Albemarle County, VA Water Use Rules: Recycled Water Rules (2026)

The county's zoning ordinance does not maintain a general recycled-water or graywater reuse program for households or most businesses; the phrase "recycled water" appears in the Albemarle County Code specifically inside the data center standards adopted by Ord. 25-18(1) on April 2, 2025. Sec. 65(B) requires that a data center be served by public water and public sewer, and subsection (B)(2) adds that any water-based cooling system serving the facility must be either a closed loop system, which recirculates the same water rather than continuously drawing fresh supply, or a recycled water system.

Both options are aimed at limiting a data center's draw on the county's public water system, since data center cooling can use large, continuous volumes of water. This requirement sits alongside the section's public water and sewer mandate, and a data center that qualifies as a minor accessory use under Sec. 65(A), sitting on the same site as its primary use and staying under 25 percent of that use's floor area, is exempt from the standard under subsection (A)(2). The county has not published a compliance test or metering standard for verifying closed-loop or recycled-water use in the code text itself, leaving verification to the site plan and zoning clearance review process that applies to standalone data centers generally.