Project dossier · Daleville (Botetourt County), Virginia

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
Google
Owner
Google
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.

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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.

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.

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

Other tracked projects in Virginia

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).

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