Where Motive and Opportunity Align on Zoning Code

In the ongoing conversation about data centers, something quieter has been happening. Neighbors who disagree about almost everything else have had a meeting of the minds on health, safety, and welfare — and a few of the fixes are further along than most of us know. I’d like to spend this letter pointing at the progress.

Groundwater. Most families in Warren County drink from a well, even while the industrial sites and folks in Town drink from the Town main — and, eventually, from the South Fork. Nothing in our code today stops a golf course, a large irrigation operation, or a future industrial user from choosing a well instead, and exhausting an aquifer so many households rely on.

Where the consensus can take us: Supervisor Jamieson has already put a Groundwater Protection Ordinance on the table — before there’s a crisis to react to, which is exactly the right instinct, and he’s pointed to a Georgia case where one data center’s well cost a neighbor $25,000 in damages as the kind of thing we’d rather learn about secondhand. His colleagues are still working out the definitions, which is how good ordinances get made, not a reason to slow down. As written, it reaches industrial wells; golf courses and agricultural irrigation would still need a second look. That’s not a knock on the ordinance — it’s the next chapter, once this one passes.

Glare. We’ve all heard the complaints about sites that dump their light sideways or straight up — blinding drivers, disorienting wildlife, and paying good money to cloud our view of the Milky Way instead of lighting the ground where we actually need it. The good news is that it was never about what’s happening inside the building. It’s just about pointing a light fixture down.

Where the consensus can take us: our Town Planning Commission has already done the research here too — full-cutoff fixtures, warm color temperatures, limits on light spilling onto a neighbor’s yard — real, technical dark-sky standards drafted by our own staff. That language doesn’t have to be reinvented. It just needs to graduate from “abandoned rules for one type of building” to a Dark Skies Ordinance for every property owner in town — and maybe a gentle nudge toward motion sensors and timers, so we’re not paying to over-light a silent, empty parking lot at 3 a.m.

Historic Preservation. Browntown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register — a real, documented piece of our county’s story. And yet, under existing County law, anyone can tear down any structure there, regardless of its history. That’s not a plot by anyone; it’s just a gap nobody’s closed. The Town figured this out years ago.

Where the consensus can take us: Front Royal already runs a working historic district ordinance — a Board of Architectural Review, a real process before a historic building is irreversibly altered. The County doesn’t need to invent anything here. It needs to borrow its neighbor’s homework, apply it to districts like Browntown, and take the next step toward Certified Local Government status, which opens the door to state preservation grants.

Noise. We’ve heard near-unanimous testimony that people don’t want audible noise, and they don’t want the inaudible hum either, crossing their property line while they’re trying to sleep. The County’s noise ordinance already sets numbers for this — but its industrial limit is the same 77 decibels at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m., with no relief at night, and the ordinance doesn’t even assess a civil penalty for noise coming from industrial property. That’s backward for a county full of people trying to sleep next to one.

Where the consensus can take us: our Town Planning Commission has already done the research on industrial noise and vibration — separate day and night limits, and a specific penalty for the low-frequency hum that a flat decibel number would otherwise miss entirely. That’s real, technical work, already done by Town staff. Both localities should adopt it, for every industrial user.

Ugly Boxes. When Family Dollar and Ferguson went in, the County made sure they were landscaped, bermed, and screened the way a good neighbor screens an inoperative vehicle or a compost pile. Iron Mountain (next to RSW jail, which is no beauty either) came in with none of that, and years later Iron Mountain’s few trees that did go in have died without being replaced. I don’t say that to embarrass anyone — I say it because the County clearly used to know how to do this, and I’d like to know what the Board of Supervisors and Code Enforcement need to get that skill back. A landscaping bond that isn’t released until the trees actually survive a few seasons seems like a modest, practical place to start.

None of water, glare, history, noise or boxiness are radical. They’re mostly a matter of finishing what’s already been started, by people who’ve already done the hard drafting work. I’m glad to help gather whatever research is useful on any of them — I have no stake in this beyond wanting to keep living somewhere I can drink the water, see the stars, and hear the crickets instead of a compressor.

Kevin Cuddeback
Front Royal, VA

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