Spotsylvania County, VA Data Centers & Crypto Mining: Data Center Moratoriums (2026)

No countywide moratorium on data center construction is written into the code. What Spotsylvania County has enacted is a water-use restriction: § 22-47 lets the director of utilities impose reasonable conditions, regulating quantity, type and manner of use, on any industrial, agricultural, commercial or domestic applicant whose proposed use is reasonably likely to damage the water system or hurt build-out of the county's primary settlement area. The same section then singles out data centers by name: a data center or similar user may not draw on public potable source water for permanent cooling.

Temporary, supplemental or emergency potable water use for cooling needs the director's approval, and the director can cap that use by time, volume or flow, or shut it off entirely once it stops serving sound management of the water system. An applicant who disagrees with the director's decision has thirty days from that decision to file an appeal with the department of utilities, which goes to the board of supervisors. 3, rather than being a use permitted by right; that special-use listing was last amended by Ordinance No.

23-190 in December 2025, part of the same push toward heightened board scrutiny of new data center projects countywide. In August 2026 the board of supervisors voted to support a legislative call for a statewide moratorium, but that is a resolution directed at the General Assembly, not a local ordinance provision, so it creates no enforceable local ban.