We have some pretty stunning news to share. In fact, it truly boggles the mind.
Our current Board of Supervisors will be deciding next Tuesday, December 10, whether to approve ‘by right’ zoning for a proposed Gainesville Crossing data center campus. This is on land running south of Rte. 29, north of I-66, in between University Blvd./Heathcote Blvd. and Pageland Dr., right next to Conway Robinson Memorial State Park and Manassas National Battlefield Park, and just outside the Rural Crescent.
The power required for this data center campus, 4.5 MILLION sq. ft., is supposedly to be combined with the power required for the 450,000 sq. ft. Amazon data center campus, as well as for three hotels, a Wawa, a 3 story storage facility, and several hundred homes and townhomes – all being now or to be constructed in the same area. It is easy to compute that all of this growth will quickly exceed the 300MW usage capacity of the Haymarket transmission line being installed. When that occurs we will be facing another transmission line fight! Now is the time for you to speak up!
This is exactly what the Coalition fought so hard to avoid – data centers everywhere in our county ‘by right.’ This community played fair: we worked with government, we worked with staff, to close what had been a glaring deficiency for data center placement in our outdated zoning. The Data Center Opportunity Overlay District was passed in 2016. The purpose of this overlay district is to locate data centers in areas of the county where the power and other infrastructure to support them already exist.
Our county Planning Staff has created a loophole ‘by right’ designation, which has now been approved by a majority of the county Planning Commission, to be made available for data centers. The ‘by right’ rezoning for the Gainesville Crossing data center, outside the overlay district, feels like slap in the face to all those who worked so hard, for so long. And apparently, our overlay district might as well have never been adopted if the process for an SUP (Special Use Permit) for any data center outside the data center overlay district is lost in the bureaucratic trickery of loopholes with ‘by right’ PBD (Planned Business District) designations.
Regarding the Gainesville Crossing application, Dominion Power can only say that they believe they will be able to serve the proposed project. They add, however, that when or whether additional transmission line infrastructure will be required due to changed circumstances in the project area at any point in the future is not known.
Dominion testified at the SCC hearing that the Amazon data center complex would require 160 megawatts from the Haymarket transmission line, which is maxed out at 300 megawatts capacity. Dominion is proposing the Gainesville Crossing data center complex will require 250+ megawatts from the Haymarket transmission line. Do the simple math: 160 + 250 = 410. How is it possible for the Haymarket transmission line to serve these two data center masters?
If and when that Haymarket transmission line exceeds 300 megawatt usage, by regulatory standards another transmission line will be required. The Haymarket transmission line simply does not have the capacity to also serve a new master 10 times the size of the current Amazon data center campus, which it is already slated to power.
If we are wrong, then Dominion should come to the Board and to the community, and prove it – but BEFORE, not AFTER the plan is approved.
There is no other entity like a data center campus, situated on a relatively small footprint, but requiring enough power to light up several thousand homes. Citizens are carrying the burden of the massive infrastructure bills for these energy hogs. That is a corporate subsidy we should all object to. They should contribute for their own personal infrastructure. Even the SCC legal team agreed with the Coalition. The SCC Staff and lead counsel advocated not only for the Hybrid route, but that the ‘bulk load customer’ should be required to contribute monetarily, “put some skin in the game.” Obviously that argument did not prevail, the judge ruled against us. In fact, in our settlement with Dominion, the Coalition agreed we would not pursue any further court or legal action. They were definitely concerned we would take that argument as far as we could.
Please use this easy pre-addressed email to add your own personal message to the Board. Tell them it is unfair, given what we now know, to saddle this community once again with the ramifications of a data center campus outside the overlay district. As localities we must do better deciding how we incorporate this use into our communities, or we will end up looking like Route 606 in Loudoun.
Why wasn’t rigorous vetting of available power infrastructure done by the County Planning Office in advance for this application outside of the newly created data center overlay district? Why is this application being rushed?
This community fought for five years, spent thousands of volunteer hours, raised thousands of dollars, to have a seat in the courtroom to ensure that we had the best outcome we could expect with the Amazon data center. Even though the Hybrid route was imperfect, we stood together as a community. Does the board really want to risk saddling this community again with another transmission line fight? Does that sound fair?
Fool me once, shame on you – Fool me twice, shame on me. For everyone whose home is on one of the previous ten possible transmission line routes, be very concerned. For everyone else, you need to be concerned as well. We know how these power fights work. Dominion will find a path of least resistance for a transmission line. Our community will be impacted again. Because – if the Board approves the Gainesville Crossing data center application, Dominion Energy must provide them power.
Tell the Board not to make a mockery of what was such a model process in this powerline fight: community and government finding solutions together. Ask them to vote to defer this application until they have more information about its power consumption and how it will be met. They should vote to defer because this new loophole of PBD isn’t good governance. It is Planning Staff removing the Board’s legislative powers. We depend on the expertise of the Board. We depend on them to wade through the facts and make the best decisions for everyone. There is zero reason to rush this decision. There are too many questions and too many concerns.