Google says it hopes to break ground on its Botetourt County data center campus in the upcoming months.
The company has filed construction permits and hopes to start grading work in the spring or summer, Amber Tillman, head of data center public affairs with Google, said in an interview Wednesday. She said it takes about 18 to 24 months to construct a data center, and the projects will be completed in phases as resources become available.
Google representatives did not respond to questions Thursday about when the company expects the first part of the project to come online, how much it will cost to build or how many people will work there.
In June, Google closed a $14 million deal with Botetourt County for 312 acres in the county’s Greenfield industrial park. Neither the company nor the county would confirm exactly what the land would be used for until this week, when Google officially announced the data center plan Thursday morning.
Each of the three proposed data center buildings will cover about 300,000 square feet, along with three substations, an office building, access roads, utilities, parking areas and stormwater management facilities, according to a March 10 Army Corps of Engineers notice soliciting public comment on the project. The notice also included information about potential environmental impacts resulting from the deforestation and impacts to local wetlands.
In a press release issued Thursday, Google said it is committed to paying 100% of the costs associated with powering the project and has agreed to pay for the infrastructure needed for the project.
In 2024, Google announced that it would purchase all of the power generated by the Rocky Forge wind farm in Botetourt County. A Google spokesperson said in an email Wednesday that the 79 megawatts provided by the wind farm will not cover the full capacity needed for the Botetourt data center campus, but could not say how much more power the project would need.
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The company has signed an agreement with the Western Virginia Water Authority, agreeing to pay for all infrastructure required to serve the data center’s operations.
Google’s press release said that the company is working with the water authority to explore options for cooling at the site. Data centers require a large amount of water to cool down their equipment, but the industry has several options for greater energy efficiency, including using non-potable water or air to cool the equipment.
Google will do what is most energy efficient, Tillman said, as far as cooling the equipment. The fact that the water available at the site contains a low level of total dissolved solids means that it can be recirculated through the cooling system multiple times, reducing the total amount of water needed, according to the company.
Initial estimates from an agreement between Botetourt County and the water authority predicted an initial water usage of two million gallons per day, building up to eight million gallons of water per day in the future.
The water authority treats 19 million gallons of drinking water a day, with the capacity to treat 56 million gallons per day, according to its website. The authority serves Roanoke, Roanoke County, Botetourt County, Franklin County, and the towns of Boones Mill, Iron Gate and Vinton. It also serves the town of Fincastle through a contractual agreement.
Mac Scothorn, chairman of the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors, said during a March 18 interview that the chances of Google using two million gallons of water per day is “pretty low,” and that the estimate would be during the “hottest, most extreme” temperatures.
An agreement between Botetourt and the water authority lays out $8 million in specific, near-term payments by the county into a fund that would pay for the authority to develop new water sources. According to the water authority’s website, the authority is studying “new water supplies and infrastructure improvements” through funding from both the county and Google.
Local opposition to the data center project has been steady since initial plans for the project became public. The Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance has opposed the “financial, health, and environmental impacts” of data centers, according to the group’s Facebook page.
Hunter Hartley, spokesperson for the group during a Feb. 7 meeting with the water authority’s executive director, Mike McEvoy, said the group is concerned about water usage, as well as electricity costs, disturbance of land, aesthetics of the buildings and “ethical questions about what we do with our time and resources.”
Scothorn said no agreement has been made to share tax revenues from the project. Last year, Roanoke and Roanoke County each requested 15% of the tax revenues generated by the data center, arguing that they had provided the Carvins Cove land to the water authority.
The Google project will take most of the remaining available land at the 750-acre Greenfield center, which currently houses six other businesses and Botetourt County’s administrative offices.
The industrial park’s zoning was changed to allow data centers in November 2024.
“By partnering with Google, we are securing the community and the financial future of BoCo,” Botetourt County Administrator Gary Larrowe said in a statement issued by the county Thursday morning. “Due to the assistance of Google,” he said, Botetourt will benefit economically from the project.
When Google purchased the land, it pledged to put $4 million toward local projects benefiting the county’s fire service, law enforcement, schools and other departments, Larrowe said at the time.