By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Virginia helped build the modern data-center industry. Northern Virginia became a global internet hub because the Commonwealth and its localities welcomed an industry that brought investment, jobs and tax revenue.
But success has come with growing strains: enormous demand for electricity, new power lines and substations, pressure on water systems, generator noise and emissions, more traffic and the conversion of land near homes, schools and historic places. Too often, neighbors learn the full scale of a project only after key decisions have been made.
When we speak of the data-center industry, we should mean more than the company that first seeks a rezoning or building permit. It includes the developers who choose the site and design the project; the investors and owners who finance it; the companies that operate it; the major technology customers whose computers fill it; and the utilities, builders, engineers and consultants whose work makes it possible. Each has a stake in public confidence, and each should share responsibility for a project’s effects on its neighbors.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger has recognized that Virginia’s old growth-at-any-speed approach has reached its limit. She has issued a Data Center Accountability Framework and Executive Order 22, signaling that the Commonwealth expects greater transparency, responsibility and public confidence as the industry continues to grow.
That is an important change in direction. But state action will take time, while projects are being planned and approved now. The question is whether the data-center industry will wait for every new requirement—or decide that earning community trust is simply good business.
A company can win one zoning case at a time and still lose the larger public argument. Communities that feel ignored do not forget. The result can be years of hearings, lawsuits, delays, moratoriums and distrust.
There is a better approach: Treat a project’s fit with its community as seriously as companies treat power supply, construction costs, cybersecurity and financing.
The military learned a version of this lesson decades ago. Bases and training areas cannot operate successfully if surrounding development creates conflicts over noise, safety, traffic, water, airspace or land use. The answer was not to dictate local zoning. It was to give military leaders, local officials and residents a shared picture of potential problems early enough to prevent them—or solve them together.
Many Virginia communities have already worked with nearby military installations on just this kind of planning. They know the value of shared facts, early coordination and practical partnerships that protect both the military mission and the surrounding community. Those communities should expect—and would likely welcome—the same kind of early, disciplined collaboration from data-center companies.
I saw that work firsthand while serving in and later working with the Army and other services. The most effective approach was not an outside mandate. It was a practical process built into normal military planning processes: identify likely conflicts early, share the facts, consider alternatives while they are still possible and work with affected communities before positions harden.
Data-center companies should adopt the same principle—not copy the military’s programs or jargon but apply the lesson.
Before a company buys land, finalizes a design or seeks local approval, it should clearly answer the questions that matter to the people living nearby:
· How much electricity will the facility need, and who will pay for new power plants, substations and transmission lines?
· How will it use water, and what will that mean for local water and wastewater systems?
· What noise, emissions, traffic and construction disruption should residents expect?
· What will the project cost local government in roads, public safety or other services—and what will it contribute in return?
· Are there better sites, designs or operating practices that would reduce harm to neighborhoods, schools, historic resources and environmentally sensitive areas?
· Who remains responsible if the facility is sold or operated by a different company years later?
These are not anti-development questions. They are the questions responsible developers should want to answer before they commit millions of dollars, order equipment and enter a long public fight.
Early planning can reveal problems before they become expensive. It can reduce redesigns, repeated hearings and litigation. It can give a company a more predictable path to approval and give residents reason to believe that their concerns are being heard rather than managed.
Virginia’s data-center industry should invite local governments, utilities, universities, residents and independent technical experts to develop a voluntary guide for working with communities before major decisions are made. The state can help bring those parties together and recognize a credible, independently governed fund that gives communities access to qualified technical advice before key decisions are fixed. Local governments would retain their authority over site-specific land-use decisions.
This would not be a second permitting process, a new regulation or a demand for disclosure of customer or security information. It would be a practical guide for companies: identify major community effects early, consider workable alternatives while they are still available, make commitments in clear language and honor those commitments through design, construction, operation and any change in ownership.
The industry should also establish a Virginia Community Compatibility Fund, administered independently of any individual developer. It should provide grants for independent technical advice, impact review, planning and partnership-building before major decisions are locked in. The industry could create one statewide pooled fund, supported by participating companies, or establish project-based grants that are administered independently of the developer seeking approval. The essential safeguard is the same in either case: neither a developer nor a community opponent should control the findings. Residents and local governments should not have to rely only on developers’ consultants when they are trying to understand a project’s effect on power, water, noise, traffic or public costs.
That is not a subsidy for obstruction. It is an investment in better facts, better negotiations and better decisions.
The same partnership approach can also protect land and water before conflict occurs. The military has used voluntary agreements with landowners, local governments and conservation groups to preserve open land near bases, protect watersheds and prevent development that would later interfere with military operations or endanger nearby residents. Data-center companies and communities could use similar agreements to protect important water sources, preserve reasonable buffers and avoid a preventable mistake: approving homes, schools or other sensitive uses next to a major data-center campus, then discovering too late that they are affected by noise, generators, traffic or expanding electrical infrastructure.
Such agreements should be voluntary, transparent and locally controlled. They would not replace zoning or give a company authority over private property. They would give willing landowners, local governments and developers another tool to protect shared resources and prevent foreseeable conflicts before they become permanent.
Virginia does not have to choose between economic growth and accountable growth. But the era when an ordinary industrial-development process could adequately address a giant data-center campus is ending.
The industry now faces a choice. It can wait for stricter mandates and fight each proposal separately. Or it can earn a green light by doing the work early: tell communities what a project will require, listen before decisions are final, reduce avoidable impacts and stand behind its commitments for the life of the facility.
That is not surrender to opponents. It is the path to more predictable approvals, stronger projects and lasting public trust.
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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, federal civil servant and consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.
Well said!
Right now, there is a significant lack of trust with the process, some of it self-inflicted and some of it from Luddite FUD (fear , uncertaintly and dread). It's incumbant on govt leaders to rehabilitate public trust if they intend to continue with enough public support.