More than 30 community members took to Virginia Beach Town Center Tuesday night to call on lawmakers to enact a statewide data center moratorium.
Chesapeake Climate Action Network partnered with several organizations to march as part of a two-week tour across the commonwealth. Tuesday’s event was the only stop in Hampton Roads. The demonstrations call for pausing all data center development across the state to allow time to establish protections for public health, environmental and economic protections.
Data center development has exploded in recent years, with advocates arguing the growth is in response to people consuming an equally growing amount of data due to technological advancements. Northern Virginia alone has become a global hub for the facilities to the tune of roughly two-thirds of the world’s data centers.
That growth has downsides, though. Hyperscale data centers can require roughly 100 megawatts of power and consume up to 530 million gallons of water per year to operate. Facilities of various sizes can also have effects on neighboring communities’ air quality, groundwater and noise pollution.
According to Catherine Setaro, Hampton Roads field manager with Virginia League of Conservation Voters, those downsides are unacceptable for Virginia residents, and developers who profit off the facilities’ unchecked growth need to be leashed.
“Big tech has had a free pass in Virginia for too long, which is why we’re dealing with more of these industrial facilities than anywhere else in the country,” Setaro said during the rally. “Virginians are fed up. They are tired of a system where big tech can do whatever they want without consequence, cashing in while Virginians bear the cost.”
While data center growth has thus far been limited in Hampton Roads, smaller facilities that consume fewer resources still exist in places like Virginia Beach. The Chesapeake City Council blocked a developer’s proposal to build 350,000-square-foot data center last year after outcry from residents. Several localities are now researching what regulating data centers could look like. This summer, Chesapeake enacted an 8-month moratorium and restricted where they can be placed and Virginia Beach enacted a 1-year moratorium.
At the state level, Gov. Abigail Spanberger issued an executive order in September shedding by-right approval of large data center projects and instead requiring local approval.
For Chesapeake resident Linda Tindell, that doesn’t mean the threat of Hampton Roads residents seeing a data center in their community has gone away completely.
As she stood in Fountain Plaza wearing an elephant costume alongside her pet donkey named Darla, Tindell said she’s one of many Chesapeake residents concerned about future development at the former Frank T. Williams farm in southern Chesapeake. The 4,000-acre property was recently sold to a private investment firm called Praetorian Fund with no disclosed purchase details and some residents are wary it could become a future site for data center development.
Tindell, a Republican, said reining in data centers in something that crosses party lines. She said she wants to protect her community from facilities that could impact nearby ecosystems and farms that are home to animals like Darla.
“People are showing up. It’s a nonpartisan issue,” said Tindell, adding that Darla is an independent and has yet to cast her ballot. “Environmentally, it’s too aggressive. It’s too much too fast.”
Michael Jamieson is another concerned Chesapeake resident. He loves hiking and spending outdoors in places like the Great Dismal Swamp. However, if data centers are allowed to continue their expansion, he said those ecological gems will be tainted by the time his daughter grows up.
He said he wants to do something about it so his daughter’s future hikes in Chesapeake remain protected.
“It comes down to the natural environment that’s going to be harder to experience,” Jamieson said. “For me, it was important that my daughter see her dad come out and talk and actually do the things he talks about at home, not just yell at the TV.”
Devlin Epding, 757-510-4037, devlin.epding@virginiamedia.com