When John McAuliff stands at the front door of his home in The Plains, a small, incorporated town in Fauquier County, he’s 15 minutes from a massive data center in one direction and 20 minutes from a massive data center in the other direction.
“We have been letting data center growth run unchecked,” he says.
The numbers show that Northern Virginia’s data center footprint grew 500 percent between 2015 and 2023, according to the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC).
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on who you ask. “A lot of people have a lot of different opinions,” McAuliff says, and that might be putting it mildly.
An Economic Engine
As physical facilities that house computer equipment and networking hardware, data centers are essential infrastructure in an increasingly technology-driven world. But why are so many landing in NoVA?
It’s a combination of factors. The region was the birthplace of the internet, so it had an early stake in the game. There’s ample access to energy available (data centers need tons of that), as well as wide-open space and proximity to big population centers. Tax incentives, fiber infrastructure, and a big pool of skilled workers add to the attractions, NVTC reports.
All of these factors have combined to make Virginia the world’s largest data center market, and that’s driving the regional economy, says Buddy Rizer, executive director of the Department of Economic Development in Loudoun County.
“In today’s world, there are not many growth industries, and we are very fortunate that we had a first-mover advantage in what is probably the biggest growth industry of our lifetime: digital infrastructure,” he says.
A 2024 NVTC report details the economic impact, which includes some $203 billion invested in Virginia data centers. Together, these facilities employ some 12,140 operational workers, about 90 percent of them in Northern Virginia.
Data centers also created some 14,240 construction jobs. The boom has created $2.8 billion in operational and construction pay and benefits, NVTC reports.
And there’s a ripple effect: In 2023, the growth of data centers indirectly created some 78,140 jobs and $31.4 billion in related economic output. “For every job inside a Virginia data center, 3.5 additional jobs are supported in the rest of Virginia’s economy, not counting construction jobs,” NVTC reports.
Those numbers have meaning, Rizer says.
“When I arrived here 18 years ago, we were laying people off, we were cutting back services, we were raising taxes. Our tax base was only 19 percent commercial. The rest was residential,” he says. “Fast forward to today. We have one of the strongest local economies in the country. We’ve been able to lower our tax rate by 42 cents. About 50 percent of our tax base is commercial.”
But what’s going on behind those numbers? Residents have raised concerns about quality of life, energy consumption, and environmental impacts — and state lawmakers are listening.
Growing Concerns
Opposition to data centers is impacting politics in the region and at the state level.
In Prince William County, then Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler led a majority of the board in approving the Prince William Digital Gateway, a plan to rezone more than 2,000 acres of farmland to accept data centers. In June 2023, she lost her seat to data center opponent Deshundra Jefferson.
In January 2025, state legislators introduced a bipartisan legislative package aimed at trimming the explosive growth of data centers, with bills that target rising energy costs and call for more state oversight of the industry.
“If we fail to act, the unchecked growth of the data center industry will leave Virginia’s families, will leave their businesses, footing the bill for infrastructure costs, adjoining environmental degradation and facing escalating energy rates,” state Sen. Russet Perry, a Democrat, said at a press conference announcing the legislative package. “The status quo is not sustainable.”
Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, agrees. She started campaigning against data centers in 2014, in response to a proposed transmission line that Dominion Energy wanted to build to power an Amazon Web Services campus.
“The risk to the community was Dominion Energy would exercise eminent domain to take your property, to feed energy for one really, really wealthy customer,” she says. “We fought Dominion for almost five years, and we forced them to settle on a partially buried route.”
Riding the momentum of that partial win, the coalition has been fighting the ongoing data center explosion, with Schlossberg voicing a range of concerns.
“I live in Haymarket, in what remains the rural area in Prince William County, but the data centers are approximately 5 miles from me,” she says. She sees the 105-foot-tall monopoles laden with huge power lines and worries about the region’s energy supply. She and many others wonder: Will Dominion build new power plants. And will NoVA consumers and businesses bear the cost?
“And where is that energy coming from?” Schlossberg asks. “In the state of Virginia, we were working towards the Virginia Clean Economy Act: clean air, clean water. We were making progress towards those goals, and that’s being lost due to a new reliance on coal and gas and diesel generators. If you live next to a data center campus, they will have anywhere from 50 to 200 diesel generators. I’m not talking about the kind you go to Home Depot to buy. I’m talking about diesel generators the size of tractor trailers.”
She’s worried, too, about quality of life. The Digital Gateway, for example, spans roughly 2,100 acres “right next to … Manassas National Battlefield Park, one of the most important historical parks in the country,” she says. (The American Battlefield Trust has voiced opposition, saying the massive project would “overwhelm” the park.)
In rural areas, paving over vast tracts of open space threatens the local water supply, Schlossberg says, and it’s just not a logical use of land. A decade ago, a plan for the area now slated to become the Digital Gateway called for hundreds of homes to be built on that land. Schlossberg argues it makes no sense to scrap those home-building plans “at a time when affordable housing is a high priority.”
Is Transparency anIssue?
McAuliff says he isn’t rigidly opposed to data centers, but like many in the region, he’d like to see a more transparent process. To that end, he recently announced his plan to run for state legislature in 2025 as a Democrat.
As a small-business owner (he owns the historic Chilton House Suites in Warrenton), McAuliff says he understands the economic arguments. But he expresses alarm at the way data center decisions are being made. “I’m so frustrated with what my current state delegate is doing that I’m filing to run against him,” he says.
Rizer insists that in Loudoun County, there is transparency — “these things are openly discussed,” he says — but McAuliff argues that across the region, more citizen input is needed.
“From a local perspective, the problem is primarily that folks are not getting consulted on this land use,” he says. Data centers “have an impact on water, on the size and number of power lines, on the availability of energy. We just have to take a serious look at what those impacts are going to be for local residents.”
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
This story originally ran in ourApril Issue. For more stories like this,subscribeto Northern Virginia Magazine.
