It is now undeniable:
Unrestrained data center sprawl, throughout Prince William County, throughout the Northern Virginia region, and now, throughout the rest of Virginia, will accelerate the impacts on our homes and our quality of life, spreading out its tangled web of tentacles causing new transmission lines and substations. The insatiable appetite of the data center industry is no longer hidden.
December 2014: In the dead of winter, the Coalition to Protect Prince William County was created around one kitchen table because of the threat of one massive 230kv transmission line, reaching 100 ft tall and needing a 120 ft easement using eminent domain to take private property.
Proposed Prince William data center prompts protest letter to Jeff Bezos – The Washington Post
Amazon rumor prompts fight in Haymarket | Headlines | insidenova.com
“But opponents say the $65 million transmission line is mostly being built to accommodate a single customer – Amazon.com – which reportedly has plans in the works to open a 500,000-square-foot data center near Interstate 66 and John Marshall Highway, near the Wal-Mart.”
“Ultimately the community is being asked to bear the brunt and sacrifice our beautiful historical and cultural landscape for one company.”
“In response to the situation in Prince William, Dominion is now reviewing several potential alternative routes. A draft of the alternatives can be found here. The utility is in a balancing act of serving the high-revenue data center sector while attending to the needs of residents.”
Over the 9 years since this community faced its first fight to protect our quality of life from the power needs of data centers, Dominion and the Data Center industry have learned nothing. Their response is to foist THEIR power needs on OUR communities. Instead of innovating and learning, they have doubled down on their abuse of cheap land and cheap power.
But is it cheap? Who will continue to bear the brunt of their bullying tactics?
We, the residents throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia foot the bill for them.
It is not just Prince William County that is at a crossroads, it is our entire state. From Loudoun, to Prince William, Fairfax, Fauquier, Culpepper, Orange, and King George counties, and now Stafford, the bill is going to come due…on our homes as we deal with transmission line routing, with our water as data center blight consumes our green spaces and watersheds, and on our electricity bill, as we face and foot the costs for new electrical grid infrastructure required to feed an industry that consumes electric power like none other on the planet.
What is the MINIMUM price tag WE will be paying for THEIR power needs? More than $100 Billion.
Does this tactic sound familiar? They provide cover for the data center industry by suggesting there is another community need. Instead of “anticipated new growth west of Haymarket” to make the Haymarket transmission line a “public utility need,” Dominion is now throwing in EVs (electric vehicles) as the final trigger for the massive new infrastructure push required to support all the data centers now being approved.
“Dominion says the steep rises in demand are linked to accelerating data center growth and, “to a lesser extent,” electrification, including the transition to electric vehicles. The findings are in line with 2021 predictions from the University of Virginia’s Energy Transition Initiative.”
“Since 2019, the Company has connected 75 data centers with an eventual capacity of 3 GW,” Dominion wrote in the IRP, which was filed with the State Corporation Commission Monday. “These data centers will ramp up to this capacity over time, so the Company expects this growth to materialize over the next 3 to 5 years.”
2023 Integrated Resource Plan (azureedge.net)
The reality this report is describing is that our state of Virginia needs an entirely new energy infrastructure to meet the needs of ONE customer, the data center industry. And WE will ALL be fighting to protect our communities from transmission lines and nuclear energy facilities and gas plants unless we ALL stand up now to this insanity.
The “deal” we are getting as Virginians isn’t such a great deal when you consider what WE all are sacrificing. WE will be asked to give up our quality of life, give up our critical environmental resources, give up OUR history — so that ONE industry can get cheap land and cheap power. No amount of “projected revenue” is worth these losses and these costs.
We say NO to these 21st century Robber Barons. We will stand up to protect our homes, our families, our reliable energy grid, and our future.
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If you haven’t already, use these easy-to-send emails to make sure the data center companies QTS and Compass get the message! Make sure your name is on the record, along with hundreds of others from our community, letting them know You Will NOT Relent!