Kim Taylor-Wilson is a member of Stafford’s Architectural Review Board, but she didn’t discuss structural details on Tuesday night. She spoke about lives.
She cautioned the county Board of Supervisors about approving a data center project that would be built on property containing a historic cemetery that includes the graves of enslaved residents.
“They were not property, though the law once called them so,” Taylor-Wilson said of the deceased. “They were not items in a ledger, or tally marks in a census that refused to record their names. They were mothers, they were fathers, sons, daughters, people who woke before dawn, who loved, who grieved, and who themselves grieved for those who laid them to rest.
“When we talk about preserving their graves, we’re not arguing over dirt or property lines. We’re deciding whether we finally acknowledge that they were human.”
She was one of a handful of Stafford residents who spoke to the importance of preserving the historic cemetery on the property planned for the Potomac Creek Campus data center project.
Following that testimony and their own discussion of historical resources, the supervisors voted 4-3 to defer three matters necessary for the data center’s approval. The idea is to give the developer time to do a “full investigation” of historic resources on the 99-acre site south of Eskimo Hill Road in central Stafford.
The project proposes three buildings, totaling up to 975,000 square feet of data center space. And, absent the cemetery concerns, it’s seen as a good location by many — even data center critics — for a data center campus, near the large Stafford Technology Campus data center development and the regional airport.
But the cemetery, which is on a part of the tract where a data center building is planned, caused the Stafford Planning Commission recommend denial of the project back in May.
The site includes four known Caucasian burials, marked by elaborate headstones, belonging to the Seddon family, and indications of 12 or more unmarked burials believed to be the final resting place of individuals enslaved by the Seddons.
Mark Looney, an attorney for the project, said Tuesday that the developer is prepared to preserve the cemetery in place, or to relocate it to another part of the property, if decreed by a judge as required by Virginia law.
He said no descendants of those buried have contacted the property owner in at least the past two decades.
“This is an abandoned cemetery,” Looney said.
The potential to upset burial sites, though, eventually proved too much for the supervisors to approve the project Tuesday.
Many made impassioned speeches, including board Chairman Deuntay Diggs, who spoke of his mother being buried in an unmarked grave.
Hartwood District Supervisor Darrell English was perhaps the most direct.
“How would you feel if it was your ancestors or relatives back then, and you knew there was a big data center coming in or whatever?” he asked Looney. “Would you want them to uproot your ancestors like that?”
A somewhat-lengthy explanation from the lawyer followed, but English — who later voted against the deferral along with Supervisors Tinesha Allen and Crystal Vanuch — didn’t seem swayed.
“All right,” he said. “I’m done with this.” And he turned off his microphone.
In other business Tuesday, the supervisors:
- Voted 5-2 to begin the process of putting a referendum on the November ballot that would ask voters if they want a special sales tax of up to 1% implemented to pay for school construction. State legislators recently gave all localities the power to institute the tax. English and Vanuch voted against the move, with Vanuch saying she doesn’t think the referendum would be approved.
- Voted unanimously on two matters related to Dominion Energy’s North Anna to Bristers electric-transmission proposal, which would bring a new power line through Stafford. The supervisors approved spending $140,000 on outside legal counsel to represent the county’s concerns with the project, and they OK’d changes to the county’s Comprehensive Plan, a blueprint for development. One of the main things Stafford wants is to have the line buried, a step Dominion claims is too expensive to take.
