At their meeting on July 19, 2018, the 5-member Nelson County Service Authority Board voted unanimously against a proposal to set a rate of more than 10 cents per gallon and a connection fee of $500,000 for the ACP, which wanted to purchase 40,000 gallons of water per day for up to two years. The water would have come from Lake Monacan, and the ACP wanted to use it for horizontal directional drilling to bore a path for the pipeline beneath the Blue Ridge Parkway, from near the Wintergreen entrance through to Augusta County.

The proposed connection fee of $500,000 and the per gallon connection rate were more than 10 times the regular rate and would have resulted in about $3.5 million in revenue over two years for the service authority. Several NCSA Board members said they did not see the need for a rate scale that would accommodate huge construction or industrial projects that did not fit the vision of the county, and that approving the rate could bring risks and liabilities to the county.

The Board’s legal counsel noted that, although the special rate and permit had been denied, the ACP could come back to the service authority asking to become a regular customer and pay the regular rate and connection fee. The Board then unanimously approved a new requirement that starting July 19, 2018, any applicant wishing to purchase more than 100,000 gallons of water per month would have to petition the Board for approval.

According to ACP spokesperson Aaron Ruby, the company now has another source to meet their water needs, with about 10 tankers making 10 round trips daily to the construction site.

ACP construction has not yet started in Virginia because the required permits have not yet been received from the Department of Environmental Quality and the State Water Control Board.