Editor’s note: This is the fourth and final part in a series examining the 15th anniversary of Isle of Wight County signing its 2009 Norfolk Water Deal and its impacts. The third was published Oct. 8, the second on Sept. 30 and the first on Sept. 24.

 

Isle of Wight County has made several efforts to increase its usage of Norfolk water since signing the deal that obligates the Western Tidewater Water Authority to purchase surface water from the city.

The county had just over 2,400 water customers in 2009 when it and the city of Suffolk each agreed that year to a 25% and 75% respective share of the biennially-increasing millions of gallons per day each locality receives from Norfolk, according to The Smithfield Times’ reporting from that year.

By 2014, county staff had estimated Isle of Wight would need an additional 24,000 water customers to pay for its eventual 3.75 million gallon per day 2038 share of Norfolk water, and the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission had separately estimated that 27,800 new residents would be living in Isle of Wight by 2040. Those two estimates birthed a plan, dubbed ISLE 2040, to encourage the building of 13,600 new residential units in the WTWA-served Carrollton area by increasing the allowed housing density and expanding the boundaries of the Carrollton-centric Newport Development Service District.

Newport is one of three DSDs in place since 1991 where the county aims to attract and concentrate development with roads and public water and sewer infrastructure.

The ISLE 2040 plan died in a 4-1 vote in 2015 amid staunch opposition by area residents.

A plan to expand Isle of Wight’s use of its Norfolk water by building a $3 million water main to switch Gatling Pointe from Smithfield’s water system to the county’s met the same fate in 2016.

Smithfield, in 2023, agreed to pay the county $1 million to exit a 2018 agreement that would otherwise have obligated the town to begin purchasing WTWA-supplied county water last year. The 2018 agreement had proposed offsetting the 114,500 gallons per day Smithfield sells to the county for Gatling Pointe by switching an equivalent number of town customers in the Benns Church Boulevard area to the county’s system. Town officials urged exiting the deal after contending the differing disinfectants each locality uses to treat its water couldn’t be intermixed without costly upgrades.

According to County Administrator Randy Keaton, Isle of Wight still has two options for increasing its usage of Norfolk water: attract large water consumers or more water customers in general. In either case, that means more commercial and residential developments in what’s already the sixth-fastest growing county in the state, according to data from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center that shows a 6% increase in the county’s population since the 2020 census.

 

Option 1: build more houses

Per the the town’s 2023 renegotiation of its water agreement with the county, Smithfield gave Isle of Wight the right to sell water directly to residents and businesses that move into a proposed mixed-use development, dubbed “The Promontory,” that would add 262 homes and five commercial parcels along Benns Church Boulevard, even though the development is located just inside the town limits. Charlottesville-based Greenwood Homes submitted a rezoning application to the town last year for The Promontory, which is tentatively set to go before the town’s  Planning Commission in early 2025. Approval would require the Planning Commission and the Town Council to separately hold public hearings and votes on the requested rezoning.

County supervisors, in a 3-2 vote in May, approved mixed-use zoning for Sweetgrass, a proposed 615-home development with up to 73,000 square feet of commercial space on Isle of Wight’s side of the border less than a half-mile from where The Promontory is proposed.

Developments proposed, but not yet approved, include the 317-home Gwaltney Farms subdivision slated for 143 acres located 2 miles from the Promontory and Sweetgrass sites, and the stalled 179-home St. Luke’s Village, which Greenwood purchased in May and has proposed expanding to 315 homes. 

Offsetting the money Isle of Wight is spending annually on unused Norfolk water presents a powerful incentive for approving the pending rezoning applications, but not enough of one, in the opinion of Board of Supervisors Chairman Joel Acree.

“We’ve got a responsibility to our citizens and our county that we don’t allow our challenges such as water to overdevelop,” said Acree, who’d cast one of the two dissenting votes on Sweetgrass.

Isle of Wight County Schools projects that the combined impact of 12 approved developments and three proposed ones would put Smithfield Middle School at 106% of its capacity based on state class size maximums, and would put three other northern-end schools at 94% to 99% of capacity.

“You can’t have blinders on. … You have to step back and look at the big picture,” Acree said.

 

Option 2: attract a large water user

Attracting a large industrial water user comes with its own share of challenges.

Isle of Wight County operates four industrial parks, none of which is presently served by the WTWA, and as such, attracting a large water user to any of the four parks wouldn’t impact the county’s usage of its Norfolk water without costly upgrades to extend service.

According to Keaton, the Isle of Wight Industrial Park, located off Benns Church Boulevard between Smithfield and Suffolk, is supplied by its own well.

The Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park on the outskirts of the town of Windsor, which spans 1,200 acres across three phases, is supplied with groundwater the county purchases from the town. 

The Shirley T. Holland Park is presently home to only three businesses: the Cost Plus World Market distribution center, Safco Products and a Keurig Dr Pepper manufacturing plant. The latter is slated to close by the end of the year.

“Due to the fact that the usage of the three businesses is still relatively low, it has not been feasible to extend water service from WTWA,” Keaton said. “We would need a large user to justify the expense of extending a water line along (Route) 460.”

The adjacent 1,735-acre Norfolk Southern site, which spans the Isle of Wight-Suffolk line and is named for the parallel Norfolk Southern Railroad, is presently undeveloped.

The remaining 65-acre industrial park, dubbed the Franklin Industrial Air Park for its location adjacent to the Franklin Regional Airport, is located at the southern tip of the county and is served with water the county purchases from the city of Franklin.

 

Option 3: replenish the Potomac

The Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which serves as the region’s sewer provider, has been working on another alternative that would allow municipalities to reduce their impact on the Potomac Aquifer by replenishing it.

Replenishing the Potomac to sufficient levels could provide the WTWA with the leverage it would need to renegotiate or exit the Norfolk Water Deal by decreasing the need for an alternative to the state’s dwindling groundwater.

SWIFT, an acronym for “sustainable water initiative for tomorrow,” is the name HRSD has given to a water treatment process that restores wastewater to drinking water standards and re-injects it deep into the ground to replenish the Potomac.

HRSD completed a prototype SWIFT treatment plant on the York River in York County in 2017. Suffolk is now host to its own SWIFT plant, which, according to HRSD spokeswoman Leila Rice, can recharge the Potomac with up to 1 million gallons of SWIFT water per day.

“The facility is also outfitted with interpretive educational elements and is our primary SWIFT education facility as well as an active research site that informs our full-scale implementation of SWIFT,” Rice said.

HRSD’s first full-scale SWIFT facility is currently under construction at its James River treatment plant in Newport News, and is slated to be complete by fall 2026. Once that happens, it will be capable of recharging the Potomac with up to 16 million gallons per day.

Upgrades to the Nansemond River SWIFT plant in Suffolk are also underway, with construction scheduled between fall 2025 and spring 2029. Once complete, the Suffolk plant will have the capacity to recharge up to 34 million gallons per day.

The Nansemond and James river plants collectively will have the capacity to replenish 50 million gallons of drinking-quality water per day, which provides a “sustainable source of groundwater that is available to all communities,” Rice said.