CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors is stopping where they are, sticking with the ordinance they adopted in April regulating data centers. This after county staff recommended “to pause further work on this topic to allow new industry regulations to coalesce”.

County Development Process Manager Bill Fritz addressed the board Wednesday, saying, “We’re concerned that any ordinance we adopt now risks becoming out of date or that, as data centers evolve, we may not have regulations that address the impacts that they may cause.”

“As we’ve continued to do research, data centers and data center design and operations are evolving,” Fritz said.

Staff also noted the General Assembly is still crafting state law in light of evolving data centers, and Sen. Creigh Deeds told Cville Right Now the legislature is likely to take up legislation against this coming session that were not adopted last session.

White Hall Supervisor Ann Mallek agreed during the meeting, and told WINA Morning News, “The concerns everyone on the board has is how to meet the demands of service for water and electricity, etc., without damaging what’s available to the rest of the community.”

“While it is a shiny toy and lots of revenue to some counties, the impacts in those counties have been severe,” she said.

Personally, Mallek said she is not the biggest fan of the data center route toward economic development.

“I’m most interested in businesses which bring employment to our residents, and especially our young residents and people wanting to change careers at whatever age, and they don’t have that,” Mallek said. “It’s a big storage place with very few employees.”

Supervisors on April 2 adopted limited regulations for data centers, and a month later adopted a resolution of intent to consider additional regulations and the creation of an overlay district. On Aug. 8, the Board had a work session to discuss potential regulations and overlay districts for data centers. The April ordinance essentially requires anyone applying to construct a data center over 40,000 square-feet to seek a special use permit.

After discussions with the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and the Albemarle County Service Authority, staff is assured water supply is adequate to supply data centers constructed by-right up to 40,000 square-feet. Beyond that, the water grows murky, so to speak, as to water and electricity supply to anything larger, and that’s where it’s difficult to determine what to do because of evolving design and operations changers.

Mallek noted there are several smaller data centers in Albemarle County that had been operating for years that no one really knew about. “That is a reassuring thing,” Mallek said.

“Where the police department is in Albemarle County, the old Wachovia building out there, that was their data center,” Mallek noted. “But it was a bunch of filing cabinets, it was not a 65-foot tall, 200,000 square-foot building full of computer servers generating heat and everything else.”

She said county zoning was not prepared for that, so the April ordinance was enacted and there’s reassurance that a business can just come in and build a large center “”without any of those other requirements in place”.

Mallek said she feels much better about the situation now, and agrees to “stop where we are now, and let the industry mature and let some more certain information be available so a future board can consider if anything needs to change”.