If Google follows through with its idea to develop a data center campus on the 312-acre site it bought in the Botetourt Center at Greenfield, it will be the Western Virginia Water Authority’s largest single-location customer, WVWA Executive Director Mike McEvoy said.
Google purchased the land for $14 million but has not given a concrete timeline for the project.
Water is used in data centers to cool equipment. A draft agreement between the county and the water authority estimated that the potential data center campus could require between 2 million and 8 million gallons of water each day, as reported by Cardinal News.
Botetourt County provided a copy of the document to The Roanoke Times on Aug. 7, in which such details were redacted. The county board of supervisors has approved the draft agreement, but the WVWA board has not voted on the matter yet.
Botetourt County would be responsible for the entire cost of the water supply project up to $100 million, and it would be responsible for a portion of the cost up to $300 million, according to the agreement. The WVWA would be responsible for any remaining costs. How much the entire cost ends up being will depend on what exact water replacement plan is put in place, said Botetourt County Administrator Gary Larrowe.
The draft agreement outlines that the water authority will establish a water supply source development fund, to which the county will contribute $8 million throughout the project’s development.
In addition, the county is required to make annual deposits to the fund beginning prior to Dec. 31, 2028, until certain terms — outlined in the agreement — are met. The WVWA will make a $250,000 deposit into the fund until the county’s obligations for annual deposits end.
Carvins Cove is the WVWA’s largest reservoir, with the ability to hold around 6.4 billion gallons. The treatment plant there can treat up to 28 million gallons per day, McEvoy said. Currently, they are producing around 10 million gallons of water a day from the reservoir — up from the typical 7 million, as the reservoir is pretty full currently, he said.
Roanoke and Roanoke County jointly formed the WVWA in 2004. Since then, it has expanded to include Franklin County, Botetourt County, Boones Mill and Vinton. It also contracts to operate the water and wastewater systems for the Town of Fincastle and Craig-New Castle, according to its website.
On June 9, Roanoke City Mayor Joe Cobb sent a letter to Larrowe and Botetourt County Board of Supervisors Chair Amy White regarding the county’s request for increased water capacity from the WVWA. In it, Cobb wrote that in order for the city to offer formal support for increased water service to Greenfield, there are a number of concerns that must be addressed “to ensure the long-term sustainability and fairness of any agreement.”
The city proposed that Botetourt County replace the “up to 8 million gallons per day” the project could utilize within 10-15 years by creating new water sources or upgrading existing infrastructure.
The letter went on to request that Botetourt County pay the city 15% of the annual tax revenue generated by project until the water capacity is fully restored, and that the county require Google to pay for repairs, replacements or enhancements to city-owned assets at Carvins Cove Park that are directly impacted by water level fluctuations.
Roanoke County then sent a letter to Larrowe on June 23, stating that if Botetourt County entered an interim tax revenue sharing arrangement with the city, as it requested, Roanoke County would expect an equal arrangement as an equal partner in the formation of the WVWA and its “principal water supplies.”
“Our purpose in that was just that if Botetourt was considering doing something like that with the city, we just wanted to be on record and clear that our expectation would be the same thing for the county, but in the same breath saying we were not making that an ‘ask’ — in other words, we were not trying to initiate that,” Roanoke County Administrator Richard Caywood said in an interview.
Botetourt County has already taken all of these concerns into consideration, Larrowe said. The plan with the water authority “actually solves 99.9%” of the city’s request, he said. Upon seeing the final authorized agreement, he thinks that the request will be “certainly modified, if not removed,” he said.
“One of the things that the city had requested was that there end up being some kind of a water replacement plan, and I don’t think that they had ever really recognized, or maybe hadn’t known, that this was actually in place,” Larrowe said, referencing the draft agreement with the WVWA.
Google has said that if infrastructure upgrades are necessary due to its development, it will pay for them, Larrowe said.
Since the letter was sent on June 9, Cobb said he feels that progress toward addressing these concerns has been made. One of the city’s primary concerns was ensuring that the project wouldn’t impact citizens that rely on Carvins Cove, not just as a source for drinking water, but also recreationally.
“I think they’ve heard that, and I think they’ve taken that into consideration,” Cobb said in an interview Friday. “I feel a lot more confidence now that those questions that we raised initially are being addressed.”
As long as there is a “pretty solid plan related to water replacement” and addressing potential fluctuation in water levels, Cobb said he thinks the city’s concern about revenue sharing would be resolved.
“We’ve said from the beginning that we support this project. We think it’s a great benefit to our region,” he said.
“And alongside that, we just had some serious questions that I think, had we been involved earlier in the conversations, we probably could have gotten these addressed earlier, but that will help us all know going forward how to communicate some of these things earlier,” Cobb added.
The water authority wouldn’t have taken on the project if it didn’t think it could meet its requirements, McEvoy said. The WVWA models prospective large economic development projects on its system to determine if it has the water supply and pipe capacity necessary to support them.
“We can meet the project’s requirements without really any strain on our system,” he said.
The WVWA does recognize the need for another water source in the valley, however. Pre-COVID projections determined that the valley would need another water source by 2060, meaning that work on developing that source would need to start in 2040, McEvoy said. Additionally, localities, water authorities and other entities that manage water across the Commonwealth are currently working to update the statewide water supply plan, which is about a five-year process, he said.
“With this water supply initiative that’s underway right now, and really just the growth post-COVID in the Roanoke Valley, we thought it was actually a good idea to get started earlier,” he said. “So all these things kind of all came together at the right time.”
The WVWA plans to conduct a water supply study to look at a number of options, including heightening the dam at Carvins Cove to increase its capacity or increasing infrastructure at Spring Hollow Reservoir to bring more of that water out to its central service area, to determine which one makes the most sense for increasing water supply to Greenfield, McEvoy said. Another option is to use treated wastewater to satisfy industrial purposes, such as the cooling systems at the potential data center.
When Botetourt County became a WVWA member in 2015, its water was supplied almost exclusively from Carvins Cove. The county has been interested in “diversifying that source,” McEvoy said, so the authority engaged the county about possibly developing another water source. It agreed to look at the issue and help fund another source for the valley, McEvoy said.
“And, quite frankly, the development up there, the data center project, will allow the county to afford that. The revenue coming in will help them pay for developing a new water supply,” he said.
© 2025 The Roanoke Times, Va. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
