Loudoun County is home to a diverse population of residents, a broad range of excellent restaurants, and is, by some metrics, the wealthiest county in the United States.
It’s also known as “Data Center Alley,” for being home to nearly 200 data centers—with another 100 or more on the way. Data centers—the large, unsightly, constantly humming buildings that serve as the physical backbone of the internet—are more ubiquitous in Loudoun County than anywhere else on Earth. Roughly 70% of the world’s internet traffic comes through Loudoun County’s vast swaths of data centers.
On the upside, they generate more than 40% of the county’s local property tax revenues, undeniably contributing much of Loudoun’s wealth. However, the expansion of data centers also comes with many costs.
“I saw them getting too close to homes—they were getting too close to residential [land] and/or converting residential to data center use,” Juli Briskman, Algonkian District Supervisor, said. “One of my issues with that is, any inch of land that we rezone from residential or another type of business use to data centers, we lose the opportunity to do those other uses, which, number one, can help lower the cost of housing, and number two, help diversify our economy.”
Data centers exacerbating land scarcity, housing prices
Like much of the US, housing in Loudoun County is facing an affordability crisis. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Loudoun County is $2,270, shooting up to $2,847 for a three-bedroom apartment. Houses fare even worse: The average two-bedroom house in Loudoun costs $2,457 to rent while a three-bedroom unit goes for $3,303. Unlike much of the US, 53 million square feet of data centers bear some of the responsibility.
“Part of the reason is because we’ve converted land that should’ve been for residential to data center, so we’ve constrained ourselves,” Briskman said. “Also, because data centers keep buying land, the value of the land has gone up so much that it’s squeezing out residential developers.
“You hear a lot in this county like ‘Hey, it would be nice if my kid could graduate college and move back but they can’t afford the rent so now they’re in Winchester or now they’re in West Virginia or now they’re down in Stafford County.’”
The east half of Loudoun County, a suburban area, hosts most of its data centers in towns like Ashburn and Sterling. As its reputation as the center of Data Center Alley has grown, Loudoun’s more rural western half has also begun to express concerns.
On June 22, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-10th Congressional District) held a town hall at Harmony Middle School in Hamilton. Subramanyam, a former technology policy advisor to President Obama and state legislator in Virginia, has long prioritized the oversight of data centers and the protection of his constituents from their potential harm.
At Subramanyam’s town hall, residents from across the county asked him about data centers and their growth—and multiple west Loudoun residents spoke up. According to Blue Ridge Leader, they expressed concerns including unsightly above-ground power lines, communities being asked to absorb infrastructure needs, and how data center land use will further complicate western Loudoun’s current struggles to meet housing demands.
“One of the byproducts people will remember when looking at this is now, because we have all this square footage that’s pushed out, a lot of development now seems to be pushing out into western Loudoun,” Purcellville resident Dan Carvill said.
Data center power lines come to Loudoun’s backyards—literally
Other problems data centers cause can’t be measured in dollars. For example, Briskman mentioned power lines, environmental impact, and land use impact.
Briskman, who is currently serving her second term on Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors, recognizes the necessity for data centers and the financial boon they provide local economies as well as the risks and environmental hazards they pose. In the last several years, Virginians have started noticing them as well.
“When I was knocking doors running for office in 2019, I was hearing ‘They’re big boxes, they’re so ugly, why do we have to keep building them?’” Briskman said. “At that point, I don’t think the general public understood the potential water issues, the power issues, the air pollution issues—but as the public started learning about the power lines, they’ve really woken up to a lot of issues.”
The electrical grid that feeds electricity to Loudoun County’s data centers has been controversial for a long time. Utilities company Dominion Energy has donated nearly $50 million to politicians in the last 20 years, many of whom elect members to the very committee that oversees and regulates utilities in the commonwealth. That committee, the Virginia State Corporation Commission, recently approved the Dominion-proposed construction of a route of transmission lines that will run directly through the Loudoun Valley Estates neighborhood in Ashburn.
Those transmission lines consist of 185-foot monopoles, at least one of which will be built in the middle of one resident’s backyard.
Officials and residents of Loudoun County know it’s unlikely to be an isolated incident and are considering how to best proceed for the future of the county.
“There are certainly more data centers coming, which will continue to increase demand,” April Chandler, LCSB Chair, told WUSA9 July 1. “We feel like it’s very important that we take a deliberative and thoughtful approach—because it could potentially be a precedent.”
The data center industry is affecting Loudoun County in numerous visible and tangible ways. The community benefits from the tax revenue the centers bring in, but as monolithic buildings that consume massive amounts of water and electricity spring up, fed by nearly 200-foot-tall transmission lines literally planted in people’s backyards, Loudoun residents seem to be asking more and more often: At what cost?
