Last night, I got a front row seat to the fears and anger many Virginians are feeling about the data center industry.
On the second floor of the Best Western Battlefield Inn off I-66 in Prince William County, person after person took to the mic to raise their concerns about massive transmission lines running through their neighborhoods, the impacts of data centers to local drinking water, and the fact that Virginia gives data centers a tax break that amounts to more than $1 billion in savings for tech companies.
Listening, taking notes, and cheering them on was Lucas, State Sen. Danica Roem (D-Manassas), and State Sen. Russet Perry (D-Leesburg).
The crowd was pumped up. People quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as they railed against what they see as the unchecked proliferation of data centers in Virginia and the state’s unfair tax break.
Not a single person rose to speak in favor of data centers, but after the event ended, I ran into Jason Ascher, the political director of the Mid-Atlantic Pipe Trades Association.
Ascher shared with me how hundreds of the members of his union work in data centers as plumbers, pipefitters, welders, and HVAC techs.
Citing the local tax revenue it produces and wages it gives his members, Ascher called Virginia’s data center industry “the goose that laid the golden egg.”
