Google Botetourt (Botetourt Center at Greenfield) Approved
312 acres bought from the county for $14.06M (Jun 20, 2025) plus $4M in grants; performance agreement approved by the EDA Jun 20 and the Board of Supervisors Jun 24, 2025. First building due 2028; first-building cooling announced as air-cooled after a fight over drawing from Carvins Cove. A board-appointed water study commission (Jul 28, 2026, 3-1) reports within six months. Grading permit issued Aug 2026.
Key facts
- Operator
- Owner
- Size
- 312 ac
- Location
- Daleville (Botetourt County), Virginia
- First proposed
- 2025-06-20
- Decided
- 2025-06-24
- Stage today
- Approved
Source
read 2026-09-05
What to do next
Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.
What has happened so far (5 events)
- 2024-11-26rezoning
Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission, in a joint public hearing, unanimously approved a zoning ordinance text amendment defining data centers and permitting them in the Research and Advanced Manufacturing (RAM) district — the only zoning in the county that allows one. · source - 2025-06-20announcement
Google closed on 312 acres at Botetourt Center at Greenfield for $14,055,406 ($45,000/acre) and committed $4M in grants to county projects over five years; the Economic Development Authority approved the performance agreement the same day. · source - 2025-06-24vote
Board of Supervisors approved the performance agreement: construction of the first data center to start in 2026 and the first building fit for occupancy in 2028, with a grant whenever Google's business personal property tax exceeds an effective $2.40 per $100. · source - 2026-07-28vote
Supervisors voted 3-1 to create a five-member, board-appointed commission — no Google or county affiliation — to study the data center's impact on regional water resources within six months. Supervisor Linda Rottman dissented, calling it 'a gigantic middle finger to everyone in the crowd.' · source - 2026-08-28permit
The county issued Google a Land Disturbance Permit allowing phased grading of the 312-acre site. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)
Permits already on file (1)
Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.
- 2026-08-28
The county issued Google a Land Disturbance Permit allowing phased grading of the 312-acre site. · source
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Virginia DEQThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search Virginia DEQ for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Daleville (Botetourt County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Daleville (Botetourt County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Virginia State Corporation Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 37.410, -79.920 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- Virginia briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Virginia
- STACK Infrastructure Berry Hill megasite — Berry Hill (Pittsylvania County / Danville), 63 mi Approved
- EdgeCore Shannon Hill campus — Louisa County (Shannon Hill), 106 mi Approved
- Red Ace data center campus (Keyser Road) — Culpeper County, 130 mi Approved
- Mountain Road Technology Park — Hanover County, 136 mi Denied
- CoreWeave Chester VA — Chester (Chesterfield County), 139 mi
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google Botetourt (Botetourt Center at Greenfield)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-botetourt-greenfield-va, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).