With the data center industry continuing to expand throughout Virginia, the state’s largest local government is working to adopt policies meant to avoid problems with noise, the buildings’ proximity to homes and the power lines providing electricity to them that have afflicted other communities.
Fairfax County has just a handful of data centers, primarily because there aren’t many available large tracts of land in the jurisdiction that can host the mammoth-sized facilities whose thousands of computer servers process the data that makes the internet and cloud computing possible, county officials say.
But the county of 1.1 million residents has seen an increase in the development of smaller “edge” data centers that make connectivity even faster in densely populated areas, officials say.
The growth has prompted a plan to amend the county’s zoning ordinance to restrict where and how data centers can be built — a step also occurring in other counties such as Loudoun and Prince William as concerns about noise and the massive amounts of energy consumed by data centers ripple across the region.
Advertisement
But the board of supervisors was forced to delay its vote on the issue Tuesday after the county staff realized the night before that it had failed to comply with a new state law that, as of July 1, changed the advance public notice requirement on pending decisions and public hearings to seven days from four days. A new vote and public hearing on data centers was scheduled for Sept. 10.
“I’m not happy about this at all; in fact I’m angry about it,” Jeffrey C. McKay (D), the board’s chair, said during Tuesday’s meeting after announcing the error. “We spent a lot of time on this issue, and we discovered this yesterday.”
On Monday, McKay said the proposed zoning amendment is an effort to steer data centers into the right areas so they do not lead to problems with noise or the surrounding environment that have plagued Prince William and Loudoun counties. There, despite the large influx of local tax revenue, the industry’s rapid growth has led to an angry backlash from residents and community groups.
Advertisement
“We want to have data centers in Fairfax County, but we want to make sure that we’re steering them not only to the right zoning categories but also that we have the right environmental, noise abatement and other protections in place,” McKay said.
“What’s most important is that we are getting ahead of this problem,” McKay said.. “That we’re not finding ourselves in a Prince William or Loudoun situation.”
Among other things, the proposal before the Fairfax board would allow data centers as large as 80,000 square feet as a “by right” use — meaning no special exceptions would need to be approved — in industrial areas of the county. Facilities as large as 40,000 square feet would be allowed as a by right use in some areas zoned for commercial use.
All of the buildings would be required to be at least 200 feet away from residential properties, with equipment at least 500 feet away and kept out of view. And the facilities would have to be at least a half-mile from the nearest Metro station, unless a special exception is granted for a shorter distance, with proof that they are in compliance with the county’s zoning ordinance.
Advertisement
Environmental groups and some county residents are pushing for even stricter requirements, while industry advocates say they go too far.
The proposed guidelines “are fairly prescriptive and suggest a relatively narrow aperture in terms of the number of developable parcels and the design aspects the County may consider for data center projects,” Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition industry group, said in a statement. “This may limit the number of developers interested in investing and the number of potential projects.”
Homeowners near the site of a planned 466,000-square-foot data center in the county’s eastern Bren Mar area argue that the restrictions should apply to projects like that one, which have been submitted to the county but are not yet approved for construction.
That project is currently allowed as a by right development. But its proximity to nearby homes — just over 200 feet away — and to the Van Dorn Street Metro station could make it subject to a special exception hearing if the board decided to include it in the zoning amendment, those residents argue.
Advertisement
Not including it “would basically shut off any kind of opportunity that we would have to have a public hearing on this,” Tyler Ray, president of the homeowners association in the nearby Bren Pointe neighborhood of townhouses, said in an interview Monday. “The county isn’t doing anything to protect us.”
During a four-hour public hearing on the zoning change earlier this month, other groups called for the county board to expand the distance from the nearest homes to at least 500 feet and make all new data center construction subject to a special exception hearing.
“Data centers might be one of the most pivotal issues of our generation,” Renee Grebe, a conservation advocate with the Nature Forward environmental group, said during that hearing. The zoning changes under consideration “will have decades-long consequences on our county and us residents,” she added.
Advertisement
That sense of urgency stems from broader projections about the industry’s growth and its impact on the portion of the nation’s power grid that includes Virginia, D.C., Maryland and 10 other states as data centers handle more energy-intensive artificial intelligence technology.
Recently, the Dominion Energy utility estimated that the industry’s demand for electricity in its service area will quadruple by 2040 to nearly 14 gigawatts, or enough to power 11.2 million homes.
Meanwhile, Loudoun County is preparing to adopt its own zoning amendment that will also further regulate the industry, with the county board considering a proposal to require new data center projects to include plans for a microgrid that would supply the facility with its own electricity.
Prince William, the area’s second-largest market, is also working to regulate the industry.
Advertisement
“If we continue to try to meet the power needs of the data center community through the traditional regional grid structure, we will fail,” said Loudoun Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn), who is spearheading his county’s zoning amendment effort.
Turner noted that the region’s grid operator, PJM Interconnection, has warned that power failures are a possibility in the coming years if more energy is not delivered to the region. The organization recently approved $5.2 billion of transmission lines projects meant to ensure grid reliability, including one that connects Northern Virginia to coal plants in West Virginia. It is also planning to solicit bids for even more power line projects while relying in part on fossil fuel plants for extra energy.
Turner argued that those fixes won’t occur in time.
Advertisement
“We won’t have the build-out on these new lines until 2028 and AI is here,” he said.
McKay, the Fairfax chair, said the county is not seeking to add to the problem by becoming a major market for data centers. But the county nonetheless wants to prepare for the inevitability that the industry’s footprint will spread farther into Fairfax, he said.
“Who knew when this started that this was where this was going to end up?” McKay said. “I’m not criticizing Loudoun or Prince William, per se, but I am saying that we don’t want to end up in a situation they’re in.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLGkecydZK%2BZX2d9c4COaW5oamlks6K10Z%2BYsWWUlsGiecKepa2doqh6u7vNoqWgZw%3D%3D