By Jill Palermo Times Staff Writer Feb 3, 2023
State Sen. Chap Petersen, D-34th, discusses two of his data center bills before the Va. Senate Rules Committee, as supporters look on.
Courtesy Hugh Kenny, PEC
A bill that would have prohibited data centers within one mile of state and national parks — effectively blocking the Prince William Digital Gateway — died Friday in a state Senate committee room packed with dozens of Prince William and Fauquier residents, many wearing matching shirts proclaiming: “Virginians Support Data Center Reform.”
But the group did not leave the state Capitol completely defeated. A bill calling for lawmakers to study data centers’ impacts on Virginia’s environment, economy, energy resources and carbon-reduction goals received a unanimous vote of approval from the state Senate Rules Committee moments after it tabled Senate Bill 1078, the measure targeting the PW Digital Gateway.
State Sen. Chap Petersen, D-34th, of Fairfax City, discusses two of his bills before the state Senate Rules Committee on Friday, Feb. 3.
Courtesy Hugh Kenny, PEC
Both bills were sponsored by state Sen. Chapman J. “Chap” Petersen, D-34th, of Fairfax City, who said he filed them to “tap the brakes” on data center development and inject “guardrails” aimed at protecting sensitive areas from the giant, concrete buildings.
While introducing the bills at the Friday, Feb. 3 committee meeting, Petersen noted that “more than 20% of all the data centers in the world” are located in Northern Virginia, and that they use “a tremendous amount of our electricity load” and take up “a tremendous amount of space.”
“And this is proliferating. … That digital gateway will take up the same square footage as 144 Walmart Supercenters,” Petersen said of the controversial PW Digital Gateway data center campus, proposed for about 2,139 acres adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park. The development won a comprehensive plan amendment from the Prince William Board of Supervisors in November but is still in the rezoning phase.
“So we’re talking about a massive expansion of a commercial use, which is very energy intensive, very water intensive, primarily in the rural crescent of Northern Virginia,” Petersen said.
Petersen also made a last-minute change to limit his bill’s reach by prohibiting data centers only within one mile of any state or national park. The bill initially sought to prohibit the facilities within one mile of any recognized historic site. The change removed 123 sites around the state from the bill’s impacts, Petersen said.
A bus full of PW Digital Gateway opponents traveled down to Richmond before dawn to advocate for the bill. A handful of Prince William County residents testified in favor of it, including Haymarket Town Councilman Bob Weir, a Republican vying for the Gainesville District seat on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in the upcoming Feb. 21 special election.
Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, also spoke in support of the bill. She noted that all Virginia electricity ratepayers foot the bill for new power lines needed to fuel new data centers, rather than the data centers themselves.
Weir and Schlossberg were followed by representatives from most of the major conservation and environmental groups in the state, including the Sierra Club, the American Battlefield Trust, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, the Virginia Conservation Network and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation – all of whom also spoke in favor of SB 1078.
Speaking against the bill were representatives from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, as well as the Prince William Chamber of Commerce and data center developers Compass and QTS – both of which have filed rezoning applications to build data centers in the PW Digital Gateway planning area.
Also speaking against the bill were representatives from commercial real estate and data center industry groups, two labor unions, and Tim Kissler, a developer and Prince William Digital Gateway-area homeowner who has signed a contract to sell his home and land to Compass data centers.
“It was the typical grassroots versus the suits,” Petersen told the Prince William Times in an interview after the vote. “It was organized volunteers going up against folks who are paid lobbyists.”
Conservation group representatives emphasized the huge amounts of electricity consumed by data centers and questioned whether Virginia could or should meet those demands.
“You know what we’re worried about: it’s the tripling of the energy infrastructure in Virginia … solely for the expansion of data centers,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council. “But for data centers, [the state is] declining in our energy use because of our work on efficiency, good land-use planning [and] good transportation planning. Data centers alone will cause a 300% increase in the infrastructure and generation we need just to meet their needs.”
Among those opposing the bill, Myles Louria, a lobbyist for the Data Coalition, said the bill would “drastically limit” new data centers in Virginia and would unfairly single out data centers near parks while other commercial development, which might have even greater impacts, would not be similarly restricted.
Louria went on to note that the data center industry accounted for 62% of “all capital investment that occurred across the commonwealth in 2021.”
“Senate Bill 1078 runs counter to policies and efforts by Virginia to attract data center investment in jobs,” Louria said. “We believe it’ll have a chilling effect, not just nationally, but internationally.”
After the testimony, which was limited to seven minutes from both sides, state Sen. Barbara Favola, D-31st, who represents parts of Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington counties, made a motion to table Petersen’s bill out of a “respect for local governments.”
Favola said local elected officials must follow various state regulations for siting data centers and “have the tools to balance the environmental impacts as well as the economic impacts of data centers.”
State Sen. Jill Vogel, R-27th, who represents Fauquier County, offered a substitute motion to approve the bill. She called shielding parks and historic sites from data center development one of “the highest priorities” for her constituents.
Vogel’s motion was not successful, however, dying in a 4-13 vote.
Favola’s original motion passed in the same 13-4 split, with 10 Democratic senators and three Republicans voting in favor of tabling the bill. Only Vogel and three Democratic senators voted to advance it.
Favola then made a motion to advance Petersen’s Senate Joint Resolution 240, which calls for studying data centers’ impacts on energy use, carbon emissions and the economy. That measure advanced to the full Senate in a unanimous vote.
“I believe the study should come,” Favola said. “We need to figure out what we’re gonna get [as a result of data centers] and what kind of role the state should play.”
In an interview after the vote, Petersen said the joint resolution calls for forming a working group of stakeholders – likely representatives from environmental and conservation groups as well as those from energy, economic development and trade unions – to discuss data centers’ impacts and to suggest possible legislation for the 2024 session of the Virginia General Assembly.
Asked why he views data centers differently than many of his fellow state senators, Petersen said he believes most Virginia lawmakers are “behind the curve” when it comes to fully understanding data centers’ impact on Virginia’s residents and landscapes.
More and more residents, he said, are becoming educated on data centers and realize they are not harmless “cash cows.”
“People who are candidates – especially candidates for statewide office – have got to get on the right side of this issue,” Petersen added. “They can’t just be all-in for data centers.”
Del. Danica Roem, D-13th, of Prince William
Courtesy of Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury
Petersen’s SJ 240 is the only data-center-related bill to advance to the full House or Senate with the exception of the state’s new economic incentive package for data centers, House Bill 2479. That bill would extend Virginia’s retail sales and use tax exemptions on qualifying data center equipment and software until 2040 and again until 2050 for tech companies that make data center investments in Virginia of more than $35 billion. HB 2479 has already had its first reading in the House of Delegates.
Bills introduced by Del. Danica Roem, D-13th, an opponent of the PW Digital Gateway, have not found success.
Roem’s House Bill 1986, which would have required that the State Water Control Board adopt stricter stormwater management rules for land disturbances related to the construction or expansion of data centers, was tabled in a 6-1 committee vote.
Roem’s House Bill 1974, which would have declared it in the public interest to spend more to bury transmission lines in close proximity to national parks or state forests also died in a 3-2 committee vote. Roem’s House Joint Resolution 522, which is similar to Petersen’s data center study resolution, was killed by a House committee in a 3-2 vote.
Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com