Report Highlights Community Pushback Stalling $64 Billion in Data Center Development Nationwide

As Elena Schlossberg of Prince William County, Virginia, sees it, the community effort to fight the richest companies in the world seeking to build data centers began about a decade ago when opposition coalesced in the early days of the industry’s development.

A representative for the Data Center Coalition speaks in opposition to a bill on data centers with Virginia Del. Josh Thomas (D-Prince William) and labor union representatives behind her. (Photo by Charles Paullin/Inside Climate News)

Then, a couple of years ago, when people began to learn much more about the warehouse-like server farms proliferating at double the earlier rate, the fight strengthened with a meeting in Warrenton.

“That was where we all just started saying, ‘OK, in order to fight this behemoth, we have to have some organizational process,’” Schlossberg said. “We have to be able to communicate. We have to be able to support each other. We have to have a clearinghouse for all the information.”

Schlossberg’s group, the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, about 35 miles southwest of the nation’s capital, teamed up with several other groups, including the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association, and met in one of the areas facing development pressure that could now triple in the state. They formed the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition.

Such community opposition is the focal point of a recent report by Data Center Watch, a research organization tracking data center opposition. A key finding: “$64 billion in U.S. data center projects have been blocked or delayed by a growing wave of local, bipartisan opposition.”

“What was once quiet infrastructure is now a national flashpoint — and communities are pushing back,” the report says. “This report highlights political risks and local opposition as frequent factors in data center project delays or cancellations, including community resistance, environmental concerns, and zoning issues.”

As data center development explodes, the industry has faced particular challenges in Virginia, its global epicenter. Some $900 million in projects in the state have been blocked, and $45.8 billion in projects have been delayed. Yet, environmental advocates say few protections have been put in place.

At the state level, dozens of bills were introduced in the Virginia General Assembly this year to enact development safeguards, but only a symbolic one about utility costs was signed into law by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing many of the tech companies developing projects in Virginia, said the group is “committed to working collaboratively with local officials, policymakers, and regulatory bodies at every level.

“Data center companies site projects where they are permitted under local zoning ordinances, rules, and regulations, which are developed by local leaders representing their communities,” Levi said. “The industry seeks to work collaboratively with local officials to minimize community impacts, which often includes participating in town halls and other community and public engagement opportunities.”

Examples of pushback

The locations of projects getting blocked or delayed are mostly centered in the Northern Virginia suburbs and exurbs of Washington, where the internet began. The region now serves a vast federal government, defense and intelligence complex.

A couple other projects highlighted in the report branch out into the Northern Neck, south of the Potomac River, and outside Richmond. Virginia is home to 13 percent of the world’s data center capacity, while 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic moves through computers in the state.

One case study in the report highlighted the effort by Schlossberg’s group, the Manassas Battlefield Trust and others to stop the $24.7 billion Digital Gateway development of a campus with 37 data centers in Prince William County near the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Another is the Bren Pointe residential community in Fairfax County, fighting a $165 million hyperscale project that would need transmission lines and a five-acre substation 60 feet from the boundary of a townhome complex.

In another project in Warrenton, proposed by Amazon with an undetermined development cost, hundreds of people, including actor Robert Duvall, attended and spoke in opposition, according to FauquierNow. Legal challenges have stalled the town council’s approval of the project, and during that period, council members who supported it have been voted out of office.

The report noted that Republican elected officials made up 55 percent of those critical of projects, expressing concerns over the use of tax incentives. Democrats made up 45 percent of those opposing projects, largely over environmental concerns.

But many elected officials are approving data centers.

“What will it take for people in positions of power to make different choices?” Schlossberg said. “As plain as the nose on my face, data centers are impacting the integrity of our water and our air and our communities and our reliable, affordable electricity.”

Ann Wheeler, former chair of the Board of Supervisors in Prince William County, declined to comment on why she lost her Democratic primary race for re-election, but stood by her choices to support the industry in today’s digitally driven society.

The environmental concerns used “misinformation” as part of a campaign of BANANA, or Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone, she said, and supporting the facilities’ construction meant union jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in local revenue to support social services her party has traditionally aligned with.

“They’ll go in somewhere,” Wheeler said, adding her county had resources for responsible planning. “I would rather have that tax revenue in Virginia.”

The report did not feature the opposition to a proposed data center in Pittsylvania County. There, community pushback and a report commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which highlighted the health effects from on-site, fossil fuel-powered generation equipment, led to the Board of Supervisors rejecting a needed rezoning application, effectively killing the project. The report included other case studies of successful data center opposition in Indiana, Texas and Arizona.

Legislative failures

Virginia’s legislative research arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, issued a report in December that comprehensively examined the costs of data center development. It found that data-center energy demand would roughly triple from 2023 to 2040 if development went unconstrained. Even so, the legislative protections proposed this year failed to make it across the finish line.

Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have had localities require a description of substation needs and a study on the noise the facilities close to homes and schools generate, which can come from their air conditioning units, and onsite power generators. House Democrats killed a requirement for state regulators to review data center power contractsto ensure that electricity generation and transmission lines could support the need.

One change that did pass requires the State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, to review cost allocations for data center projects between consumers and the center operators. The commission already had that authority.

One Republican lawmaker, Del. Ian Lovejoy of Prince William County, pushed for ways to have the industry pay for the electric grid upgrades it necessitates. But debate on the bills married business and labor union interests, which “usually are opposed to one another,” Lovejoy said. “When those two groups agree on something, [there are] very difficult headwinds.”

The General Assembly was also leery of interfering with local land use decisions in an election year, Lovejoy said.

All 100 delegates are up for election this year, along with the governor. Democrats control the chamber 51-49. The state Senate, also controlled by Democrats, 21-19, has elections in two years. A similar debate driven by community opposition to new solar projects also took place this year in the legislature.

Community opposition to data centers, Lovejoy said, “is going to affect more and more people when they build data centers directly next to houses. That’s the cautionary tale. Look at Loudoun [County], look at Prince William. Don’t build them next to schools, don’t build them next to houses. Make sure they’re set back properly, or you’re going to have the same issues that we’re having.”

Schlossberg said members of her group traveled a couple of hours down to Richmond one early morning during the legislative session earlier in the year. They were there to lobby for the swath of data-center bills as part of the group’s increasing battle at the local, state and federal level that is costing the industry money and creating a community of opponents.

“I think it’s important to really talk about the building of community,” Schlossberg said. “In a digital world, I think we have seen people who have never felt lonelier. And I think that’s been a really important positive outcome, is that people connect.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

by Charles Paullin, Virginia Mercury

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