AWS data center development prompts request to reopen quarry; BOS to consider light agenda; General Assembly budget proposal includes some funding to fight HAB at Lake Anna; News roundup
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.
This week in county government: public meetings, March 3 through March 8
For the latest information on county meetings including public meetings of boards, commissions, authorities, work groups, and internal county committees, click here. (Note: Louisa County occasionally schedules internal committee/work group meetings after publication time. Check the county’s website for the most updated information).
Monday, March 3
Louisa County Board of Supervisors, budget work session, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 3:30 pm. (agenda, livestream)
Louisa County Board of Supervisors, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 6 pm. The board will convene in closed session at 5 pm. (agenda packet, livestream)
Louisa County School Board, Central Office Administration Building, 953 Davis Highway, Mineral, 7 pm. (agenda, livestream)
Wednesday, March 5
Water/Sewer Committee, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 2 pm.
Other meetings/events
Monday, March 3
Mineral Town Council, special meeting, Mineral Town Hall, 312 Mineral Ave., Mineral, 6:30 pm. At publication time, an agenda wasn’t publicly available.
The Mineral Town Council will convene for a special meeting to announce candidates under consideration for an appointment to a vacant council seat.
Additional information about Louisa County’s upcoming public meetings is available here.
Interested in taking your talents to one of the county’s numerous boards and commissions? Find out more here including which boards have vacancies and how to apply.
Quote of the week
“[Harmful Algal Blooms are] an issue that will take a coordinated effort from local, state and federal funding to address. It doesn’t appear that Richmond understands the magnitude of the problem on a local or statewide basis. To date, the federal response has been basically zero. Healthy water quality at Lake Anna, Smith Mountain Lake, Gaston, Kerr and a multitude of others should be a much higher priority of our elected state and federal representatives.”
-Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams on the need for state and federal support to address Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) at Lake Anna and beyond.
Check out the article below to learn more about state funding to address HAB.
AWS data center development prompts request to reopen quarry
A quarry that’s been shuttered for nearly 20 years could resume extracting tons of granite from the earth to support construction of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center campus.
New York-based Dalrymple Realty Corporation has asked Louisa County for permission to reopen a quarrying operation just west of Wares Crossroads. The quarry, which Dalrymple acquired in 1994 and operated as Cedar Mountain Stone, first began extracting rock in 1978. It closed in 2007. (land use application)
Now, Dalrymple wants to resume operations at the facility, situated on a 53-acre agriculturally zoned parcel at 2660 Mt. Pleasant Church Road (Route 624). The company says it intends to reopen the quarry mainly to supply stone to the Lake Anna Technology Campus where AWS plans to build seven data centers, covering more than 1.7 million square feet. The campus, located on 150 acres at the corner of Kentucky Springs Road (Route 652) and Haley Drive (Route 700) adjacent to the North Anna Power Station, sits about eight miles east of the quarry.
“Circumstances change, and the demand for stone from the quarry has increased such that the Applicant has determined that it is cost-effective both for it, and for its customers, to reopen the quarry,” wrote Marian Harders, a land use planner with Walsh, Colucci, Lubeley, and Walsh, the law firm representing Dalrymple, in an application submitted to Louisa County in early February. “The Applicant’s immediate purpose in reopening the quarry now is to provide essential stone for Amazon’s Lake Anna Tech Campus construction. It may also provide stone to other customers. The Applicant proposes to reopen for the extraction of granite.”
Since Dalrymple shuttered the quarry, Louisa County has revised its zoning code, no longer permitting resource extraction in A-2 zoning—the property’s current designation—but allowing the use with a conditional use permit (CUP) in the A-1 designation. Dalrymple is asking the county to rezone, from A-2 to A-1, the 53 acres encompassing an existing quarry and an adjacent 34-acre parcel where it plans to remove an existing building (tax map parcels 27 73, 27 70). The company is also asking for a CUP for both properties.
The company owns another 36 acres on the other side of Mt. Pleasant Church Road that isn’t included in the proposal.
Dalrymple’s request requires public hearings in front of the planning commission and the board of supervisors and an affirmative vote by the latter body. As part of the public approval process, Louisa County’s Community Development Department will hold a neighborhood meeting to give the applicant an opportunity to discuss the project with neighbors. At publication time, the meeting hasn’t been scheduled.
In its application, Dalrymple contends that reopening the quarry would have limited impact on public services and would support the county’s economic development goals. Beyond providing stone for large-scale industrial development, the facility would employ 12 people. The applicant says it “seeks to hire locally where possible.”
Though the subject property is tucked amid farms in an area designated as rural on the Future Land Use Map in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, Dalrymple argues that resuming resource extraction at the site makes sense given its historical use as a quarry. The company also notes that permitting the use in the area is consistent with the location of the county’s other active quarry, which is also in an area designated as rural.
The quarry’s reopening would significantly increase heavy truck traffic on Mt. Pleasant Church Road and several surrounding roadways. And Dalrymple focuses much of its application on addressing that issue.
According to a traffic analysis from Timmons Engineering included in the application, the quarry would average 175 loads per day, equating to about 18 truck trips per hour, assuming a roughly 10-hour workday. The first trip would take place just before 7 am with trucks visiting the site for about 15 to 20 minutes throughout the day.
Dalrymple would install a new entrance off Mt. Pleasant Church Road to access the site. The entrance would be located about 1,100 feet north of an existing access point, which would no longer be used.
According to Timmons, the proposed entrance “will provide a safer means of ingress/egress (with respect to sight distance) and allow for more efficient circulation and on-site storage of vehicles.” Heavy trucks would be required to turn north when leaving the quarry due to a weight-restricted bridge on Mt. Pleasant Church Road to the south.
As heavy trucks would primarily travel to and from the Lake Anna Technology Campus, they’d be restricted to seven roads, per a proposed traffic management plan: Mt. Pleasant Church Road (Route 624); Chalklevel Road (Route 625); Mansfield Road (Route 613); Zachary Taylor Highway (Route 522); New Bridge Road (Route 208); Kentucky Springs Road (Route 652); and Haley Drive (Route 700). Both Louisa County and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) have agreed to the route, according to the application.
Dalrymple’s engineers say the route doesn’t pose any significant safety risks and has the carrying capacity to handle the anticipated volume of truck traffic. They also note that the new roundabout at the intersection of Routes 208 and 522 “will safely and efficiently accommodate the increase in heavy vehicle traffic.”
If the board of supervisors doesn’t greenlight Dalrymple’s request, AWS contractors are expected to source gravel from a Cedar Mountain Stone quarry in southern Culpeper County with trucks travelling down 522 before heading to the campus.
As part of its request, Dalrymple proposes 13 proffered conditions. The conditions set rules for the quarry’s daily operations and mandate that the business provide compensation to both Louisa County and surrounding property owners.
Among other provisions, the conditions limit the quarry’s operating hours to between 6 am and 6 pm Monday through Friday and 6 am and 4 pm on Saturdays, limit blasting activity to once every seven days and require the company to provide training to Louisa County Emergency Services personnel that’s specific to situations they may encounter at the quarry.
The conditions also require the applicant to provide to the Louisa County Board of Supervisors 5,000 tons of crushed gravel “to be used in connection with the construction and maintenance of County public facilities;” mandate that the company provide at least 100 tons of free aggregate material on a one-time basis to any property owner within two miles of the project at the property owner’s request; and require that Dalrymple make a $2,500 annual contribution to the county to support fire and emergency medical services.
Though the quarry must seek county approval to resume operations, Dalrymple says it remains in good standing with the Virginia Department of Energy (DOE), which regulates and permits mining and related resource extraction in the state. Dalrymple notes that, when the quarry closed in 2007, it received a temporary cessation permit. Since then, it says it’s “obtained all necessary inspections, permits, and continuations of Temporary Cessation since activity ceased.”
Though permits from DOE remain in place, the company says it would be required to obtain an air permit from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) related to its use of equipment essential to operating the quarry. DEQ issues several types of emissions permits to regulate the operation of certain stationary sources of air pollution, according to its website.
Dominion's State of the Station report highlights brief BOS agenda
The Louisa County Board of Supervisors on Monday night will convene for its first March meeting with a light agenda, including one public hearing, on tap. Prior to their regular meeting, supervisors will hold their third work session of the Fiscal Year 2026 budget cycle where they’ll continue to consider funding for outside agencies, organizations that aren’t formally part of county government but partner with the locality to provide services.
Dominion to deliver State of the Station report
Representatives from Dominion Energy will deliver their annual State of the Station address, updating the board on the performance and operation of the North Anna Nuclear Power Station (NAPS), among other NAPS-related matters. The address will be accompanied by a public hearing.
The yearly report and hearing are required under a 1984 settlement agreement between Dominion’s predecessor, Virginia Electric and Power Company, and Louisa County. The agreement stipulates that the company will participate in an annual public meeting called by the county and address the facility’s general operations and economic impact as well as the storage of high and low-level nuclear waste and health and environmental issues.
Read the report here.
BOS agenda includes three discussion items, one presentation
Monday night’s agenda includes three discussion items and one presentation.
In the lone presentation, the board will get an update from Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC).
After briefly defunding the school last April over concerns that it allowed a pro-Palestinian student group to show a film on campus, the board allotted $5,859 to the college in the FY25 budget. That figure represents about 10 percent of the funding PVCC received from the seven localities in its service area, which is proportional to Louisa County’s enrollment share. The college requested $6,154 for the coming fiscal year.
The school relies on local contributions to support program expenses that aren’t paid for by state funds, including student support activities, parking and safety, and learning opportunities designed to improve access for citizens like dual enrollment.
The board will discuss three items: “Subdivision Ordinance and Associated Input from the Virginia Department of Transportation;” “Private Roads in Louisa County;” and “Workgroup and Committee Expectations.”
Regarding the discussion of private roads, the meeting materials include a draft bond protocol, which lays out a pathway for improving private roads, assuming a sufficient bond is available, among other processes. (draft)
With respect to committee expectations, there’s a draft memo from Deputy County Administrator Chris Coon detailing a list of expectations for board-appointed positions on 11 county boards, committees and commissions. (draft memo)
Coon got a greenlight from the board in January to draft guidelines for citizens who serve on everything from the Louisa County Planning Commission to the Tourism Advisory Committee. The draft memo details the purpose of each committee and includes broad expectations that would apply to all appointees.
General Assembly budget proposal includes some funding to fight HAB at Lake Anna
The General Assembly in late February passed proposed amendments to the biennial state budget that include funding to fight Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) at Lake Anna. But it’s not as much as county officials had hoped.
The assembly’s budget proposal allocates $250,000 to support ongoing efforts to mitigate and remediate HAB in the current fiscal year. That money would be tacked onto $500,000 approved in the two-year state budget last year. The budget deal doesn’t include any money for HAB mitigation in Fiscal Year 2026.
Comprised of cyanobacteria that can produce toxins and harm humans, wildlife and pets, the blooms have been a seasonal problem at the lake in recent years, prompting the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) to issue no-swim advisories for parts of its upper reaches every summer since 2018 and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to name the lake to its list of impaired waterways in 2022 and 2024.
County officials and grassroots activists with the Lake Anna Civic Association have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the blooms, arguing their persistence could hurt the local economy by driving away tourists and impact the long-term health of the lake.
The proposed budget amendments also allocate $250,000 for testing and analyzing HAB in inland waterways. Beyond Lake Anna, the blooms have impacted lakes and rivers across the commonwealth. Currently, the state doesn’t dedicate any money specifically to testing and monitoring HAB in freshwater.
An initial budget proposal approved by the House of Delegates in early February included additional Lake Anna-specific funding—$33,000 for the Lake Anna Advisory Committee (LAAC) to manage invasive Hydrilla and maintain a network of no-wake buoys on the lake’s 9,400-acre public side. But that money was left out of the spending plan greenlit by both the House and Senate.
The budget package, which passed the Democratic-controlled General Assembly with bipartisan support, now heads to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin for consideration. Lawmakers and the governor will work to craft a final budget deal before the new fiscal year kicks off July 1.
Officials in Louisa, Spotsylvania and Orange counties, the three localities home to Lake Anna shoreline, had hoped to nab $1 million to continue efforts to address HAB in the lake’s upper reaches—the same amount allocated in FY24, the second year of the last state budget. But, pending a final budget deal, they’ll likely have less money to work with.
Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams, who represents the upper end of the lake where VDH advisories warning residents and visitors to avoid direct contact with the water have repeatedly disrupted tourism season, expressed frustration with what he sees as lawmakers’ lack of interest in addressing the blooms.
In an email to Engage Louisa in early February after the House and Senate passed their initial budget proposals, Adams said that while he’s grateful for state support, the funding levels for monitoring and mitigating HAB are “woefully inadequate.” He said that both the state and federal government need to start taking the blooms seriously, noting that HAB is impacting water quality in inland waterways far beyond Lake Anna.
“This is an issue that will take a coordinated effort from local, state and federal funding to address. It doesn’t appear that Richmond understands the magnitude of the problem on a local or statewide basis. To date, the federal response has been basically zero,” Adams said. “Healthy water quality at Lake Anna, Smith Mountain Lake, Gaston, Kerr and a multitude of others should be a much higher priority of our elected state and federal representatives.”
Over the past several years, county officials have lobbied state legislators for support to fight the blooms and met with some success. In 2022, the state provided $3.5 million to DEQ to study HAB’s causal factors in Lake Anna and the Shenandoah River and develop long-range strategies to limit its occurrence.
Lawmakers followed that up with the $1 million appropriation in an amendment to the state budget two years ago and another $500,000 in the first year of the current biennial budget. The funding was aimed at implementing immediate mitigation strategies.
The Lake Anna Advisory Committee (LAAC), an inter-jurisdictional panel including representatives from Louisa, Spotsylvania and Orange, used the $1 million allocation to pay for the inaugural year of its Lake Anna Cyanobacteria Mitigation and Remediation Program (LACMRP), a multi-year effort to reduce excess phosphorus in two of the lake’s upper branches: the Upper North Anna Branch and Terry’s Run. Excess phosphorus, which can come from runoff from agriculture and development, among other sources, serves as a key food source for the blooms.
In letters to lawmakers requesting more state aid, both LAAC and the board of supervisors said that the state-supported intervention measures are working, but “a steady level of state funding is required to continue [the] efforts.”
LAAC is expected to discuss next steps for its HAB mitigation program at its March 27 meeting.
Cuckoo District Supervisor Chris McCotter, who represents the lower end of the lake and serves as LAAC’s chair, said in an email in early February that state support is critical in ensuring local officials can “properly administer to the lake.”
“Our needs have outstripped our means at this time,” he said.
With respect to HAB mitigation specifically, McCotter said that LAAC is looking into multiple funding sources to help rein in the blooms.
That includes partnering with EutroPHIX, one of the contractors working with LAAC as part of its mitigation program, to apply for funding through DEQ’s pilot “Pay For Outcomes” grant program. The program focuses on reducing phosphorus and nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and pays participants based on how successful they are in reducing excess nutrients.
“As far as HAB management, LAAC is pursuing a multi-platform strategy (including a pay-for-results grant from DEQ), so I am hopeful we have viability in the coming years to continue the progress we made reducing phosphorus in 2024,” McCotter said.
News roundup: Louisa man charged with murder of girlfriend
Engage Louisa focuses on Louisa County government. We recognize we can’t cover everything, and there’s plenty of other news in our neck of the woods. With that in mind, we occasionally include links to the work of other journalists covering noteworthy events and issues that impact our community. We also occasionally include links to press releases from local government and other entities.
Louisa man charged with murder of girlfriend -Press release from the Louisa County Sheriff's Office
Can Lake Anna get urgent care? Why medical providers say ‘no’ -Lake Anna Breeze
Retired meteorologist keeps neighbors in the know -The Central Virginian (metered paywall)
Louisa County Animal Shelter at critical capacity -Press release from Louisa County
Cats and DOGE: McGuire hosts first (telephone) town hall -The Daily Progress (subscription required)
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.
It does make sense to get the stone from the Mt Pleasant Church Rd location, rather than having it hauled from the quarry near Commonwealth Park ( horse park ) , down RT 522 for 35 to 45 miles.