Any company that would want to build an energy-hogging, environment-clogging hyperscale data center in Augusta County can do so right now by right on property zoned industrial without needing county approval.
This isn’t necessarily sitting well with Gerald Garber, the chair of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors.
“Considering it already gets emails, that tells me how big it is, and nobody’s even talked about building one here yet. That tells me there’ll be people all over the place on this,” Garber said at Monday’s BOS staff briefing, addressing a proposal from Riverheads District Supervisor Mike Shull to appoint a citizens committee to help guide county policy on data centers.
Hyperscale data centers – basically, the infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking equipment used to store information and deliver business and government services; the hyperscale definition applies to centers exceeding 10,000 square feet and 5,000 servers – can be big business.
According to a 2023 report from the Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission, the data-center industry accounts for 74,000 jobs, $5.5 billion in labor income and $9.1 billion in gross domestic product to the state’s economy on an annual basis, though there’s a bit of a fools’ aspect to the economic impact – most of the benefits, the report tells us, comes in the construction of data centers, not from the ongoing operations.
It’s the impact of those ongoing operations on local communities that is the issue. A 2024 JLARC report tells us that a small data center consumes as much energy as 4,500 houses, and the projected proliferation of the centers would triple electricity demand in Virginia over the next 15 years, with an additional burden on local water supplies.
You may be familiar with the horror stories coming out of Memphis, which is home to a massive data center being used by xAI, an artificial-intelligence company owned by Elon Musk, which is powered by 35 methane-gas turbines that xAI is using without legal permits.
Because of lack of foresight in local zoning, Musk’s company was able to locate its data center next to historically Black neighborhoods that are now bearing the brunt of the environmental impact from the gas turbines.
“What’s happening in Memphis is a human rights violation. Elon Musk and xAI are violating our human right to clean air and a clean, healthy environment,” said KeShaun Pearson, executive director of Memphis Community Against Pollution.
Several Virginia localities are moving to address loopholes in their local zoning laws to reduce their exposure to these kinds of abuses.
Just last week, for instance, York County passed an ordinance requiring data-center applicants to include letters from energy and water companies stating whether or not they can handle the needs of the facility when running at full capacity.
The new ordinance in York County also requires applicants to submit a sound study, and to agree to sound limits, property setbacks and the inclusion of vegetative buffers at property boundaries.
Henrico County voted earlier this month to require data centers to be 500 feet away from residential areas, and to require substation screenings and vegetative buffers.
Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, meanwhile, voted to update its zoning ordinance to remove the by-right zoning rule that will now require future proposed data centers to go through the county board of supervisors to get approval.
Tim Fitzgerald, the county administrator in Augusta County, told the BOS at the Monday staff briefing that the county staff has been working on a draft ordinance to address zoning related to data centers.
“We’re taking a harder look at things like, where do we have the infrastructure, where does it make sense for data centers to be and live, and how do they cooperate with the neighbors and so forth?” Fitzgerald said.
Those are some of the technical aspects.
Garber emphasized that “this is also going to be political.”
“I mean, it probably will be as political, maybe more so, than solar, simply because there’s a lot more money involved here,” Garber said. “When there’s too much money involved, people get a lot of pressure, from a lot of different sources. I just want us to be a little bit cautious on it, but take a good look at it.”
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Chris Graham
