https://thederecho.blogspot.com/2019/11/is-county-setting-us-up-for-new-power.html
It seems like nothing is ever easy in Prince William County as some just don’t want to play by the rules and staff seems ever willing to sprinkle Holy Water on their efforts.
For those new to the area or that have been in a coma for the past couple of years, I will briefly lay out the Haymarket Transmission Line fiasco. 1. Corey and the Economic Development Director fly out to Seattle and work a deal to bring an Amazon data center to a parcel just west of Haymarket, 2. The parcel does not have access to sufficient electric power, 3. Dominion proposes several obtrusive power line routes to service the project, 4. The public opposes the project and demands the lines be buried, 5. Five years of hearings, motions, litigation, etc. ensue, 6. Local residents spend thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to carry the fight to both Dominion and the SCC, 7. Residents initiate legislation to mandate an underground line, 8. Dominion ultimately agrees to a hybrid line that is buried in the most impacted areas of the route.
During the proceedings, it became evident that the Prince William’s Zoning Ordinance in effect allowed data centers and substations to be sited in every non-residential zoning category without restriction. Thus, subsequent to the settlement of the case, residents met with several of the Supervisors, drafted amendments to the provisions of the Zoning Ordinance regarding data centers and created the Data Center Overlay District. The purpose was to incentivize data centers to locate within the Overlay District which had been deemed to have sufficient existing infrastructure to support those data centers. As a result, data centers are a by right use in the overlay district and afforded an expedited review process.
As for proposed data centers outside of the Data Center Overlay District, well that is another matter. In order to avoid a repeat of the Haymarket fiasco, the BOCS adopted zoning text amendments that mandated that data centers proposed outside of the overlay district go through an SUP process both for the data center itself and any accompanying substation.
Which brings us to the Gainesville Crossing application that will be heard by the Planning Commission next Wednesday, containing a proposed 4.5 million square feet of data center uses. Now before anybody gets their knickers in a twist and starts crying NIMBY or screaming that I and others are opposed to anything, anywhere and all the time, let me lay a few things out.
First, I have no problem with the concept of placing data centers on the site, I find it a far better option than the original proposal for 1,000 Townhouses and a strip mall. This is not about the data centers as a use but rather the potential for unintended consequences, consequences that would have been addressed during an SUP process. Thus, once again this is a process issue, or more correctly, an abuse of process use issue.
I would note that the Applicant initially filed an SUP for the data centers but subsequently withdrew it. Instead, the Applicant elected to proffer those data center uses and have the county waive the requirement for special use permits and public facility reviews. I am just overjoyed by the news that the Applicant is willing to gift the County data centers if it will simply waive the requirement for reviews that would protect the existing residents from a repeat of the Haymarket Power Line Fight. Staff has of course said little more than note its support of the waivers as the project will promote the implementation of a targeted industry use. I guess proper planning and ensuring there is sufficient existing infrastructure takes a back seat to implementing a targeted industry use.
So, how did the Applicant get around the SUP requirement, the answer is by utilizing a loophole by first designating the rezoning as one for a Planned Business District (PBD) which allows the BOCS to waive any provision or restriction in the Zoning Ordinances in order to approve the rezoning application. That sort of leads to the question why have any ordinances at all if the Applicant can simply seek a wholesale waiver of their provisions.
As I noted previously, the SUP provisions for data centers located outside of the Data Center Overlay District were instituted by the BOCS to ensure that such new data center locations had access to sufficient infrastructure. Thus the question with respect to this particular application is does that infrastructure currently exist. The answer, in my view, is possibly but probably not.
If one refers to page 31 of the Staff Report, the last item addressed is Proffer 36 which “seeks to permit data centers and supporting facilities in land bays B, C-1 and C-2 by proffer rather than by special use permit and public facility review”. It notes that the “property is directly across I-66 from the Data Center Overlay District” and that the “planned electric line, which will have adequate capacity to serve the property”. On the face of it, that would seem to solve the electrical infrastructure issue but those of who were neck deep in the Haymarket fight have good reason to believe that is simply not the case.
In its August 26, 2019 comments submitted to the Planning Office, the Applicant asserts that “Dominion Electric has obtained an easement on a portion of the property adjacent to I-66 for the installation of a high voltage electric transmission line that has been approved by the State Corporation Commission” and that “based upon the Applicant’s communication with Dominion Power, will have sufficient capacity to serve the proposed project”. Well, those of us that have been at war with Dominion learned some hard lessons, number one being that Dominion will assure nobody of anything regarding capacity and power line routing until an intensive study is done which requires the potential customer to provide an anticipated electrical load. In the case of the Amazon project, that load required the construction of a new transmission line as distribution lines alone could not supply and adequate amount of power.
The only exception that I am aware of are those data centers that are reviewed and approved under Dominion’s Data Center Site Certification Program. As one might expect, that certification program involves an evaluation and analysis of numerous factors, but most importantly the existing available utilities. To date, only a handful of proposed data centers in the Commonwealth have availed themselves of the program and there is no evidence that the Gainesville Crossing data centers are one of those few.
I would note that the proposed data centers at Gainesville Crossing have a significantly larger footprint than Amazon’s and arguably at least an equivalent power requirement. Which brings us to the approved but as yet unbuilt transmission line that the Applicant suggests will service its data centers. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, that unbuilt transmission line is the one being constructed for Amazon and therein lies the rub. If you review the SCC case file for the Amazon line you will find multiple pieces of written and oral testimony by load engineers and Dominion professionals regarding the capacity of the new line and the percentage of that capacity that will be subsumed by Amazon’s power requirements. For those that do not recall, 97% of the new transmission line’s capacity is already dedicated to supplying the Amazon facility, leaving 3% for all of the other surrounding uses both current and future. In short, to my understanding there is no capacity in that unbuilt line for the proposed data centers at Gainesville Crossing. Lest my take not be sufficient for you, we have met frequently with the Manager of Electric Transmission at Dominion Energy and put forth this very scenario for this very project for well over three years. Dominion’s assertion to us, the capacity for such a project does not exist in the line as proposed and approved by the SCC.
It also bears noting that the Haymarket line was constructed to serve the Amazon data center campus with a floor area slightly under 450,000 square feet. Given that the Gainesville Crossing proposal calls for a maximum of 4.5 million square feet of data center usage (ten times that of the Amazon complex) one can reasonably question how the Haymarket line could possibly provide the required capacity sufficient to energize a data center complex of that magnitude.
Taking that a step further, assuming the Amazon energizes the third of its data centers, no capacity in the line will exist and an alternate source of power will be required for Gainesville Crossing, likely meaning the construction of another transmission line. Conversely, if the Gainesville Crossing data centers are approved and constructed prior to Amazon energizing its third facility, that would leave Amazon short of power and again in need of another source of power, read another transmission line. Far fetched? If you believe so you have never dealt with Dominion.
Which brings us back to the express purpose of the Data Center Opportunity Zone and the amendments to the Zoning Ordinance requiring Data Centers and substations outside of the opportunity zone to file SUP applications and undergo public facility reviews. That purpose, to ensure that the necessary infrastructure exists or will exist so that the County residents are not forced to engage in another fight with Dominion and the SCC.
It would certainly seem that in this case both the Applicant and Staff are hell bent on circumventing the intent of the BOCS and as a result creating a circumstance wherein the both Data Center Opportunity Zone and the amendments to the Zoning Ordinance requiring Data Centers could be rendered meaningless. That would serve as a dangerous precedent that would enable additional data centers and more transmission lines outside outside of the Data Center Opportunity Zone.