New coalition forms to demand change to data center industry
By Audrey Carpenter
A group composed of more than 20 environmental, conservation, historic preservation, and climate advocacy groups, as well as community representatives and neighborhoods across the state, have formed a coalition calling for industry-wide data center reform.
The Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition will hold its first press conference Friday, Dec. 1 at 11 a.m., at the Clearbrook Center for the Arts, 2230 Tacketts Mill Dr. B, Lake Ridge in Prince William County. The coalition says it will demand accountability from the data center industry and share community impacts from this type of development.
The red lines indicate where new electric transmission lines would be built. The brown lines indicate expansion of existing right of ways. The purple lines indicate rebuilding in existing right of ways. Map courtesy of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
Cindy Sabato with the Piedmont Environmental Council wrote in an email, “The data center industry explosion in Virginia is bringing with it unprecedented energy infrastructure and other needs that will have far-reaching, long-term effects on Virginians, Virginia’s climate goals, and the state’s natural resources. Data center proposals are being approved broadly with little understanding of their cumulative impacts and often behind nondisclosure agreements that prevent community members from participating fully in the process.”
PEC is a Virginia nonprofit and an accredited land trust which focuses on conservation, restoration, smart growth and environmental issues, according to its website.
From PEC’s website, Julie Bolthouse wrote, “As director of land use here at The Piedmont Environmental Council, I’m accustomed to responding to major development proposals. However, I’ve never seen anything quite like this past year. The size, scale, and speed at which applications for data center projects are coming in and being approved is astounding.”
She added, “Localities have rezoned thousands of acres for data center development, often with little scrutiny. Additionally, power contracts and water withdrawal and air quality permits are being lined up behind the scenes. The cumulative effect of all that’s being approved is not yet understood, and because many of these projects have yet to be constructed, communities are likely to discover important impacts far too late.”
The coalition is urging the state to study the cumulative effects of data center development on the state’s electrical grid, water resources, air quality, and land conservation efforts, and to institute several common-sense regulatory and rate-making reforms.
It will highlight several ways the data center industry in Virginia has failed to prioritize community concerns by proposing mega-campuses in inappropriate locations, such as near historic battlefields and cultural resources, schools, and residential communities. These data centers consume excessive amounts of water with little oversight’ install thousands of large diesel generators that threaten local and regional air quality. They also compel massive energy infrastructure upgrades paid for by ratepayers.
In addition, speakers will discuss the significant threats data centers are posing to Virginia’s clean energy progress.
Secretive veil
More and more, land use decisions around data centers are occurring behind a veil of secrecy forged by nondisclosure agreements and Virginia Freedom of Information Act violations, the coalition said.
The Blue Ridge Leader can confirm this fact. While working on a separate story on data centers we were told in one instance the owner of a data center could not be revealed due to a nondisclosure agreement, and in another instance a data center tenant would remain private.
The coalition will ask the state government to step in and require more transparency on the part of data center developers and require them to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of the industry by shifting the cost of new transmission lines and power generation onto the industry players, rather than on the backs of Virginia’s ratepayers.
These issues were presented at a Nov. 13 Town Hall on Transmission Lines and Data Centers in Warrenton where coalition members talked to a packed house of attendees. A similar Town Hall meeting is scheduled for Loudoun County on Nov. 30 at the Old Stone School in Hillsboro located at 37098 Charlestown Pike.
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OK. – Let’s look past all the fancy organizational titles and people who may never run a business or struggled to pay their property taxes. Data Centers can be beautiful buildings so perhaps instead of complaining get into the process asking the richest companies on earth to design buildings to impress instead of computer warehouses.
Data centers don’t need power supplied to them to be above ground so welcome the increased power but require it be underground. Data Center sponsors are the most dependable local tax payers Loudoun has ever had and they generate no new students. It is absurd to resist such a combination!