County supervisors and service-authority staff used the town hall to outline ongoing water and wastewater projects and to explain why the county renegotiated or rejected prior commercial permits.

Service-authority work: Supervisor Kathy Bender and service-authority staff said the county is installing interconnections — notably a line tying Hopyard to Perkins Corner — so the authority can decommission older plants and operate fewer treatment plants. Bender said the service-authority project connecting Hopyard to Perkins Corner will allow staff to reduce the number of plants from five to three and is tied to a consent-order deadline requiring Perkins Corner to cease operations by Jan. 1, 2027. A bond of roughly $4,000,000 was approved to fund related improvements and staff are applying for grants.

Water-permit and data-center concerns: Supervisors described rejecting projects that would stress wetlands or use potable water for nonconsumptive cooling. Multiple speakers said they would not permit data centers that draw treated drinking water to cool servers; supervisors cited prior Amazon/Birchwood discussions and an MOU in which county staff determined model inputs were flawed and the proposed project would have removed up to 2,000,000 gallons per day from the Rappahannock River under the original plan. Service-authority staff said $600,000 that a private firm proposed to provide would not have covered necessary system upgrades for county permitting when model corrections were applied.

Regulatory review and studies: County staff told the audience that the Rappahannock River’s total extraction capacity and the inventory of existing grandfathered intakes have not been comprehensively studied. Board members said a state-level study (legislative commission work) has been authorized to examine aggregate Rappahannock use and that the county is participating in efforts to improve river-use data and modeling.

Clarifying details extracted from the meeting:
- Perkins Corner consent order: county cited a completion/transition date of 2027-01-01.
- Service-authority bond: described as roughly $4,000,000 to begin improvements.
- Earlier MOU/permit issue: county staff said prior modeling used for the Birchwood/Amazon MOU was flawed and that proposed water contributions would not meet permit needs once corrected.

Speakers (whitelist for attribution): [{"name":"Kathy Bender","role_title":"Supervisor, Shiloh District","affiliation_type":"government"},{"name":"Dan Hamilton","role_title":"General Manager, King George Service Authority","affiliation_type":"government"},{"name":"Bryce Young","role_title":"County Engineer","affiliation_type":"government"}]

Topics: [{"name":"water_infrastructure","justification":"Discussion covered wastewater plant interconnections, consent orders and funding for upgrades.","scoring":{"topic_relevance":1.00,"depth_score":0.86,"opinionatedness":0.05,"controversy":0.45,"civic_salience":0.90,"impactfulness":0.88,"geo_relevance":1.00}} , {"name":"permits_and_regulation","justification":"Board described permit modeling, state review and a need for updated Rappahannock studies.","scoring":{"topic_relevance":0.95,"depth_score":0.72,"opinionatedness":0.08,"controversy":0.50,"civic_salience":0.85,"impactfulness":0.80,"geo_relevance":1.00}} ]

Authorities: [{"type":"policy","name":"Consent order (Perkins Corner)","citation":"consent order referenced by staff","referenced_by":["service_authority_projects"]},{"type":"other","name":"Amazon/Birchwood MOU (permit review)","citation":"MOU referenced in board discussion","referenced_by":["water_permit_review"]},{"type":"other","name":"Cloud infrastructure grant (2023)","citation":"state cloud infrastructure grant referenced in discussion","referenced_by":["economic_development"]}]

Actions: []

Discussion vs. decision: The meeting recorded status updates and requests for staff to pursue grants, apply bond proceeds and continue permit review; no final regulatory approvals were made at the town hall.

Provenance: [{"block_id":"s_1435.075","local_start":0,"local_end":200,"evidence_excerpt":"...connecting Hopyard to Perkins Corner so we can decommission an aging plant...it will be completed by 01/01/2027 because that's the consent order that Perkins Corner has to go goodbye.","tc_start":"00:22:55"},{"block_id":"s_1555.48","local_start":0,"local_end":220,"evidence_excerpt":"$600,000 they were gonna graciously give us for the water we needed for our whole system wouldn't even have been for the courthouse permit the data has found. So those were flawed numbers...When Amazon bought the Birchwood permit from Birchwood, They didn't talk about us...they got a minor modification and not a major modification.","tc_start":"00:25:55"}],

searchable_tags:["water","service_authority","consent_order","Rappahannock","permits"]