I<\/span>n<\/span>In<\/span> 2007, the US was on the cusp of an economic recession, and Buddy Rizer was tasked with finding Loudoun County, Virginia, a new way to make money. Rizer\u2019s earlier career as a radio DJ didn\u2019t exactly make him an obvious candidate to find a solution, but he was looking for what he called a \u201creal job\u201d and stumbled into a role at Loudoun\u2019s economic development authority.<\/span><\/p>\n This new gig came with urgency thanks to the bursting of the housing bubble: More than 80 percent of the county\u2019s revenue came from residential real estate. The goal, at the time, was to raise the commercial tax base from about 19 percent of revenue to something like 23 percent, Rizer recalls. Today, just over half of the county\u2019s tax revenue comes from commercial sources. To jumpstart that turnaround, Rizer turned to the carcasses of another recent bubble burst \u2014 those of the dot-com era.<\/span><\/p>\n The county had been home to the headquarters of AOL, which by 2000 was the US\u2019s largest internet provider<\/a>. Combined with its proximity to the nation\u2019s capital and access to resources including water and electricity, Loudoun quickly emerged as the physical manifestation of the internet, the place responsible for how the majority of Americans got online. Estimates suggest that as much as 70 percent of the planet\u2019s internet traffic passed through Loudoun County.<\/span><\/p>\n But after the collapse of dot-com stocks in 2000, followed by AOL\u2019s disastrous merger with Time Warner, much of that industry dried up, and Loudoun was left with hulking, empty buildings and miles of fiber optic cable already laid in the ground. Where some people saw abandoned infrastructure, Buddy Rizer saw opportunity: \u201cAnd so I thought if we can fill those, that would be a good start,\u201d he says. Rizer soon realized that the same factors that made Loudoun County attractive to AOL could once again make it a hot spot for technology. It still had an internet exchange point, lots of land, a government eager for investment, and a capable local electricity utility. \u201cAnd so we came up with this plan to attract data centers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Today, Loudoun County has another moniker: Data Center Alley. Over just a small portion of its roughly 515 square miles, it\u2019s home to about 250 data centers, the densest concentration in the world. For a long time, residents there recall only a passing understanding of this, if they realized it at all. The development of data centers in Loudoun was just something going on in the background of many residents\u2019 lives. They noticed construction along main roads, paid an increasingly lower property tax rate, and sent their kids to coveted public schools.<\/span><\/p>\n The county\u2019s data center boom arrived as tech companies expanded into the cloud, a sanitized name for the blocky buildings that house rows and rows of servers. And with that business came prosperity: 22 new schools built in just the last 15 years, tax revenue from data centers alone that exceeded the county\u2019s operational budget by $35 million in 2024, and a decline in real property tax rate for residents from about $1.29 to 80 cents per $100 in assessed value since 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n Some longtime residents never heard of their county\u2019s nickname until recently, when the effects of data centers on the community started to become impossible to ignore. What had been a relatively quiet boon locally was starting to foment a national backlash elsewhere, and starting to disturb daily life in Loudoun, too.<\/span><\/p>\n The current, massive US data center buildout has been accelerating thanks to the widespread adoption of generative AI, which has created a growing need for the physical infrastructure to run tremendous amounts of \u201ccompute\u201d \u2014 the industry term for processing power. There are already 3,000 data centers in operation around the US, according to an April analysis by the Pew Research Center<\/a>, with 1,500 more in development. When Rizer began recruiting companies to build data centers in Loudoun, he sat on conference panels for secondary markets. Now when he attends data center conferences, Loudoun is the biggest market there, and \u201cthere\u2019s more economic developers than there are data center companies, because everybody sees the opportunity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Loudoun County residents are also starting to take notice. Within the past few years, data centers have been elevated from an unremarkable part of daily life in Loudoun to something that many residents now think about every day. For some, it\u2019s the constant hum they hear from their decks; for others, it\u2019s the transmission towers that loom over their favorite green space, or the surprise call from their energy utility that one of those towers could go up in their own backyard. While residents recognize that data centers have brought a lot of prosperity to the county, they\u2019re beginning to wonder how much more they can take.<\/span><\/p>\n As communities around the country begin recognizing the potential opportunities of building data centers, the efforts have also faced immense pushback. Opposition to this development is shaping strange alliances across the political spectrum and has become a central issue in this year\u2019s midterm elections. New York<\/a> and Texas<\/a> have begun pumping the brakes on new data center buildouts, worried about how their energy grids could support them without leaving residents stuck holding the bag if major tech players change plans. Local stories from around the country show that residents are coming out to community meetings in droves to oppose data centers. In at least one case, a violent attack on a local Indianapolis official appeared motivated<\/a> by his support for data centers. And national polls<\/a> show that many Americans do not want to live near them<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n With its long history hosting data centers, Loudoun residents have more recently taken to calling it something new: the canary in the coal mine of data center development. Want to know what the country\u2019s future looks like? Loudoun County\u2019s past gives a strong glimpse of it.<\/span><\/p>\n Even in Loudoun, where the existence of data centers has been a fact of life for nearly two decades, Rizer says that in the last few years, community opposition has become more vocal. \u201cBefore then, people understood what we were doing,\u201d he says. These days, residents seem more aware of the inconveniences.<\/span><\/p>\n Rizer is no stranger to this kind of response to his projects, but the tone of the pushback is different. Residents have always had myriad worries: economic, environmental, and aesthetic. That part isn\u2019t new. \u201cI\u2019ve done $70 billion of deals here, and the only thing in common is that somebody\u2019s been against every single one of them,\u201d Rizer says. \u201cI have never seen, in my entire career, the vitriol, the hate that is associated with this.\u201d Asked to put his radio DJ hat on to choose a soundtrack for this moment, he chuckles and says the first one that jumps into his head is Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cYou Need to Calm Down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As Rizer and other officials in Loudoun field their own residents\u2019 concerns about data centers, they\u2019re also being flooded with calls from local officials across the country looking for their advice. Rizer is the first to admit that hosting a data center, let alone hundreds, is not the right choice for every community. He stands by the work he\u2019s done to bring them to Loudoun, and still believes they\u2019ve benefited the county on the whole. But data center expansion in Loudoun has recently taken on a life of its own, to the point that even Rizer no longer spends his time courting new facilities. \u201cWe don\u2019t want more data centers here, but we want those that are here to be successful and continue to contribute to our community,\u201d he says, diplomatically.<\/span><\/p>\n But new facilities are coming anyway, and even Rizer, the \u201cgodfather of data centers<\/a>,\u201d is powerless to stop them. Over a series of visits to Loudoun County, I wanted to see for myself what it\u2019s like to cross through communities surrounded by the cloud. Is the data center future that so many across the country seem to fear all it\u2019s been built up to be?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have never seen, in my entire career, the vitriol, the hate that is associated with this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Long before it became Data Center Alley, Loudoun County was already solidifying its role as the hometown of the modern internet. In 1996, AOL decided to move its headquarters<\/a> from neighboring Fairfax County to Loudoun, eventually employing more than 5,000 workers<\/a> in Ashburn at its peak in 2004. Soon, the first internet exchange point, MAE-East, would make a similar move to Ashburn<\/a>, making Loudoun the physical location where much of the world\u2019s internet traffic flowed. It was further solidified as a tech juggernaut when telecom company MCI WorldCom also opened a large office in the area, which became its headquarters in 2003<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n The companies brought more than just jobs and a new workforce to the area. They also laid fiber underground across the county, attracting other tech firms<\/a> to the area because of the convenient promise of low latency and proximity to the nation\u2019s capital. The attention earned Loudoun nicknames like \u201cthe Silicon Valley of the East<\/a>\u201d and \u201cDulles Technology Corridor<\/a>,\u201d after the nearby airport.<\/span><\/p>\n For a while, AOL and MCI\u2019s presence made Loudoun an unlikely but bustling tech hub. Between 1990 and 2000, the county population doubled to 170,000<\/a>. Early AOL employees have recounted lavish parties<\/a> thrown by the company in its heyday, including \u201cgo-go-style dancers\u201d and a sushi conveyor belt around an airplane at the nearby annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.<\/span><\/p>\n During this time, data centers were already starting to pop up in Loudoun County, but with little fanfare. The first one arrived in 1997, and after that there was a slow drip of new data centers permitted in the area. In 2000, the local zoning administrator made a decision that would have lasting consequences later on, but made little noise at the time. Because data centers looked similar to offices, they became designated as \u201coffice parks,\u201d meaning that they could be built on any land zoned for office space \u201cby right\u201d \u2014 bypassing more time-intensive regulatory review. That meant that unlike other commercial facilities like heavy machinery plants, which face more restrictions being built near populated residential areas, data centers could be built wherever offices had been allowed.<\/span><\/p>\n Then the dot-com bubble burst. In early 2000, AOL announced a blockbuster merger<\/a> with Time Warner for more than $160 billion. But as the first wave of internet companies suffered sharp declines, AOL\u2019s ad revenue tanked, and the country\u2019s largest provider of dial-up internet was soon undercut further by the rise of faster cable broadband. MCI filed for bankruptcy<\/a> in 2002 after a major accounting scandal. By 2006, it was acquired by Verizon<\/a>, and a year later, a much diminished AOL announced it would move its headquarters<\/a> to New York.<\/span><\/p>\n Soon after came the financial downturn that became the Great Recession. Looking for unique ways to pitch the county, Rizer, then a newly minted business development manager, saw an opportunity in the recently emptied buildings and miles of fiber still lacing Loudoun\u2019s roads. From 2002 to 2005, no new data centers<\/a> had been permitted. In the years after Rizer began courting them, only a few were permitted per year, county data shows, but growth was slow and steady. Then, in 2014, the number of data centers permitted jumped to seven. Rizer recalls feeling like the county could finally start relying less on its taxes from residents and more on commercial revenue. \u201cWe were catching up on schools and catching up on salaries for our workforce,\u201d he says. He recalls no pushback out of the ordinary on any development project, and says that for 15 years, \u201ceverybody loved the data centers because of the difference it made in our community.\u201d In 2018, data center permits tripled to 21 in a year, and they reached a new peak in 2022 at 25.<\/span><\/p>\n Only those who were really paying attention seemed to notice that Loudoun was quickly becoming the data center capital of the world. Many longtime residents I spoke to sheepishly admit they hardly recognized Loudoun\u2019s global reputation for data centers, though they perhaps passively noticed the new, blocky buildings that popped up along main roads or the tall transmission towers near their favorite running trail.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the past 20 years, though, Loudoun residents have seen a direct impact of data centers on their lives, whether they knew it or not. Real property tax rates declined dramatically, while property values have gone up in some communities as much as 182 percent in the last decade, even at residences close to data centers, according to county officials. The county has paved smooth roads and built sprawling athletic fields, a recreation center with an Olympic-size pool, and an average of nearly one and a half state-of-the-art public school buildings every year for the past 15 years, all thanks largely to the revenue generated by the county taxes data center companies have to pay anytime they get new equipment. And while data centers have gotten a reputation for creating relatively few jobs once they\u2019re constructed, the county says<\/a> that for every job inside those buildings, three and a half non-construction jobs are \u201csupported\u201d throughout the rest of the state economy. Those include ongoing maintenance at data centers, like electricians or HVAC technicians, and employment at other tech companies that move to Loudoun to be near where the data lives.<\/span><\/p>\n While the data centers take advantage of a long-standing tax exemption from the state, Rizer emphasizes that the county has never spent a dime to attract them to the area. \u201cA majority of the people that live here now only know prosperity, only know the strongest local economy in the country, only know great services and great schools,\u201d Rizer says. \u201cAnd so they don\u2019t necessarily connect to that. They don\u2019t see that common thread between the fact that the data centers are here and they have a great quality of life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n My most recent visit to Loudoun is on a July day when wildfire smoke that\u2019s wafted down from Canada has sent air quality into a Code Purple<\/a>. The ashy filter makes the grayish buildings all around look especially drab, though when I visit a local bike trail lined with trees and transmission towers, I still see plenty of cyclists braving the AQI that exceeds 200<\/a> in some spots.<\/span><\/p>\n Julie Bolthouse, a longtime Loudoun resident who grew up across northern Virginia, drives me by the old AOL campus and points out a building with a playground on the other side of the street. \u201cThat used to be a major daycare center here in the heart of Data Center Alley, because there were so many people who worked here,\u201d she says. \u201cNow it\u2019s just these big, giant computer energy-guzzling, water-guzzling warehouses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The lot where the old AOL campus sat is now filled with construction equipment and several-story buildings. The old headquarters has been demolished to make way for \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 more data centers.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout Loudoun, Bolthouse remembers land that now houses data centers being home to business centers and dentist\u2019s offices. She returned to the area after college, enjoying that it made an easy trip to both DC and Virginia\u2019s Shenandoah National Park, and feeling comfortable in an area that\u2019s generally not prone to major weather events like hurricanes. In 2017, the organization she joined, Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), began tracking the impact of data centers on the local environment. A year later, Loudoun\u2019s Board of Supervisors had one of its most contentious votes ever, narrowly approving a 750,000-square-foot data center<\/a> spanning over 100 wooded acres near Goose Creek. Groups like PEC loudly objected to the development over environmental concerns, while those in favor of the proposal argued development would happen there regardless; it was just a matter of what would get built.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEverybody loved the data centers because of the difference it made in our community\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Today, Bolthouse is the director of land use at PEC and helps lead a coalition of Virginia groups<\/a> that advocate for stronger protections, tracking, and transparency around data center development. Bolthouse isn\u2019t dispositionally anti-data center, nor does she want to see existing ones in the area torn down or shut off. But she does advocate for a pause on new development. \u201cThis industry is kind of creating a narrative that they\u2019re up against communities, and that there\u2019s a community backlash, and we just need to explain to the communities the benefits of data centers,\u201d she says. \u201cBut what they\u2019re really up against is physics. They\u2019re up against the reality of what it takes to build out gigawatts of power, and the impact of building out gigawatts of power has direct impacts on people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Recently, she\u2019s found, more of her neighbors are paying attention. She recalls 2025 as a turning point, where PEC no longer had to do the legwork to get people invested, but instead was triaging which press requests would make the most impact given its limited capacity. And for residents, data centers were becoming more than just eyesores. They were beginning to disrupt life in Loudoun.<\/span><\/p>\n Vicky Hu lives in a red brick home on a cul-de-sac beside a peaceful, tree-lined stream. Her backyard stretches far along the water, where a white gazebo gives shade to sit and watch the deer she says regularly cross her yard. Including her mother and daughter, three generations of Hu\u2019s family have lived in this house. Having grown up in the city of Taipei, Hu marveled at the nature that surrounded her new home: deer as well as turtles and cranes. \u201cTo me, this is like a dream. My dream home,\u201d she tells me.<\/span><\/p>\n Until last year, when Hu got a call that pierced that dream. She got a voicemail from a Dominion Energy representative and first wondered if there was an issue with her energy bill payment. Instead, she was told that a new transmission line connecting two substations would cut directly through her backyard. \u201cAre you out of your fucking mind?\u201d she yelled at the rep.<\/span><\/p>\n On the day I visit, the gazebo is filled with poster boards of blown-up maps of the community \u2014 and new development plans that threaten to overtake it. The trees along the stream are tagged with bright pink ribbons tied around their trunks. They mark the land Hu\u2019s family says would be cleared should Dominion Energy\u2019s plan to string 185-foot transmission towers through their backyard go through as planned. \u201cIt\u2019s like the sort of thing you only think you\u2019d see in a dystopian nightmare,\u201d Hu\u2019s daughter, 23-year-old Madison Taggart, tells me as she shows me around her childhood home.<\/span><\/p>\n Growing up, Taggart says that home always felt \u201clike a timeless place that no one else could touch.\u201d Hu bought it shortly after her daughter was born, having seen the community built from the ground up. She worked for a developer and recalls watching workers bury power and communication lines beneath the community from her trailer across the road. By 2003, she\u2019d nearly finished selling the community, except for one lot that was reserved for a VP at her company. As Hu\u2019s aging mother struggled with the stairs in her townhome, she kept thinking about that lot on the cul-de-sac next to the water. She asked her colleague if she could buy it, and two years later, she moved in.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, Hu is engaged in a yearlong fight to redirect the transmission line to another route \u2014 one that, so far, she\u2019s on the losing end of, pending an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia. After that first phone call, Hu said she ran around the neighborhood \u201clike a crazy woman,\u201d ringing doorbells and asking if anyone had heard of the proposal. She said they hadn\u2019t. By the time I visit, a sign in her backyard shows a diagram of the proposed 185-foot transmission tower next to a comparatively stout Statue of Liberty (if you exclude the base she stands on).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat used to be a major daycare center here in the heart of Data Center Alley, because there were so many people who worked here. Now it\u2019s just these big, giant computer energy-guzzling, water-guzzling warehouses.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Dominion insists that building the transmission line is necessary to power not only data centers, but also homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals. The local school district has been dragged into the fight over the route as well, though, with one proposal cutting close to two nearby schools. Hu\u2019s homeowners association donated a portion of land that would be cut through to the school district, preventing it from being seized by eminent domain.<\/span><\/p>\n Both the school district and residents in Hu\u2019s community have been fighting the planned routes, and worry that the expansion could signal even more encroachment on key facets of the community down the road. \u201cThere\u2019s also a deep concern for having this be a precedent that it could normalize easing the planning by just putting them on school property,\u201d says April Chandler, Loudoun County School Board chair. Her concerns are with the kids and faculty of her community. \u201cAs a school board member, it\u2019s not my job necessarily to consider what\u2019s best for Dominion Energy or for data centers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Despite working or living in Loudoun since 2000, Hu had never heard the nickname \u201cData Center Alley\u201d until last year, when a Swiss reporter came to interview her about life in the data center capital of the world. Now, she can\u2019t unhear it. She notices transmission towers everywhere she goes. And she worries nowhere is truly safe from the ever-expanding buildout. \u201cThis is just the first power line coming through a neighborhood. Where do you think the rest of the power lines [are] going to go through?\u201d she asks. She predicts that in the next five to 10 years, \u201cwhen you look at the sky in Ashburn \u2026 you\u2019re going to see a power line running everywhere, like a spiderweb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Should she lose the fight to preserve her backyard, Hu says she\u2019d have no choice but to leave. \u201cDo I want to stay here sitting on my deck watching the power pole? \u2026 Or should I stay here for a couple years to see if I\u2019m going to get cancer or a brain tumor?\u201d She has lost sleep and hair fretting over how to save her home this past year. \u201cIt\u2019s just very sad,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2018re thinking, \u2018You work your whole life, you own something.\u2019 But you actually don\u2019t own it, because a power company can say, \u2018I like your house. I want to take it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As I get out of the car a couple blocks down from the Vantage VA2 data center, I can already hear the whirring. Because I visited on a day with such poor air quality, what I\u2019m told are usually invisible emissions plumes make a faint outline in the smoggy air. They\u2019re emitted, Bolthouse tells me, by the diesel generators powering the facility. She compares the noise to that of a lawn mower. (I later find out that the generators are never supposed to run on day with such poor air quality, but an emergency circuit issue required them to kick in temporarily.)<\/span><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t always sound like a lawn mower, though. Other days, the gas turbines that power the data center make an even more annoying high-pitched squealing noise, nearby residents like Lindsay Shaw tell me. We meet while she\u2019s out for a walk with her dog, and she describes the way the sound permeates into her home. Constant light from the data center shines right into her bedroom at night unless the bathroom door is fully closed. Her fianc\u00e9 has taken to wearing an eye mask.<\/span><\/p>\n Nobody wanted it this way. In an ideal world, Vantage would have done what hundreds of other data centers in the area have done and connected to the Dominion energy grid by the time the site went online last year. But after Vantage had already signed agreements with customers leasing space in the new data center, Dominion informed Vantage it didn\u2019t have enough capacity to get the 800,000-square-foot data center on the grid. Rather than let the building sit dormant until Dominion built up capacity, Vantage decided to create its own energy source using gas turbines. This is becoming more and more common in other parts of the country, as the new AI-motivated data centers require vastly more energy than the old cloud servers.<\/span><\/p>\n Residents and local politicians acknowledge that the Vantage site is an outlier because of its unusual reliance on on-site generated power from natural gas \u2014 albeit a very annoying one. Before it was built, Shaw tells me she thought a data center would be among the best options that could come to the lot across the street, in part because it wouldn\u2019t be something that would drive a lot of traffic near what she says is an already dangerous intersection. But now she says the data center has caused plenty of other problems and feels the operators have not been proactive enough in engaging neighbors. Vantage\u2019s senior vice president of global public policy, John Stephenson, says he \u201cwould respectfully disagree\u201d that they haven\u2019t proactively engaged nearby residents. He notes that they held a community meeting at a nearby brewery to field questions early on, but admits that \u201cin retrospect, we probably could have done more.\u201d The company has taken different approaches to mitigate the noise, including installing insulation and repositioning the turbines to lower their tone.<\/span><\/p>\n But residents who live near other data centers throughout Loudoun \u2014 even those that don\u2019t have to generate their own power on-site \u2014 also complain of noise. Jason Mello says he hears a constant \u201clow-frequency drone\u201d he attributes to the HVAC systems of nearby data centers from his Ashburn home. Living near Dulles Airport, many Ashburn residents are used to the sound of planes overhead, \u201cbut planes come and go. The data center hum never stops.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mello shows me videos of the noise from his deck outside a town hall meeting where we meet. He says he\u2019s already spent $2,600 getting two new window inserts, with three more to go in his bedroom. He was quoted at least $15,000 for new siding that would further mitigate the noise. \u201cAs a homeowner, if I want to live in peace at night, that addresses the inside,\u201d he says, \u201cbut if I\u2019m sitting on my deck, I can constantly hear that humming. And I think that\u2019s why you got to fix the problem also at the source.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re thinking, \u2018You work your whole life, you own something.\u2019 But you actually don\u2019t own it, because a power company can say, \u2018I like your house. I want to take it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Several residents tell me that the boom in infrastructure needed to support the data centers has impacted their ability to enjoy the natural resources of Loudoun that once attracted them. \u201cYou can barely hear the birds anymore,\u201d says Jessica Medeiros, another resident who lives across the street from the Vantage data center. Even when she tries to retreat from the noise near her home, she\u2019s regularly reminded of the data centers\u2019 presence. As a regular runner on the famed Washington and Old Dominion trail for the past 20 years, Medeiros says the \u201cconstant construction,\u201d towering power lines, and reduced shade because of cleared trees \u201cruins the experience with nature.\u201d She often says that when she dies, \u201cI want my ashes scattered along the trail. But I think that trail\u2019s going to look a lot different in another 10 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe greenery is gone. The sense of community is gone. It feels very stale,\u201d says Jenny Marza, another Loudoun County resident. \u201cThere\u2019s no more trees left and every inch is taken up by greed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While fighting new development near her own home, Marza has already felt pressure from the data center explosion on her small export logistics business. For years she\u2019s been looking at buying office and warehouse space in the area to be near the airport, but prices have been so astronomical that she\u2019s been forced to continue leasing. Now, even her current office rent has skyrocketed \u2014 she suspects because every landlord knows that data centers are willing to pay an average of $3.76 million per acre<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t always sound like a lawn mower, though. Other days, the gas turbines that power the data center make an even more annoying high-pitched squealing noise.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Marza says \u201cI\u2019m kicking myself\u201d over a warehouse she came close to buying last year for around $5 million, but held off because it was more space than she needed at the time. \u201cAnd then we put a pause on the search for two years and when we returned, it was like, \u2018Holy crap, there\u2019s nothing left.\u2019\u201d Anything that was selling at $5 million was now $10 million. To Marza, the residential property tax savings and increased home values mean little when compared to the quality-of-life concerns she has and the ability to help her small business survive. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s a drop in the ocean of what they\u2019re getting in return,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like nobody protected our interests as a community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDone the right way, you can be good neighbors,\u201d Shaw says, reflecting on the Vantage site near her home. \u201cBut this one was done like that shady neighbor next door that has people coming in and out all hours of the night. And then the FBI raids them and you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, I knew something shady was going on.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When I arrive at the Loudoun government building on a July evening shortly before 6:30PM, I\u2019m handed a red flyer outside by a group<\/a> advocating for local government control of utilities used to power data centers. Inside, the nearly full room is prominently speckled with light blue shirts that read \u201cI support data centers.\u201d The shirts list the reasons: \u201cBecause I like: lower taxes, excellent schools, better job opportunities.\u201d They also include caveats: \u201cWhen they are: in the right location, well-designed, quiet, environmentally sensitive.\u201d The slogan doesn\u2019t exactly roll off the tongue.<\/span><\/p>\n I comfortably score a seat, but later hear complaints from some attendees who say they arrived shortly after me and were relegated to the overflow room. Though it\u2019s a first-come-first-served event, those critical of data centers grumble that industry supporters seem suspiciously well organized in their early arrivals.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, it doesn\u2019t have the kind of fireworks or soundbites that have made community meetings about data centers around the country into national news. While some residents voice strong frustration, the two-and-a-half-hour forum is cordial and respectful of Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall\u2019s request of no cheering nor jeering.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPlanes come and go. The data center hum never stops.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Randall is in a tough spot. As head of the elected nine-member panel<\/a> tasked with adopting local ordinances, appropriating funds, and rezoning land, Randall has just enough power for her constituents to lay responsibility for their criticism at her feet, yet not enough to change some of the things she says she wishes she could. At the meeting, she listens to residents\u2019 concerns, promising to follow up with phone calls for some while repeatedly acknowledging and lamenting the quality-of-life frustrations many of her neighbors have about living near data centers. But she also declines to give ground on topics she said are unfounded or detached from political reality.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Buddy](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/268652_Loudoun_VA_Data_Centers_SVoss_0010.jpg?w=828\")
<\/div>\n![\"Buddy](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/268652_Loudoun_VA_Data_Centers_SVoss_0002.jpg?w=828\")
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