Virginia’s Alexandria. The large, windowless warehouses that contain the rows of fast servers that power practically everything people do on computers and phones are becoming more and more commonplace in American towns, cities, and suburbs.
The explosive expansion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence in recent years has increased demand for data centers, and both urban and rural governments are vying for lucrative contracts with large tech corporations.
Some locals are resisting the world’s most powerful corporations’ worries about the economic, social, and environmental well-being of their communities, however, as data centers start to encroach on increasingly densely inhabited regions, bordering houses, schools, parks, and leisure facilities.
More than 300 data centers may be found in Northern Virginia, which is dotted with forested bike trails that weave through the suburbs and the undulating hills of the westernmost counties. However, one of the most recent plans in the region, Plaza 500, calls for the construction of a 466,000-square-foot complex and an electrical substation nearby, just a few hundred feet from community centers, playgrounds, and townhomes.
The billionaire Barry Sternlicht’s private investment company, Starwood Capital Group, made a proposal to Fairfax County politicians that included promises of jobs and a large increase in property taxes. However, detractors of data centers claim that the incentives are insufficient to offset the negative effects of constructing the facilities so close to residential areas.
One of the main opponents of the Virginia project, Tyler Ray, is concerned that additional data centers in the region would jeopardize the already overburdened electrical grid: In 2023, data centers accounted for more over 25% of Virginia’s total electricity production; if data center growth keeps up its present rate, this percentage might increase to 46% by 2030. Concerns regarding water costs are also raised by estimates that indicate a mid-sized data center uses the same amount of water each day as 1,000 families. Ray is also concerned about the purity of the air because the enormous diesel generators that power the data center’s technology release harmful chemicals into the atmosphere.
Despite their best efforts, Ray and his neighbors were unable to halt the development. In September, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors declared that the Plaza 500 project was exempt from the harsher zoning regulations that would apply to all newly planned data centers.
The night the supervisors voted, Ray remarked, “I don’t know how a general resident, even someone who has been actively involved in an issue, has any chance to go up against the data center industry.”
Bringing data centers to their communities benefits local governments financially: In 2024, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said that the state’s existing data centers generated $1 billion in tax income.
Data centers typically have less than 100 direct jobs available for average-sized facilities. Opponents of data centers argue that the 150 direct jobs created by Google’s recent announcement of its investment in neighboring Loudoun County, which includes two data centers, is not worth the trouble. However, proponents of data centers contend that the projects are valuable due to the quantity of indirect jobs created, such as construction, technical support, and electrical labor. Google claimed in the same release that 2,730 indirect employment were created as a result of their investment.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ vice chair, Kathy Smith, voted in support of the Plaza 500 proposal because she believes that Fairfax County should benefit from the inevitable rise of data centers in the area.
Smith stated that it is my duty to take a step back from our work and consider the wider picture. Data centers will continue to exist.
Across the nation, in Morrow County, Oregon, Amazon Web Services has constructed at least five data centers around the 4,200-person town of Boardman, which is surrounded by the Columbia River and sprawled across acres of farmland with wind turbines and mint patches.
Following a $66 million tax exemption, AWS paid about $34 million in property taxes and fees as required by the agreements last year. These payments, together with the company’s $1.7 in 2023 charity contributions, have been crucial in modernizing infrastructure and supporting services. So far, at least $2.8 million has been spent on a new ladder fire engine, a school resource officer, and $5,000 subsidies for homebuyers.
This path, exactly? In the passenger seat of Police Chief Rick Stokoe’s vehicle, Boardman Mayor Paul Keefer pointed out the window at construction workers moving dirt and paving pavement, saying, “It wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for AWS.”
Keefer and Stokoe, two local authorities with the power to vote on whether to approve tax benefits with the corporation, are among those with whom AWS has developed relationships. Some locals and past county commissioners are concerned that those connections are too close.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Kevin Miller, AWS’s vice president of global data centers, stated that we are interested in being a good corporate citizen and genuinely collaborating with those communities.
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Those officials have left their positions. However, there were once more questions highlighted by the most recent data center agreement between Morrow County officials and AWS, which provides the business with an estimated $1 billion in tax savings over 15 years to develop five additional data centers.
In 2022, Jim Doherty and Melissa Lindsay, two former Morrow County Commissioners, attempted in vain to get AWS to increase its tax payments in new data center discussions.
We were careful not to blow it up. Lindsay stated, “We didn’t want to chase them away.” However, there were better offers available.
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