Dear Coalition Friends and Supporters,
“Fool me once shame on you. Fool me TWICE, shame on me.”
The warnings from the Prince William County community, from local conservation organizations, and from regional, state and national preservation groups were totally and completely ignored by too many in the Prince William County government with the approval of the Digital Gateway. The level of unrelenting pressure and work by citizens to turn that near catastrophe around is almost surreal. And while the Digital Gateway is hopefully experiencing its last gasp before the Virginia Supreme Court, we are now dealing with a threat twice that size.
–> TUESDAY, JULY 7 – 2 PM – BOCS VOTE ON DULLES CLOUD SOUTH *See below*
Dulles Cloud South is exactly that. Digital Gateway was 22 million square feet of data center floor area – Dulles Cloud South is 43 MILLION square feet of data center floor area. (Yellow in map below is Dulles Cloud South along Sanders Lane in Catharpin. The gray with blue outline below it is Digital Gateway.)
Under the proposed framework, the corridor could be developed at a 0.50 floor area ratio (FAR), allowing for a maximum of 43 million square feet of data center gross floor area (GFA)
To invite that folly again is beyond irresponsible, knowing that there is still little change requiring fiscal accountability on a statewide level. And there will be no running away from this for ANYONE in elected office.
–> Print this flyer and distribute in YOUR neighborhood!
We REJECT our pocketbooks and our property being plundered for this industry. Whether it’s billions in state taxes this industry isn’t paying, or the billions that we are paying for energy infrastructure projects needed to meet their unprecedented power demands.
EVERY. SINGLE. DATA. CENTER. PROJECT requires grid infrastructure additions. So much so that it is questionable if all this power can even ever be built. But in the meantime, the projects scarring Virginia’s landscape, and subsuming people’s homes and land, is growing exponentially. The approval of Dulles Cloud South, or any iteration of this project, will only exacerbate what has been brought upon us. It is tantamount to setting our grid on fire.
AND WE, from the localities in Northern Virginia triggering this infrastructure takeover, are becoming hated across the region.
Don’t know what we are talking about?
Here are just a few projects:
- MARL and MPRP: intrastate transmission produced from coal coming from West Virginia, and nuclear coming from Pennsylvania.
- Virginia projects ranging from 500kV to 765kV: Valley Link, Morrisville to Wishing Star, Nokesville, Golden to Mars, Kraken Loop, Joshua Falls-Yeats, and two new massive gas plants in southwestern Virginia.
ALL of this to feed Northern Virginia’s addiction to data centers.
There is nowhere to hide from the decisions of local government. Prince William County supervisors, along with every other locality in the state of Virginia who continue to approve data center projects, are responsible for the increasing cost of living on all of us. Not just here in Prince William, but across the state and outside of the state.
Given what we have learned since the Digital Gateway project was first proposed in 2021, it would be unconscionable to invite the Dulles Cloud South project with double the impacts.
Boards of Supervisors, across the Commonwealth of Virginia, have the power to curb this insanity. We have the power to demand it.
The “buck stops here” is literally at the dais where your local supervisors sit and serve. THEIR vote directly impacts the rising utility rates. Their first vote on Dulles Cloud South will be on Tuesday, July 7. (See Action steps below)
The Property is strategically positioned north of the Prince William Digital Gateway area and provides a logical, condensed extension of data center development adjacent to two major transmission line corridors. By placing a condensed data center development in this location of the County additional infrastructure to support the proposed data center development can be confined within a singular location and prevents having to bring additional infrastructure in from other areas of the County or to other, one-off data center development locations.
We reject the idea that data center industrialization is “condensed” OR “confined.” Indeed, what this opening paragraph so succinctly describes is quintessential sprawl. But even worse, the declarative statement that infrastructure is “confined” is laughable. Just ask the communities fighting multiple transmission lines, like Morrisville to Wishing Star, Nokesville Transmission line and the Vint Hill Substation. These are all projects triggered by data centers from miles away.
“Further, the proposed development is particularly appropriate given (i) the existing high-voltage electric transmission lines running the length of the Property, and (ii) the Property’s access to a natural gas line.”
Well, this is an interesting new addition calling out the gas line. Yeah, cause that has worked out so well in Memphis, Tennessee. But we don’t have to travel that far, just look here at home! Gas turbines as on-site generation for data centers are more than a nuisance; they are a health risk:
https://youtu.be/QCJTm7jI2Xs?si=cNkbp4M4yYGOLPoo
This application relies on inaccurate information – There are multiple road projects that have been REMOVED from the Comprehensive Plan because they were fiscal boondoggles, like the widening of Sudley Road and Gum Springs.
This traffic impact analysis alone is reason to reject this application:
To introduce this type of traffic congestion that will necessitate many new roads will only result in significant increases in dangerous salinity into the struggling Occoquan Reservoir: Fairfax County Occoquan Reservoir water quality study. To date, Prince William County has not had a comprehensive groundwater study initiated or completed.
There are 251 homes currently in that area, some on larger lots protecting the watershed, but there are many on smaller size lots with modest ranch houses. These are existing communities that will have to be destroyed to make way for damaging industrialization. Many of these are the affordable housing this county needs.
Dulles Cloud South applicants erroneously claim: “Leveraging its adjacency to the Prince William Digital Gateway and two major transmission lines.”
The implication from this statement would have you believe that those transmission lines will provide power for this project. That could not be FURTHER from the truth.
We all know that the current infrastructure that runs along Sanders Lane does NOT have the capacity for any new data center build out, no matter what the size, and that the Morrisville to Wishing Star line, while partially triggered by the Digital Gateway project, will also NOT be nearly enough power.
A reality made clear by a Dominion Energy Rep in a PWEEG (Prince William Energy Engagement Group) meeting March 10, 2025:
“Coalition to Protect PWC representative: What happens if the Digital Gateway in two or three years, goes through the entire legal process and they finally are allowed to come online, is the Digital Gateway included in this [ Morrisville to Wishing Star Transmission line]?
Dominion Rep : I believe a small part of the Digital Gateway was.
Coalition Rep: Okay. How small?
Dominion Energy Rep: I don’t the full megawatt. ……but the point is its a small, small portion.
Coalition Rep: You can’t even tell me how much. Is it at least 100 megawatts? (Digital Gateway project forecast was at least 3,000 megawatts)
Dominion Energy Rep : I don’t think it’s even that much.
What does this information tell you? Tell our Supervisors?
It tells ALL of us: There is not enough power to feed the Digital Gateway, and certainly NOT enough to feed this outlandish and mammoth Dulles Cloud South project.
We know there are already 13000 diesel generator permits in Northern Virginia. How many more thousands will Dulles Cloud South necessitate, and what would those impacts be to our air quality? During a time of climate change we simply can’t imagine a more backwards, thoughtless and unnecessary risk to the very air that we breathe.
Good planning does not mean private citizens have a right to rezone their land and use the rest of us taxpayers as their 401k, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Compatible zoning exists for a reason. Homeowners depend on zoning to know that they won’t wake up to a nuclear reactor or gas plant in their neighborhood.
Razing hundreds of homes, increasing utility bills, harm to air quality, risking groundwater quality and access to clean water for surrounding residents, AND risking more pollutants into the Occoquan Reservoir — is ALL pure folly.
This Board got lucky with the Digital Gateway mulligan. They must not make the same mistake again.
PWC BOCS: Vote NO.
It’s time Virginia took pride in NOT being the dumping ground of data center sprawl. Our natural and cultural resources are what set us apart. It’s time to embrace our assets.
No supervisor can ever claim again “we didn’t know.” The impacts are right in front of your faces.
TAKE ACTION:
–> Protecting where you live isn’t a bystander sport. We need YOU to write the supervisors. Spend just five minutes of your time.
PWC Board of County Supervisors:
tgordy@pwcgov.org yvega@pwcgov.org abailey@pwcgov.org
vsangry@pwcgov.org kboddye@pwcgov.org jlacroix@pwcgov.org
gstewart@pwcgov.org djefferson@pwcgov.org bocs@pwcgov.org
–> Print this flyer and distribute in YOUR neighborhood!
–> Show up July 7th, 2 pm meeting. More details to come. Very few Comprehensive Amendment Initiations are ever rejected, so NOW IS the time to put an end to this digital disaster.
We have enough data centers, and trust us, you have barely begun to see the approved buildings and their associated infrastructure. We are only starting to see the tip of the iceberg.
The Coalition sent out an email in December of 2025 about this application:
Dulles South Innovation Center Application Beyond Absurd – The Coalition to Protect Prince William County
Here are more articles:
Dominion announces plans for new 3-gigawatt gas plant in Cumberland County • Virginia Mercury
Proposed Chesterfield gas plant draws community objections, industry support • Virginia Mercury
“Data centers and other large energy users create a special set of risks, and we are pleased to see the Commission engage with these emerging issues here. Residential customers should not be subsidizing these wealthy companies, and Virginians are relying on the Commission to address these fundamental questions of fairness.” said Peter Anderson, Director of State Energy Policy with Appalachian Voices, in a statement.
“It’s a project going from a power station in Pennsylvania to feed data centers in Northern Virginia,” Prutilapac said of the proposed MARL project. “It’s not as though it’s a project that they’re adding the lines because there are underserved communities 10 minutes down the road.”
An Electric Super-Highway Through the Piedmont – The Piedmont Environmental Council
Data centers drive 76% surge in PJM power prices – E&E News by POLITICO
Actual and expected growth of large data centers for powering artificial intelligence are driving electricity prices higher. That has contributed to a growing disconnect between electricity supply and demand inside PJM. The report noted that data center load included in PJM’s last two future capacity auctions translated into a $13 billion cost increase for customers across the sprawling grid.
PJM wholesale power prices nearly double in a year, data centers blamed
Monitoring Analytics warned that “the price shock to customers is very large and irreversible” and that “if problems related to data center load are not resolved at an appropriate time, the price shock will be bigger in the short term.”
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