HB 496
A number about your facility is about to be published, and you are not the one producing it.
Takes effect
1 January 2027
Delayed effective date. The public reporting website is expected live the same day.
Who reports
Water utilities. Not data centres.
No penalty attaches to the operator, because the duty is not theirs.
Claims register
Every figure on this page is recorded with its source in our public register, under C-020.
What it actually requires
Read narrowly. Where the statute is narrower than the coverage suggests, the narrow reading is the one that governs.
- Waterworks operators must categorise their monthly sales data by customer type, one of which is data centres holding an air permit from the Department of Environmental Quality.
- The categories are data centres, domestic, industrial and commercial, and all other non-categorised purposes.
- Volumes are split into potable and, reported separately, reclaimed water.
- The obligation sits with the utility that sells the water, not with the facility that uses it.
What it does not measure
This is the part that decides whether the published number helps you or harms you.
- It is a sales figure. It measures what was billed to the site, which is withdrawal, not consumption.
- It says nothing about what the facility returned to sewer, and nothing about what it reused on site.
- A facility that returns most of what it takes looks identical, in this dataset, to one that evaporates all of it.
- The operator does not produce the number, cannot annotate it, and has no standing in the dataset to explain it.
What we would do about it
Meter both sides of the boundary, continuously, on the lines that matter. Close the balance every fifteen minutes: withdrawn, returned, reused, consumed, with the unmeasured paths shown as unmeasured rather than folded into an estimate. Sign each window and chain it, so the figure a council reads is the figure the operator reads and either can verify it independently.
It does not replace the filing. It gives you something to put beside it. Request a water assessment →
Questions people ask about HB 496
Short answers, because most of what circulates about these rules is wrong in the same two ways: who reports, and what gets counted.
Does Virginia require data centres to report their water use?
No. Virginia HB 496 places the reporting duty on water utilities, not on data centres. Waterworks operators must categorise their monthly sales data by customer type, and data centres holding a DEQ air permit are one of those categories. The facility itself files nothing under this law.
When does Virginia HB 496 take effect?
1 January 2027. The bill carries a delayed effective date, and the public reporting website is expected to be live on the same day.
What exactly does Virginia HB 496 require?
Waterworks operators must break their monthly sales data into categories: data centres with a Department of Environmental Quality air permit, domestic users, industrial and commercial users, and all other non-categorised purposes. Volumes are split into potable water and, reported separately, reclaimed water.
Does HB 496 measure data centre water consumption?
No. It measures what the utility sold to the site, which is withdrawal. Consumption is withdrawal minus what the facility returns, and the return side is not covered by this law. A facility that returns most of its water and one that evaporates all of it can appear identical in this dataset.
Can an operator correct or annotate the published figure?
Not through this mechanism. The operator does not produce the number and has no standing in the dataset to explain it. Producing an independently verifiable figure of your own is the only way to put a different number beside it.
Sources
We publish these because a page about a statute that cannot be checked is worth exactly as much as a water figure that cannot be checked.
This is a plain-language summary written by a company that sells water measurement, not legal advice. Read the instrument, and take counsel on how it applies to your facility.