The Stafford County Board of Supervisors has voted to pause a 99-acre data center project over concerns that it would be built over a historic cemetery that includes the graves of enslaved residents.
The proposed Potomac Creek Development, which would be built along Eskimo Hill Road includes a cemetery, dating back to the 1700s.
The site includes four headstone markers for white people who were buried there, and an adjacent area containing what appears to be unmarked gravesites that are likely for people who were enslaved.
“My mother’s in an unmarked grave,” said Stafford County Board Chairman Deuntay Diggs, during a Tuesday board meeting. “I’m very emotional about it, because I’m thinking about what that felt like to me, the first time I went back and couldn’t find her grave.”
Diggs supported a plan to defer voting on the project, to give the developer time to hire an archaeological consultant to investigate and survey the property, to determine where people were buried.聽“That is very important to me, and I could not support it if we were to do anything outside of that.”
Board member Maya Guy agreed. “I need a full investigation or I can’t support it. I’m not antidevelopment, anti-data center. I want y’all’s money, OK?”
Board member Darrell English asked the lawyer for the developer, “How would you feel if it was your ancestors or relatives back then, and you knew there was a big data center coming in 鈥� would you want them to uproot your ancestors like that?”
Mark Looney, an attorney for the project said the developer is prepared to preserve the cemetery in place or move it to another part of the property if ordered by a judge.
The Board will revisit the project in two months.
Currently, Stafford County has one data center online. Five projects have been approved, and 12 applications are pending.
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