Surry County is pursuing a backup plan for its share of opioid settlement money following the state’s denial of a grant application for a “23-and-1” regional crisis receiving center that would have provided up to 23 hours of acute care to people struggling with addiction and mental health crises.

Surry supervisors voted in April to pool the county’s less-than-$10,000 share of settlement money with neighboring Prince George County, which had served as the fiscal agent for the two rural localities’ joint application for $1.3 million in funding from Virginia’s Opioid Abatement Authority.

Virginia expects to receive a $1.1 billion share over the next 18 years from multistate settlements with opioid drugmakers Allergan, Endo, Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt, Purdue and Teva; distributors AmeriSource Bergan, Cardinal and McKesson; Purdue sales consultant McKinsey; and pharmacies CVS, Kroger, Walgreens and Walmart to resolve multiple lawsuits alleging the companies’ complicity in a nationwide opioid addiction crisis. Virginia has allotted 30% of its share to direct aid to the state’s 133 cities and counties based on each locality’s population, share of overdose deaths and other factors. Another 15% will go to the Commonwealth Opioid Abatement and Remediation Fund and the remaining 55% will be distributed by the OAA.

According to its 2023 annual report, the OAA’s 55% share amounted to $613.9 million as of Jan. 1 of this year.

Prince George’s grant application had called for combining its $59,724 fiscal year 2025 share with Surry’s $9,870 and the requested $1.3 million in OAA funding.

“That was sort of our first pitch home run swing where we weren’t entirely surprised that that application was not selected. … We had a follow up meeting with the Opioid Abatement Authority after that round of selections,” said Surry County Commonwealth’s Attorney Derek Davis. “They pretty much told us that they loved the idea, loved our grant proposal, it was just too large for just the two small localities of the District 19 area.”

District 19, which overlaps with the Virginia Department of Health’s Crater District, spans over 1,900 largely rural square miles from Surry to Petersburg and as far south as Greensville County at the North Carolina state line.

Davis is also chairman of the Riverside Community Criminal Justice Board, which would have been the regional agency to oversee the proposed crisis receiving center.

Davis said the new plan calls for a multijurisdictional mobile crisis response unit serving Surry, Sussex, Dinwiddie and Greenville counties and the city of Emporia.

“This mobile responses unit would consist of essentially a peer recovery specialist, EMS, possibly law enforcement and they would be a mobile unit and would just go out and respond to connect households and members of the public that are struggling with substance abuse disorder,” Davis said.

Surry supervisors, by informal consensus, gave Davis the go-ahead to develop a new grant application for the concept. The application window for the OAA’s 2024-25 grant cycle opened Oct. 1 and will close April 1.

“I’ve been a strong advocate for us being rural and transportation issues here, which is a cause to a lot of our problems and a lot of the substance abuse treatment people can’t get to because of the lack of transportation,” Davis said.