they’ll rely] on the ambient [air] temperature [for cooling],” Woodward said, adding that the cooling technology AWS employs has become less water-intensive over the last few years.
The reservoir has a daily safe yield of 3.2 million gallons, based on a capacity study conducted three years ago. Current users, including the Town of Louisa, tap between 300,000 and 500,000 gallons daily.
Woodward said EdgeCore would use a closed-loop, air-chilled system to cool its equipment, which uses far less water than the industry standard. The water the facility does use will come from the James River, not the reservoir. The James River Water Authority, a partnership between Louisa and Fluvanna counties, is expected to finish building a waterline to the river by the fall of 2027 to feed development along the Interstate 64 corridor.
Though Woodward expressed confidence in the reservoir’s ability to support data center development, he said the county is beginning to discuss the possibility of building another reservoir, noting that the Northeast Creek impoundment is the sole source of public drinking water for central Louisa, an area that’s experiencing steady growth.
Concerns about the public water supply have been top of mind lately because of sustained drought. The lack of rainfall prompted the Louisa County Water Authority earlier this month to impose mandatory water restrictions on customers who rely on public wells at Zion Crossroads and Lake Anna. The restrictions don’t apply to the reservoir.
“We’re realizing that even without the data center situation, it is not good to just have one water source for the central part of the county, so somewhere along the line...I would certainly think within 10 years…we’re going to probably wind up building another reservoir somewhere,” Woodward said, noting that building the infrastructure would entail a years-long permitting process.
County officials haven’t publicly discussed building a second reservoir—at least not recently. But Louisa County Water Authority General Manager Pam Baughman told Engage Louisa two years ago that officials were in the early stages of exploring what she termed “incremental upgrades” to its infrastructure “to ensure there is enough water for everyone.” Her comments came as the county endured a moderate drought and AWS began developing its data centers.
Baughman said the upgrades could include raising the reservoir by as much as six feet to increase its capacity and/or piping water from the James to central Louisa.
“Decisions on who, what, where, when or how have not occurred or been fully vetted to date,” she said at the time.
Note: Due to time constraints related to other news coverage, this week’s edition doesn’t include a planned article about the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s public hearing for a draft discharge permit for Amazon Web Services’ Lake Anna Technology Campus. We hope to cover the issue again soon. In the meantime, check out The Central Virginian’s coverage here. Check out the Virginia Mercury’s coverage of issues surrounding data center discharge here.
The Louisa County Board of Supervisors on Monday night convened for its second June meeting, discussing two notable transportation projects and holding five public hearings, four of which centered on expanding Agricultural and Forestal Districts. Check out a recap below. (meeting materials, video)
Supes, VDOT talk Route 33 closure
A representative of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and members of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors chalked up the surprise announcement of a major road closure to poor communication and stressed the importance of better coordination going forward.
Louisa County said in a press release on Wednesday, June 10, that a segment of Jefferson Highway (Route 33), adjacent to the Northeast Creek Reservoir and Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) North Creek Technology Campus, would close for six weeks, from Monday, June 15 to Friday, July 31. A longer section of the road—from the intersection of Routes 33 and 22 in the Town of Louisa to Pendleton Road (Route 522)—is limited to local traffic, motorists traveling to or from destinations along the route.
The county said the closure would allow for a range of road and utility work, including the installation of a new guardrail system and the placement of a new culvert and water main under the road. Though the county didn’t say so directly, the work is being performed by a private contractor on AWS’s behalf.
VDOT said in a Facebook post on the Friday before the closure that the work is “associated with a private land-development project,” and being “carried out by their contractor, not as part of any state-funded VDOT maintenance or construction project.”
Impacted residents and other community members didn’t find out about the closure until signs were installed in the Town of Louisa and near Cuckoo on June 8, just a week prior to the start of work.
Neither the county, VDOT, AWS nor Clark Construction, the general contractor for the data center campus, had publicly shared details about the project prior to the signs’ installation. That left residents along Route 33 surprised and frustrated, and scrambling for details.
Those details were slow to materialize as the county didn’t issue its press release until two days later. The release included information about the scope of work and a map showing where the road would close and the recommended detour route.
Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams, who represents the impacted area, addressed the issue during VDOT’s quarterly report on Monday night. Adams expressed frustration with what he termed a “lack of communication” from VDOT and the project applicant, noting that he didn’t find out about the closure until the afternoon the signs were posted. He said that left him in a difficult position as residents called him with questions he couldn’t answer.
“From about 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock, my phone blew up. People were coming home. They saw the signs [and wanted to know] what’s going on,” Adams told newly-minted VDOT Residency Administrator Craig Simpson, who's been on the job about two weeks.
As the county put together its press release, Adams said that VDOT was slow to respond, exacerbating the problem. He said the department appeared to be trying to distance itself from the issue, pointing to an email in which, he said, VDOT claimed that the county had signed off on the project’s timeline. Adams said that while county officials knew Route 33 would close at some point this summer, they weren’t aware of the exact dates and would’ve liked more notice.
Moving forward, Adams said he hoped VDOT and the county could improve their communication for the sake of residents.
“I think we all need to strive to do better for our citizens. I think they deserve that,” Adams said, adding, “We want to be a partner. We want to work with you. We want to get those messages out. We just need a willing partner on the other side.”
Other supervisors also chimed in.
Jackson District Supervisor Toni Williams acknowledged that Simpson has only been in his job for a couple weeks and said that he and county officials would get along fine so long as all parties are “open and honest.”
“I think the expectation going forward is communicate with us and the staff so that we can talk to the citizens and just own it if and when you mess up,” Williams said.
Simpson said he’s eager to move forward and identify ways to ensure better communication.
“I recognize there were some hiccups with this particular project with some of the communication and coordination. Moving forward, I want to focus on the future and look for ways to improve our coordination with the county,” he said.
Check out the county’s FAQ about the closure here.
Hamilton Road bridge replacement moves forward
It’s the end of an era for the Hamilton Road Bridge.
VDOT Residency Administrator Craig Simpson told supervisors on Monday night that the department is set to begin a multi-month project to replace the steel Pratt pony truss bridge, which has carried traffic over the South Anna River in western Louisa County for more than a century. Simpson said work would commence later in the week with the project expected to be complete this fall.
VDOT closed the circa 1917 bridge nearly a year and a half ago due to structural deficiencies. Prior to its closure, the bridge had weight limits that prevented it from accommodating some farm equipment and emergency vehicles. Citing public safety concerns, supervisors asked VDOT to upgrade the structure.
VDOT plans to replace the bridge with a modified Warren type truss bridge, which will be able to handle all legal loads, including modern emergency vehicles, farm equipment and school buses. The agency has said the structure provides the “closest appearance to the existing bridge” of any available to VDOT. The existing bridge is classified as a contributing resource in the Green Springs National Historic Landmark District, a federally recognized historic district.
The bridge’s removal marks the culmination of a years-long feud over its fate. VDOT first attempted to replace the structure more than a decade ago, but the effort stalled amid pushback from Historic Green Springs, Inc. (HGSI), a preservation group, and residents in the historic district. Supervisors revived efforts to rehabilitate the bridge three years ago, citing its continued deterioration and concerns about emergency response times in the area.
For its part, HGSI pressed VDOT to restore the bridge, highlighting its historical significance. In documents submitted to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the group described the bridge as “an excellent example of historic transportation history,” noting that it’s the last “remaining bridge built under the newly formed Virginia State Highway Commission,” a precursor to VDOT. The group called the bridge “a critical feature in celebrating the Commonwealth of Virginia’s legacy of transportation innovation.”
As an alternative, the group presented VDOT with a plan to preserve the bridge while allowing vehicles to go around it on a new structure, HGSI President Rae Ely told Engage Louisa last year.
The department determined that restoring the bridge would be both time-consuming and costly and, according to Ely, rejected the group’s preservation plan.
Simpson said the department plans to salvage a portion of the bridge and transfer it to Louisa County. County Administrator Christian Goodwin said the county could then memorialize the bridge on-site.
“We’d talked about putting a small concrete pad down there and just setting [part of the bridge] on the pad and putting a coat of paint on it,” Goodwin said, noting the idea had come out of stakeholder meetings.
The idea didn’t sit well with Jackson District Supervisor Toni Williams, who called it “ridiculous.”
Green Springs District Supervisor Rachel Jones, who represents the area, defended the plan, describing it as an “olive branch” to community members who want to preserve the structure and share its history.
“This came out of many talks and discussion with the Historic District in Green Springs and it memorializes the fact that this was a historic bridge. This bridge has been there for a very long time,” Jones said, adding that community members routinely visit the bridge while walking in the area.
Goodwin said it’s up to the board whether it wants to memorialize the bridge on-site, noting the county hasn’t received any cost estimates.
Ahead of Valley Link open house, supes take more action related to proposed transmission line
Ahead of a second open house for Valley Link Transmission Company’s proposed Joshua Falls to Yeat transmission line, the board of supervisors continued to ramp up its opposition to the project and to prepare for the potential buildout of more electric transmission infrastructure in the future.
At Monday’s meeting, the board approved an amendment to county code that establishes conditional use permit (CUP) requirements and performance standards for electrical transmission facilities.
Supervisors also sent a letter to the regional transmission organization, PJM, asking its board of managers to re-examine Valley Link’s project in light of recent changes. In addition, the board submitted a list of detailed questions to Valley Link, pressing for more information about the line and its potential impacts.
Joshua Falls to Yeat is a proposed 765-kilovolt (kV) power line slated to travel some 115 miles from just outside Lynchburg to southeastern Culpeper. Under development by Valley Link, a partnership between Dominion Energy and several other utility companies, the project is designed to harness power generated in the Ohio River Valley to meet burgeoning regional demand in Northern and Central Virginia, driven largely by data centers.
The line, the biggest ever proposed for construction in Dominion’s territory, is slated to travel through Louisa for about 20 miles along one of two preliminary routes, slicing through farms and forests and passing just a few hundred feet from some homes.
The project has roiled residents and county leaders who’ve argued that Dominion and its partners are sacrificing rural communities for economic development to the north. They’ve vowed to fight the project when it’s considered by state regulators. Valley Link is expected to submit its application and preferred route to the State Corporation Commission this fall, the entity that approves large-scale transmission lines in Virginia.
CUP requirements
County officials described the CUP requirements as another tool it can tap to object to the line and as a way to ensure it has a say in the siting of transmission facilities going forward.
“This is another tool that we are putting in our ordinances to help us with the Valley Link project and projects like Valley Link so that the county continues to have a seat at the table,” Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams said.
The CUP requirements apply to substations and all associated “switching stations, and related infrastructure for electric transmission lines operating at 69 kilovolts or greater,” per the approved ordinance. That includes new transmission facilities and expansions and modifications of existing facilities “that materially increase capacity and footprint.”
The amendment doesn’t apply to the transmission lines themselves as the power to approve the lines and their routes lies with the SCC.
The ordinance requires electric transmission facilities to obtain a CUP and sets standards for the infrastructure, requiring applicants to demonstrate that proposed facilities comply with the county’s Comprehensive Plan; minimize impacts on adjacent properties and surrounding communities; and are compatible with existing land uses in its vicinity. It also requires applicants to evaluate alternative routes, including using existing transmission corridors and co-locating within existing utility easements.
In addition, the ordinance includes a provision related to buffering and setbacks, requiring “reasonable separation” from homes, public facilities and agricultural operations. It says the board of supervisors will set minimum standards based on voltage.
The amendment also sets standards for environmental protection, like minimizing land disturbance, and requires a construction management plan, among other provisions.
Letter to PJM
In its letter to PJM, the county urges the regional transmission organization to take another look at Valley Link’s proposal in light of recent changes. (Read the letter).
PJM oversees the power grid in all or part of 13 states, including Virginia, and is tasked with evaluating and green-lighting proposed transmission lines and generation facilities, in part, to ensure there’s an adequate and reliable power supply. The organization okayed Valley Link’s proposal in February of 2025, setting the stage for the SCC’s consideration.
But the county argues in its letter that Valley Link’s current proposal is fundamentally different from what PJM’s board approved, noting that the route’s starting point has changed and its “structures have grown,” from an estimated 135 to 160 feet tall to 150 to 175 feet. It asks the organization to account for those gaps “before the line advances further on PJM’s authority.”
“The County asks the Board to do what its own process requires: to confirm that the line Valley Link is now advancing, at its current route and current structure height, is the line the reliability analysis supports, and to make the underlying need and reliability record available to the communities that would carry it. If the project has changed materially from what the Board approved, the basis for its continued advancement on the 2024 RTEP approval should be reexamined,” the letter says.
Questions for Valley Link
Supervisors also submitted 28 questions to Valley Link and requested answers by June 19. The questions cover a range of topics, from the load forecasting used to justify the line’s construction to the project’s potential impacts on the county’s historical resources and agricultural land. (Read the questions).
Beyond the code amendment and letters, Board Chair Duane Adams said during Monday’s meeting that a regional coalition of impacted localities will hold a second meeting “to plan collaboratively to continue to oppose this project.” The group initially convened in early April, and the localities have signaled they intend to work together as the project moves through the approval process.
Valley Link will hold an open house in Louisa to gather community feedback on proposed routes released in late May. The meeting is set for this Tuesday, June 23, from 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm at the Betty Queen Center, 522 Industrial Drive, Louisa. Click here for more information about the project.
Supes add nearly 1,800 acres to Agricultural and Forestal Districts
Following statutorily required public hearings, the board agreed to expand four Agricultural and Forestal Districts (AFD) by a combined 1,797 acres. That includes approving landowners’ requests to extend the Gold Mine Creek AFD in northwestern Louisa by 253.6 acres; add 53.8 acres to the Trevilian Station AFD in western Louisa; expand the Shelton’s Mill AFD in the eastern end of the county by 157.5 acres; and add 1,332.9 acres to the Indian Creek AFD in south-central Louisa.
AFDs are a conservation tool that allow landowners to voluntarily prohibit development on their property for 10-year periods. In return, participating parcels are assured enrollment in the Use Value Taxation program, colloquially referred to as “land use.” The program places a special assessment on land used for agriculture, horticulture or forestry based on its “use value,” instead of its fair market value, translating into substantially lower tax bills.
In addition, AFDs place limits on local governments’ ability to enact ordinances that “would unreasonably restrict or regulate farm structures or farming and forestry practices,” per state code.
Since joining county staff last September, Agricultural Development and Land Conservation Coordinator Maggie Brakeville has prioritized growing the districts. Brakeville was hired to identify ways to preserve working rural lands as the county experiences significant residential and industrial growth.
In the first half of 2026, the county’s 14 AFDs have grown by a combined 3,078.5 acres with another roughly 5,000 acres moving through the public approval process, including Monday’s additions, Brakeville said.
Brakeville said the county is on pace to set a record for the most additions in a year, surpassing the standard set in 1998 when the Patrick Henry, Green Springs and South Anna AFDs were formed.
“[The county added] 9,693 [acres in 1998], with most of that being Green Springs. We are just 1,618 acres from surpassing that total to have the most acres ever in a year,” Brakeville said.
Click here for contact information for the Louisa County Board of Supervisors.
Find agendas and minutes from previous Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings as well as archived recordings here.
Click here for contact information for the Louisa County School Board.
Click here for minutes and agendas for School Board meetings. Click here for archived video.
Click here to access past editions of Engage Louisa.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.