Madison County officials pressed the Rapidan Service Authority (RSA) on options for allocating roughly 400 new wastewater connections that will come online after a planned plant expansion expected in 2027.

Alan Nichols, the county’s planning and zoning administrator, told the Board of Supervisors that staff want RSA to reserve or prioritize part of the new capacity for nonresidential uses — restaurants, hotels and other businesses — as well as for emergency public‑health connections and the town’s redevelopment needs. “We’d like RSA to be able to hold and reserve a certain amount of capacity so that we have a business that wants to come in here,” Nichols said during the county’s regular meeting.

Nichols said county planning staff sketched allocation options and service‑area maps to steer new capacity toward areas identified for growth in the comprehensive plan. He also said RSA staff are resistant to holding capacity because “they’re counting on selling all of these connections to fund their infrastructure agreements.”

Board members and county staff discussed several paths forward: (1) negotiating an amended RSA policy that defines a service area and reserves a proportion of EDUs for commercial or public uses; (2) exploring funding mechanisms (including an idea to have the local IDA purchase a percentage of EDUs) so RSA can recover capital costs while the county preserves capacity for economic development; and (3) requiring transparent GIS and service maps from RSA so county planners can match infrastructure to comprehensive‑plan priorities.

County administration recommended that supervisors digest Nichols’s report, solicit comments from supervisors and the planning commission, and bring formal recommendations back at the board’s next meeting so staff can ask RSA representatives to respond. No formal allocation or purchase decision was made at the meeting.

Next steps outlined by staff include scheduling a follow‑up meeting with RSA to seek a published service‑area map and policy amendments, producing engineering estimates for prioritized CIP projects, and exploring grant or state funding to reduce the pressure on RSA to monetize every available connection.

If the board adopts a policy to reserve capacity, staff said it will return with specific recommended language for the RSA representatives and with quantifiable engineering and funding estimates to show how reserved EDUs could be supported without jeopardizing RSA’s capital financing.