25 signatures reached
To: Abigail Spanberger Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia
Protecting Our Future: “Saving Every Drop for the Next Generation."
To: Governor Abigail Spanberger, Commonwealth of Virginia
Subject: Immediate Statewide Moratorium on Data Center and Gas Power Plant Approvals to Protect Our Children’s Water Rights
Dear Governor Spanberger,
As residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we write to you with a profound sense of urgency to protect the single most vital resource defining the future of our state and the lives of our youth: our clean drinking water. Currently, localized permitting processes allow developers to bypass regional oversight, forcing individual counties—such as Cumberland County—to fight isolated battles against massive infrastructure projects. This fragmented approach is inherently unfair. The adjoining counties and local communities are forced to bear the ecological and financial consequences of data centers and gas-fired power plants that threaten shared water tables, local aquifers, and regional watersheds.
We are witnessing an alarming trend where data centers, facing public pushback over heavy energy consumption, are increasingly integrated with or rebranded alongside new gas power plants. Together, these facilities operate as exceptionally water-intensive industries. They consume millions of gallons of freshwater daily for cooling and infrastructure needs. Allowing this unchecked, water-intensive expansion to continue during one of the most severe, prolonged droughts in Virginia's history is an immediate threat to public safety. When we allow private industries to deplete our freshwater reserves during a historic drought, we are actively stealing the water supply required by our children and future generations.
Under Article XI of the Constitution of Virginia and the public trust doctrine, you are the chief trustee of Virginia’s natural resources, explicitly mandated to protect our waters from impairment for the welfare of the people. Your executive authority over the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Department of Health (VDH) gives you the unique responsibility to manage our water systems on a holistic, statewide level. Therefore, we respectfully urge you to issue an immediate, statewide executive moratorium to pause all pending approvals, permitting, and grid connections for new data centers and gas-fired power plants across every county in the Commonwealth until the following legally binding protections are guaranteed:
- Cumulative Regional Impact Assessments: Shift from isolated county-by-county approvals to comprehensive, statewide hydrological studies that evaluate how the combined water consumption of these plants impacts regional water tables and municipal drinking supplies, specifically accounting for current severe drought conditions.
- Mandatory Zero-Water and Closed-Loop Cooling: Mandate that any data infrastructure or energy facility utilize zero-water or strictly closed-loop air cooling systems, completely banning the evaporative consumption of potable public drinking water.
- Intergenerational Rights and Public Prioritization: Establish legally binding guardrails ensuring that the residential, agricultural, and ecological water rights of Virginia's families and future generations are strictly prioritized over heavy industrial infrastructure.
Governor Spanberger, our children's future depends on the access to clean drinking water. We must plan first and build second. We urge you to uphold your sacred duty as trustee of our waters and halt this unchecked development before our freshwater reserves are permanently exhausted.
Sincerely,
[The Undersigned Residents of Virginia]
Why is this important?
Protect our children’s water supplies.
- Enforces the Law: It directly cites Article XI of the Virginia Constitution, holding elected leadership legally accountable to their sworn duty as the primary protectors of public natural resources.
- Prevents Resource Depletion: Data centers require millions of gallons of water daily for cooling; this petition demands a pause before local water tables and agricultural resources face irreversible exhaustion.
- Protects Family Finances: By blocking unbridled energy grid expansion, it protects everyday Virginia ratepayers from absorbing the massive infrastructure costs required to power private data infrastructure.
- Secures Intergenerational Equity: It reframes environmental policy around long-term sustainability, ensuring that today's economic decisions do not compromise the drinking water of future generations.