This morning just before 9 am and after a marathon all night meeting lasting 14 hours the Prince William County Board of County Supervisors voted to approve the Comprehensive Plan Amendment for the Prince William Digital Gateway. The vote was straight across party lines with the Democrats voting for industrial development in the rural area and Republicans voting against. (Supervisor Candland reclused himself and did not attend.)
This development in the northern portion of the Rural
Crescent threatens the health of the Occoquan watershed and the very
sustainability and affordability of the drinking water supply for Northern
Virginia including 350,000 residents of Prince William County. When an
undeveloped or generally open rural area is developed stormwater runoff
increases in quantity and velocity washing away stream banks, flooding roads
and buildings carrying fertilizers, oil and grease, and road salt to the
Occoquan Reservoir.
The total amount of planned data center space exceeds
existing data center square footage in Loudoun County (the data center capital
of the nation and the world). It took Loudoun County 14 years to build out the
existing data centers and Loudoun County still has approved data centers that
have not yet been built. The majority of the 2,400 acres in the existing Data
Center Overlay district are owned by data center development companies or
directly by data center operators. This land has not yet been built.
The one growing sector of electricity demand in Virginia is
data centers, and, wow, is that growing. In 2018 power demand for data centers
was just over 1 gigawatt of power, by 2022 that had reached 2.6 gigawatt of
power this past fall and is projected to double that in the next few years with
projects already under way.
It is clear that there is no limit to the desirability of
data centers to county supervisors and landowners. The counties have been
blinded by the windfall profits to the landowners and the prospect of increased
tax revenue. They will more than double the number of data centers in all of Northern Virginia with this approval and this massive change in use will bring great wealth to the landowners- land
that was worth $25,000-$50,000 is now magically be worth almost $1,000,000 an acre
to be used for data centers, but these windfall profits come at the cost of
degradation of our land and water resources and increased power and water costs
for all Virginians.
I offer my congratulations to Maryanne Gahaban on orchestrating the sale
of the 194 parcels and 2,139 acres of rural and rural residential land for $2.1
billion dollars. Well played. Take your money and go.
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