Neighborhoods next to the proposed Tidewater Logistics Center have too few houses to justify extending sewer service, according to Isle of Wight County Utilities Director Uwe Weindel.

Weindel told county supervisors on June 5 that he’d looked into the matter after their vote in March to approve light industrial zoning for the multi-warehouse complex on the outskirts of Windsor.

“As Tidewater Logistics has started moving into their design phases, the county felt that it was a great opportunity to go ahead and really take a look at this and see if we can serve the people on Lovers Lane with sanitary sewer,” Weindel said.

But he concluded the cost of extending service would outweigh the benefits. There are two types of sewer systems: gravity-based and vacuum-powered. The former “is always going to be the cheapest because you don’t have mechanics involved, Weindel said. Much of the town is already served by a vacuum system that’s 25 years old and in need of costly repairs.

One of the issues, he said, is the differing elevations of Shiloh Drive, Keaton Avenue and Lovers Lane, which range from 74 feet on the high side to between 36 and 40 feet.

“In order to do a sanitary sewer on Lovers Lane and tie it into the potential of the Tidewater Logistics Center, the only way to do that gravity-wise would be to basically dig holes that are anywhere from 15 to 20 feet deep to 40 feet deep — kind of impractical when you’re trying to do something of that nature,” Weindel said.

Another issue is the number of houses. The area has 42 lots with around 25 built structures.

“We’d only get about a handful of the houses. Maybe 12 houses tops would be able to tie into the logistics center sanitary sewer,” Weindel said. “So the practicality is if you really wanted to go and provide the southern area with sanitary sewer, you would have to do a pump station, and if you’re going to do a pump station then logistically you’re either going to tie it into Tidewater, which would have to have their own pump station, or you’re going to tie it directly into (Route) 460, which would be the HRSD force main.”

Weindel said the county would have to build much of the hypothetical sewer main in the road, which is already narrow, “so you’d be repaving the entire road by the time you’re done.”

“At this point I don’t really see this happening. As future development takes place in the Windsor area, especially up toward the Shiloh area in the north part of that, that becomes more practical if you have a number of houses – quantity of scale basically,” Weindel said. “So if you can create more housing development … then it becomes more worthwhile.”

The Tidewater Logistics Center was approved 3-2 over objections from Windsor-area residents. The concept calls for four warehouses totaling 726,000 square feet and a nearly 15-acre public park in place of what was shown as a fifth warehouse in an earlier 2024 plan. The campus would span 154 acres fronting Route 460. Isle of Wight’s Economic Development Authority is under contract to sell an 83-acre parcel to the project’s developer, The Meridian Group, and expects to close on that sale by the end of the month.