Data center debate: Loudoun County residents give input on regulations

Monday night in Ashburn, Virginia marked the beginning of a new chapter in the data center debate.

Loudoun County is home to 233 data centers at last count, more than anywhere else in the world.

Too close, too hot, too noisy, too much water and energy consumption — Those concerns, and others, have been stressed over and over by Loudoun County residents like Anita Selino.

“This is what I see from my driveway now, and that is a mile from my house. Then I find out that they’re building two more,” she said, showing News4 a picture of a data center on her phone. “I have asthma. I’m very concerned that I will have to move, that I will not be able to live in my house if they’re running generators.”

The 2000 decision that helped make Loudoun County the original home of AOL into the data center capital of the world is about to be updated.

At Broad Run High School in Ashburn Monday night, residents streamed into the first open house where they can give input to county employees on what’s known as “Data Center Standards and Locations Phase 2.”

“It’s important to have community involvement,” said Broad Run Supervisor Sylvia Glass. “We have a lot of people that are having a lot of questions about what data centers are, you know, where they’re going to be built.”

Chris Bruner, an electrician, said he feels the tax and other economic benefits of data centers must remain part of the discussion going forward.

“So the economic boom, a lot of it comes in where they’re saying they don’t employ a lot of people, but there’s been data hall rooms where I’ve remodeled the room four and five times over over just the past 10 years with 10, 20 electricians working 12-hour days,” he said.

There’s a second open house scheduled for Sept. 30 at the Douglas Community Center in Leesburg.