Loudoun County, Other Virginia Localities Consider Hitting the Brakes on Data Center Development

Loudoun County, ground zero of Data Center Alley and home to over 250 of the power-hungry digital warehouse facilities, is considering a pause on all new data center project applications, officials said this week.

“The community has basically been begging us to do something about the unchecked growth of data centers,” County Supervisor Juli Briskman said Thursday. “The communities have been asking us to fight back against these big corporations that have basically been able to run roughshod over the county.”

Briskman asked the board to have county staff draft a plan for what a data center pause would entail. The county is currently revisiting its comprehensive plan zoning ordinances regarding data center permitting and zoning.

Phase one of the review process concluded in the spring of 2025. Following that review, supervisors removed “by-right” permitting for data centers and moved it to a conditional use permit application that allows for more public input into the process.

In the second phase of the ordinance review, supervisors will examine existing standards for data centers and utility substations in the zoning ordinance, Briskman said.

From there, they will determine if amendments are necessary to minimize community impacts while ensuring operational functionality. Briskman said they will also “evaluate provisions related to onsite power generation and energy storage, (and) noise parking standards.”

She suggested that data center applications pause while the review of potential amendments to the comprehensive plan is underway. This would mean no new applications would be considered for months.

“I decided it was time that we actually just pumped the brakes, listened to the community, and just put a pause on all of it until we can get our arms around some of these other standards that we’ve been working on,” Briskman said.

Loudoun is not the only locality considering this sort of move.

Leaders in Suffolk are also reviewing their regulations for the industry and are temporarily pausing new applications for data centers while they work through those changes.

The town of Front Royal is drafting a policy to ban data centers from all of their zoning districts.

The city of Chesapeake voted to delay its review of applications for eight months.

“We should use this pause to ensure that the City’s ordinance ultimately protects communities from toxic air pollution and not accept half-measures that allow the burning of on-site diesel and gas,” Michelle Ueltschi with the Chesapeake Climate Action Fund said in a statement following the city’s vote.

“This decision can serve as a model for other localities and state lawmakers to hit pause on data center development until proper regulations are put in place to protect communities,” she added.

Localities’ considerations of these changes reflect a desire to slow down the development of data centers and pass meaningful regulations around siting, noise, backup generators, water use, and other concerns that communities across the commonwealth have brought up in public hearings.

Virginia does not have statewide data center siting regulations. It’s up to local governments to make their own ordinances and decisions for individual projects.

The data center industry has contributed an estimated $2.7 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2024, Data Center Coalition representatives said previously. The facilities rake in millions in tax dollars for the localities that house them.

Loudoun County, for example, has been able to reduce its property taxes because of the tax revenue they take in from data centers.

“There’s no doubt that we’ve been able to do things like fully fund our schools, put millions of dollars into our housing fund. We built a crisis receiving center for $16 million in two years,” Briskman said.

The risks residents say data centers pose aren’t outweighed by the money, she said.

”But the problem is that the community is not seeing a balance. They aren’t seeing a balance against what they view as negative impacts of the data center industry.”

Briskman added that the county has “become fiscally over reliant on data centers” and said it is time to diversify the county’s economy.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors will take up the motion at the Sept. 15 meeting.

by Shannon Heckt, Virginia Mercury

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