Fairfax County is quietly creating their own Data Center Alley. Since 2021, the Board of Supervisors has approved (or has allowed to be built by-right) over 4.3 million square feet of data centers – that’s 75 NFL football fields – in the Sully district alone. Almost all of this rapid growth is along the L-shape of Route 28, from McLearen Road to Route 50 west to Pleasant Valley Road, with more to come.
The negative impacts of these 75- to 100-foot tall data centers on nearby residents won’t be apparent for several years since not a single one is operational, mostly due to the inability of Dominion Energy and NOVEC to meet the electrical demand.
And now the first ever, 110-foot tall, data center that has county-wide ramifications, is up for a vote by the Board of Supervisors at the Public Hearing for application RZ 2022-SU-00019 / SE 2022-SU-00038 on Jan. 23 (contact ClerkToTheBOS@faifaxcounty.gov for info, ways to testify and to ask your Supervisor to vote NO).
The taller the data center, the more challenging the cooling requirements which means more rooftop HVACs, more external noise and more electricity. Three new substations and miles of transmission lines are required for those already approved, and a fourth substation and transmission lines are needed for RZ 2022-SU-00019, but Fairfax County is choosing not to consider electricity when approving data centers.
Any Supervisor that is concerned about the environment or your electric bill is a hypocrite if they vote to approve RZ 2022-SU-00019. The unprecedentedly tall data center is the only facility in the county that is flirting with disaster by storing 148,500 gallons of diesel fuel/exhaust fluid for 27 air- and noise-polluting industrial generators adjacent to a tributary to our drinking water. Diesel spills or fires require chemicals and foam that are hazardous to the environment (especially water) and contain PFAs (forever chemicals). Substations and their towering transmission lines require land. The proposed Aviator to Takeoff substations required to power some of the data centers already under construction, will sacrifice nearly 6 acres of Resource Protection Areas to run the transmission lines. In its load forecast to the State Corporation Commission, Dominion Energy admits “the increase is driven primarily by data centers” and assumes Virginia will pull out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to allow them to continue to use carbon-emitting resources to meet the demand. The electric companies are required by law to provide electricity to any approved construction – whether they are prepared to or not. And all consumers pay for the new infrastructure; they aren’t even subsidized by the data centers that require it. In fact, per Dominion, data centers pay less per megawatt consumed.
Urge your Supervisor to vote NO to RZ 2022-SU-00019 / SE 2022-SU-00038.
Cynthia Shang
Chantilly, Virginia