First, the Coalition wants to thank all the volunteers who have stepped up to reach out to your neighbors, and to provide the public service of collecting recall petition signatures. We have so much interest in the recalls, we could definitely use help from even more citizen volunteers who are also willing to be a part of this grass roots team, working to make it easy for county voters to sign the recalls and to restore integrity to what has become blatant abuse of elected office.
Our most recent recall signature count from Monday, July 25th, is over 700 signatures for both Ann Wheeler and Pete Candland recalls. Outreach county-wide to participate in signing is growing exponentially!
We also wanted to share some important developing news.
The Editorial Board for InsideNova has truly encapsulated the heart of what we are facing, not only in the Gainesville District, not only as a County, but what we believe includes the entire Northern Virginia Region, and our beautiful state.
This is the beauty of Pageland, and our rural areas today:
EDITORIAL: Picture this for Prince William
“This photo, taken from a drone in February, shows a few of the 25 million square feet of data centers that have been built in the Ashburn area of Loudoun County. Vantage Point Drone / For InsideNoVa”
“If you want to see what western Prince William County might look like in 20 years, drive north on Route 28, just past Dulles International Airport. Take the Waxpool Road (Route 625) flyover exit, which goes over southbound 28 and look around you. As far as the eye can see are monolithic buildings in various shades of gray with huge air-conditioners on top.”
“…Finally, it’s worth noting that Prince William already has about 10,000 acres in its data center overlay district. That represents almost 5% of all land in the county – a higher percentage if you back out undevelopable land that is part of Marine Corps Base Quantico, the Prince William Forest Park, and the Manassas National Battlefield.”
“That’s enough land to accommodate 33.4 million square feet of data centers, according to a report prepared for the county. That should satisfy demand through this decade and into the next and is more square feet than currently is built out in Loudoun – considered the data center capital of the world. (Indeed, Loudoun supervisors have started to push back against designating additional land for data centers.)”
“That means the biggest question the Prince William board should ask is this: How many data centers are enough? And will the extra tax revenue they generate add to the county’s quality of life enough to offset the potential negative impacts?”
“We hope supervisors will consider these questions carefully, seek informed, unbiased answers and not just vote along party lines. Because this is an issue that transcends politics. It will determine what we want to be as a community. Are we in a race to be the data center capital of the world? Or are some things more important than money?”
Read the complete InsideNoVa editorial
The Coalition to Protect PWC has been questioning the ability of Dominion Energy to provide enough power, starting with the application for the Gainesville Crossing data center complex, upwards of 3 million sq ft of data center development, which was approved by the PWC Board in December of 2019. Our position has been consistent. The Dominion Energy transmission line on Pageland Lane, which has been there for decades, is THE BACKBONE for power to Loudoun. The Pageland landowner group, Reinvent PWC, has used that transmission line as their excuse to promote what is turning out to be the fourth, and largest, data center corridor to be proposed in Prince William County.
The available power on EVERY transmission line has its limits, as was told to the Coalition directors by Dominion Energy, in a meeting on January 26, 2022 – a meeting which was recorded.
Facts and science have been ignored for far too long by Ann Wheeler, and other supervisors on our Board. But it appears that just like Roadrunner, they have run face-first into a power wall that they simply cannot gaslight.
Our transmission power grid knows no man-made county border.
We are all interconnected, in every way, on every level. Our power infrastructure is simply a tangible way to express our reliance on each other; for understanding that so, too, are all our natural resources interconnected.
At some point, the demands we place on our power, and on our natural resources, become too much.
From a LoudounNow article dated July 28, 2022:
“Dominion Energy has warned it may not be able to serve new data center projects in Ashburn, facing challenges delivering that electricity along high-voltage lines.”
“That could delay new data centers coming online by years, with millions or billions of dollars already invested in new projects.”
“Loudoun Economic Development Executive Director Buddy Rizer said his office is working to understand what happened…”
Read the entire LoudounNow article: Dominion Warns of Power Crunch for New Ashburn Data Centers