What to do with a historic cemetery on land proposed for a data center project shouldn’t be viewed as simply a hurdle on the path to approving a revenue-generating business, Connie Barrow told the Stafford County Historical Commission on Wednesday afternoon.
“This is not a hurdle,” said Barrow, a data center critic who lives in the Rock Hill District. “If you look at it as a hurdle, then you have taken the person and the spirit and the sacredness away from this process.”
She was one of several people who attended a special meeting of the commission to discuss the Potomac Creek Campus data center project. The commission agreed at the meeting to send a letter to the Stafford Board of Supervisors, outlining its concerns about the proposal.
The supervisors, who have the final say on the project, voted last week to defer discussion on it so the developer can 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, but one of them is envisioned right now to be built where the cemetery is located.
The graveyard 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 those of individuals enslaved by the Seddons.
Anita Dodd, who chairs the commission as well as the county’s Cemetery Committee, cautioned the supervisors last week about approving the Potomac Creek Campus project, and the supervisors were clearly worried about what could happen to the cemetery.
Mark Looney, an attorney for the project, told the supervisors that the developer is prepared to preserve the cemetery in place or relocate it to another part of the parcel if a judge decrees it, as required by Virginia law.
On Wednesday, the commission largely discussed technical details about the cemetery and how remains could be exhumed.
The letter that will be sent to the supervisors outlines procedures for mitigating and caring for cultural resources, Dodd told the Free Press after the meeting.
“We have major concerns,” she said.
As did those who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting. Looney described the cemetery last week as “abandoned” and said that no descendants of those buried have contacted the property owner in at least the past two decades.
But Bill Shelton, who lives a quarter-mile from the cemetery, said at the commission meeting that he’s a descendant.
He also disputed the notion that no one visits the cemetery.
“I’ve been there every year for 30 years,” Shelton said.
He spoke, too, of the potential for the proliferation of data centers to overtake historic and environmentally significant sites.
“There’s a lot of history there,” Shelton said. “Don’t destroy it.”
Jeff Eastland, who frequently speaks at Stafford government meetings about data centers and the environment, said Wednesday that if more people had spoken out last week, the supervisors might have voted to deny the Potomac Creek Campus.
That resulted in what Eastland, who lives in the Rock Hill District, called just a “stay of execution.”
“Should have been a win,” he said.
