“UNLESS someone like YOU cares a whole awful lot,
It’s not going to get better,
It’s not”
The Lorax
Dear Coalition Friends and Supporters,
WHY is this quote so prominent within the Coalition’s ethos?
From the outset, the strength in the fight to stop the onslaught of data center industrialization has DEPENDED on YOU. Yep, that’s right – YOU – who are reading this email right now.
It is YOU who must step out and find a way to “contribute,” and we don’t mean monetarily. (Although that does help keep our website running, our education outreach efforts possible, and the Digital Gateway lawsuit funded. Bear in mind, the Coalition is all volunteer.)
The real power is in YOU. Each and every one of you collectively has the potential to knit together a chain reaction of real change. What all of us together have accomplished so far has created the framework for what must come next. A Better Future.
Prince William town hall sounds alarm on sprawl, development | Prince William | insidenova.com
A joint town hall and community conversation united several Prince William civic and environmental groups at Sweeney Barn in Manassas this week to explore preservation strategies for the area’s rural character.
A hot topic, of course, was new data center taxation. In light of the tech hubs’ proliferation and increased housing development, the event – hosted by the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, the Prince William Conservation Alliance and the Civic Association of Brentsville and Surrounding Areas – sought to paint a more optimistic outlook for the near future while acknowledging the uphill battles ahead.
The industrialization HAS been slowed down – with YOUR involvement – exposing the harms of the data center industry.
There are times that we anguish over whether we should explain the totality of what we are all facing, fearing that people will simply throw up their arms and say “Why bother?” Then we remind ourselves how FAR we have come – by exposing the truth.
The Coalition blast emails are an archive of predictions that have come true. It is not because someone on our team is physic. It’s because we invest the time to pull all the pieces together — so that YOU can take action. The transmission lines are coming. The substations are coming. The gas plants are coming. The data center buildings are going up. There WILL be impacts in the very near future that you will be seeing and experiencing.
There is only ONE reason this insanity continues. It is because the Data Center industry believes THEY are in the driver’s seat…NOT our elected leaders, and certainly not the residents who have invested their life savings into their homes and their community.
Ask yourself: What have YOU done to step up to this challenge? What is your future worth? What is your biggest investment, your home and property, worth? What is your right to clean air and clean water worth? What is your rising electricity bill worth?
Here is what you are fighting to stop…
- Data Center buildings – Hundreds
- Transmission lines – Dozens – For miles and miles
- Substations – Dozens and dozens
- Gas Plants – Microgrids on future data center campuses, in residential areas, and in our critical environmental open spaces
- Diesel Generators – Thousands – Running for longer and longer periods of time in hopes of protecting the electric grid from blackouts
- Electricity bills – Rising
- Water – Risking your water quality and quantity
Your community here in Prince William County is standing together. And there is NO other place on earth where any community has fought so hard to expose the truth. What we do together serves as the roadmap for the future. There is no WE without YOU. And what WE do here has had, and will continue to have, a ripple effect far and wide.
YOU sending a Coalition click to send letter is helpful. But YOU personally writing the Board of Supervisors is even better.
YOU showing up for citizen’s time at ANY Board meeting to say “This out of control, industrialization must stop, we must understand the impacts that are happening now, before one more approval of a data center” is stupendous and impactful with the supervisors. Bring a friend or a neighbor if you are nervous!
YOU showing up to a Planning Commission or Board hearing when they will vote on a data center application is the pinnacle of applying pressure on this Board of Supervisors.
There are nearly 500,000 people in Prince William County, and in one way or another, all of YOU are affected by out-of-control industrialization. Whether it is your rising utility bills, your access to clean water, your access to clean air, or your overall quality of life — YOU are at risk of feeling some impact from this industry.
We get calls from people ALL over Prince William County, who thought the Data Center scourge was someone else’s problem. Until they wake up one day, and now it’s in their own backyard.
The time to show up is now.
The question is: What is the future YOU have built worth to YOU?
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