Another Virginia County Considers Going Big On Data Centers

Annapolis MD

29 March, 2022

5:10 PM

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By Whitney Pipkin, the Chesapeake Bay Journal A handful of proposed projects are turning Prince William County, VA, into the next frontier for debates over appropriate data center development as the industry continues to expand its footprint across Northern Virginia. Data centers are the infrastructure behind our internet-based lives. These often expansive, low-slung buildings — imagine windowless Walmart stores all in a row — are filled with racks of computer servers that store and process information. Online behemoths such as Amazon and Google continue to invest billions of dollars in the data centers to support cloud-based services. Counties that welcome the facilities can receive millions of dollars in tax revenue in return. But smart growth advocates worry that such a dynamic could make decisions about where they should be located inherently lopsided. In Virginia, Prince William's northern neighbor Loudoun County is already home to the world's largest concentration of data centers with 27 million square feet of them in operation and another 9 million square feet coming online, according to the Data Center Frontier. The industry brings an estimated $500 million into the county's tax coffers each year, and surrounding localities have taken notice. "In order for Prince William County to have a bright future, a huge expansion in the tax base must come about, and data centers are the only way to achieve that," one county resident said during a public meeting in March over whether a set-aside zoning area for data centers should be expanded. That project is among a handful being considered by the county that would help accommodate data centers. Prince William County, which borders Fairfax County to the northeast, has for more than two decades concentrated urban and suburban growth in cities near the I-95 and I-66 corridors, leaving a "rural crescent" of land out of reach of such development. Now, data centers are being proposed for some of that rural land, including parcels that drain to a regional drinking water reservoir and that border national parks. Even as the county looks to approve an "opportunity zone" where data centers would be concentrated around existing infrastructure, officials are considering a smattering of data center proposals outside of that area. "We are looking at radical changes to the long-range land use map," Kim Hosen, executive director of the Prince William Conservation Alliance, said of the data center decisions before her county's leaders. "We have, right now, more than 2,000 acres under consideration for data centers — some in the watershed for our public drinking water supply — with very little assessment." One proposal to accommodate data center development came not from county planners but from residents who, despite living in the rural crescent, see the conversion of their properties as inevitable and would like to be able to sell them directly to data center developers. Dozens of people living on larger parcels along Pageland Lane have come together to propose rezoning in support of forming a "Prince William Digital Gateway." In addition to their original rezoning request, the county is considering at the request of additional landowners whether data centers would be a fit for a broader area that would total 194 parcels and more than 2,000 acres. Mike Grossman, one of the Pageland Lane landowners, said the road's proximity to Loudoun County, power lines and fiberoptic cables make it a good fit for data center development. He said farmers and residents neighboring his property are tired of fighting "battle after battle" to prevent development from reaching this area. Several residents — who would be able to sell their land at higher prices if the zoning changes are approved — pointed to how data center development would also improve the county's commercial tax base. "Without the data centers, Pageland Lane is going to get widened and the taxpayers will have to pay for it," Grossman said. "Why not let these people that live up and down Pageland Lane sell to the data centers and get out with dignity?" Residents who oppose the change in land use say the county, not a group of property owners, should decide where to locate data centers. They are also concerned about the impact of so much concentrated development on land that drains to the Occoquan Reservoir, a drinking water source to the area, and to the Occoquan River. "This is our environmental resource. All of the hard surfaces — the parking lots, buildings, rooftops — are going to contribute runoff to the streams nearby," said county resident Stephanie Chartrand. "That's a big concern." Environmental and smart-growth groups are also concerned about the precedent this type of development sets for the county and whether the economic benefits will outweigh the other costs. "Prince William is really considering a new approach, which is to let land speculators identify where we're going to put data centers," said Julie Bolthouse, deputy director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council. "What they're looking at is the cheapest land that's available. That's why [they're considering] rural parcels that are not currently connected to water and sewer and that are next to a national park." The Digital Gateway proposal has drawn opposition from a range of advocates for cultural and natural resources, too. In a letter to the county, the superintendent of the 5,000-acre Manassas National Battlefield Park called the proposal "the single greatest threat to [the park] in nearly three decades." The county's watershed management division has said the project would entail extensive impacts to forests, streams and wildlife that many of the county's existing policies aim to prevent. "Thus far, development of data centers has resulted in mass grading that does not preserve forests, steep slopes or other sensitive features, resulting in little preservation of natural resources outside of areas protected by state or federal law," the agency's review states. The land use decisions will ultimately be up to the county's Board of Supervisors. One of them has said he will recuse himself from the Pageland Lane decision because he lives in the area up for zoning changes. Related Coverage Virginia's data centers: Computing the cost The Chesapeake Bay Journal is a nonprofit news organization covering environmental issues in the Bay region. Sign up for a free subscription at BayJournal.com.