State Senators Call for Tighter Water Restrictions

Virginia has released a long-delayed study that examined the state’s eastern region groundwater supply and the resource-hungry AI industry’s possible impact on it, finding declines are likely in a critical aquifer due to population growth and industrial use.

Richmond, Virginia -This week, Senators Russet Perry and Richard Stuart sent a letter urging Governor Spanberger to call the General Assembly into a special session to address the deeply alarming findings contained in the recently released Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Groundwater Supply East of I-95 Report required by the 2024 Senate Joint Resolution 25.

The report, the most comprehensive study ever conducted of our coastal aquifer, makes clear that Virginia’s groundwater is under serious and immediate strain. The risks detailed in this report are too dire to ask Virginians to wait another year, and the delay of the report’s release makes immediate action necessary.

Senate Joint Resolution 25 required the Department of Environmental Quality to submit its findings by the first day of the 2026 General Assembly session on January 14, 2026.

Instead, legislators did not receive it until the third week of July, months after the legislative session adjourned and the new biennial budget took effect. Had the General Assembly reviewed these findings when the law required, it is safe to say the outcome of several legislative and budget decisions would have been different.

Virginia, the world’s largest data center hub, has released a long-delayed study that examined the state’s eastern region groundwater supply and the resource-hungry industry’s possible impact on it, finding declines are likely in a critical aquifer due to population growth and industrial use and urging stricter regulations.

Produced by environmental scientists, the report — which the state for more than six months had refused to release — said regulators should have more authority to reject industrial water withdrawal permits, force entities to examine alternative sources of water and clamp down on users who might be using more water than they should be.

The report noted limits around publicly available information on data center water use but did not lay blame with the industry for the concerns raised about the aquifer.

The groundwater supply in Virginia’s populous eastern coastal plain region “is constrained, and current projections indicate declining availability in the near future,” said the report, which Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office provided to The Associated Press Thursday.

Data centers use water, sometimes in large amounts, to cool their servers. Worries about data centers’ impact on the quality and supply of both ground and surface water — and about tech companies’ failures to be as transparent as the public would like — have dogged projects around the country. The issues have become politically explosive heading into the midterm elections.

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Wayne Creed

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