Board approves huge data center
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning application Jan. 23 to allow the construction of a 110-foot-tall data center on Route 50 in Chantilly.
Nearly all the 25 people who spoke at the public hearing cited concerns with noise and environmental issues. One major complaint is the potential for a diesel leak that could contaminate the Occoquan reservoir.
The measure passed 8-1, with Pat Herrity (Springfield) casting the lone vote against it.
Related story: County planners recommend more robust reviews of data centers
According to BoS Chair Jeffrey McKay, “This is a hard decision,” but he said the application meets the standards in a series of recommendations on data centers submitted by county staff.
“This application has come a long way from where it started,” McKay said. The applicant, an affiliate of Penzance, agreed to proffer several improvements, including the addition of safety measures to enclose the diesel generators, water quality monitoring, a noise study, and the intent to seek LEED Silver green building certification.
The applicant also agreed to dedicate the 67-acre resource protection area on the property as a county park. That will create a buffer between the data center and the Pleasant Valley community, said Supervisor Kathy Smith (Sully), who made the motion for approval.
“If we’re going to do data centers, they will be done at the highest standards,” McKay said.
According to McKay, there are just 12 sites in Fairfax County that can accommodate data centers. Data centers in development and already built comprise 7.5 million square feet. That compares to 45 million square feet in Loudoun County and 37 million square feet in Prince William County, which have lower standards.
Related story: Supervisors to vote on huge data center
Supervisor James Walkinshaw (Braddock) voted for it “because it met and exceeded our environmental standards,” will not lead to increased salinity in the watershed, and will attain LEED Silver status. With respect to salinity, he said, staff and the applicant clarified that the proffers require wastewater discharge to be pretreated onsite and to meet any current and future standard for salinity established by the Upper Occoquan Service Authority.
“Denying a data center here and pushing it somewhere else isn’t doing anything to address climate change,” Walkinshaw said.
Dominion will build a new substation to serve the data center. Contrary to what Dominion said, it will not exceed the utility’s capacity to meet the green energy standards it already agreed to, Walkinshaw said. “We have to hold Dominion accountable.”
I’m with Pat Herrity and wish the Board would have stopped this unnecessary construction in the county. The noise factor alone will be challenging for nearby residents. The idea that it will be similar to a washing machine hum, is simply ludicrous. C’mon county supervisors, it’s not just about revenue. Loudon and PW county residents are already realizing this.
Related to this, think hard about all the reasons not to allow a Casino in Tysons. Casinos bring with it a culture and atmosphere that is not reflective of the current Tysons area. Again it’s not just about the revenue it might generate, it’s a quality of life issue.
When the BoS stops approving projects like this, they can start to think about lecturing us on gas leaf blowers, stoves, and EVs that become useless in cold weather (and that current infrastructure can’t even come close to supporting).
As it stands, stay out of my personal business unless you want to fully subsidize all new equipment that works as well or better than the expensive, near useless Chinese garbage you are peddling (most of which is directly derived from African and Chinese slave labor to mine for precious metals).
Fairfax board is crazy
Data centers pay taxes, and don’t overcrowd our schools. They aren’t the most sightly, but as long as we don’t end up like parts of Loudoun county that are just littered with data centers, I think we’ll be okay.
Chantilly is a perfect place to put this data center. Well done!
The issues with this one are; exception made to allow it to be 35′ taller than any other in NOVA, it will be seen by community residents no matter what they say; it sits along Cub Run Stream feeding our fairfax county water system, God forbid there is a leak from the 148,000 gallons of stored deisel fuel; To those above comments, this building will be next to residential community just like in Loudoun, to those saying it brings taxes, the county says it is estimated to bring $3 – $6 million in revenue, but the owner will always find ways to reduce tax burdens and the state gives tax breaks to data centers which need to be stopped, also they don’t bring jobs,only during construction, which is about 2 years, therefore County loses income tax revenue and home values could be affected and then reduced tax revenue on real estate.
Mckay’s comments about overall amount are off base and off point. It doesn’t matter how much the county has, the vote was on that one specific data center and the amount in the County was not on the motion.
Walkinshaw made comments where he specifically said he did not believe Dominion Energy Engineers about the substations. I don’t think he is an engineer so he should not question them. In my business I never disagree with an engineer or lawyer.
Keith –
I’m glad you do not disagree with engineers. I am an engineer and sit on the Fairfax County Planning Commission. Let me correct a handful of your assertions:
1. The building is not 35′ taller than any other in NOVA. My firm, Shumate Engineering, has designed a taller 3-story, 42-megaWatt data center in Loudoun county about three miles north of this site.
2. The on-site fuel storage will be in double-walled tanks with leak detection. The fuel fill system is designed to eliminate all risk of a fuel leak and the storm drainage around the fuel systems is separated by an oil separator before any discharge into the sewer system: no fuel oil will ever make it to the water supply.
3. The on-site generation exhaust will be filtered through Selective Catalytic Reduction (think catalytic converters on cars) and the run-time of the emergency-only generators is regulated and enforced by the Virginia DEQ to ensure that the EPA regulations governing the non-attainment zone (read already polluting a lot) of Northern Virginia are met or exceeded. These are criminal, not civil laws and are seriously and strictly adhered to by data center operators.
4. Regarding noise: the proffers require that the noise level does not exceed 45 dB at the closest Pleasant Valley property line. That is a level of noise that is at or under a normal conversation.
If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach out to me directly at 703-462-4298 or at [email protected]. Or you can come to a Planning Commission until February 14 which will be my last meeting as Planning Commissioner. I have met personally with the Pleasant Valley neighbors twice, once on site and the second when I hosted Cynthia Shang in my office.
“no fuel will ever make it to the water supply”… they thought that in Tennessee until it happened. The issue will be trucks delivering fuel, that is the weak link in this process. Delivery trucks spilling fuel is common in this country. I find it unconscionable that a Planning Commissioner spends all his time advocating for the industry he works in promoting and “educating” those uninitiated. That is your “job”, but as a Planning Commissioner you are supposed to be above that. Cozying up to staff to indoctrinate them into believing everything you “teach” them is just the icing on the cake, or not. Who did your ethics training? I’m tired of hearing you promoting your own business and your own self interest for your own benefit.
Trees:
1. Ethics: I am not promoting my business but rather being 100% transparent. I am not hiding the fact that I own an engineering firm and that I am an expert in data centers. I am simply stating that fact so there is no perception of a conflict of interest. You can research all of the meetings that I’ve attended and all of my e-mails if there is a specific ethics concern. I am a licensed Professional Engineer vested with the responsibility to protect the public and my ethics are unimpeachable.
2. No building is 100% protected from potential failure. But there are so many safeguards against fuel leaks that they are not a credible issue in data centers. That is not indoctrination but rather facts.
3. I give no credence to an anonymous critic who will not engage me personally. If, Speaking for trees, you’d like to confront me, step from behind your veil of anonymity and contact me direct. Cynthia Shang of the Pleasant Valley community did and we had two meetings – one on site in the PV neighborhood and one in my office.
4. Regarding an earlier concern regarding “salinization” of the water supply. No new data center design utilizes cooling towers, the source of “blow down” water that might have higher concentrates of solids. And if they WERE to use a cooling tower, the water is treated and purified before release into the sanitary water system. It is NEVER released directly into the water supply.
Again, I shared my phone number above and if you’d like to e-mail, I’d be glad to communicate with anyone. [email protected]
Also, I have resigned from the Planning Commission to take another volunteer Commission role in Fairfax County.
Regards,
Daren Shumate, PE
Daren, thank you for your service to Mason District and the county. Your expertise is an asset to the Planning Commission.
Agreed, Speaking for Trees — Mr. Shumate your ego is without bounds. You are part of the problem. If it benefits your business you are all for it, if it does not benefit you then all of the sudden you care about the environment. Your agenda pushing is ridiculous.
AKM: Sorry you feel the need for ad hominem attacks.
My only “agenda” is to share that data centers are not “filthy”, polluting buildings as portrayed in this blog and on TV.
The demand for data centers is driven by, for instance, users of the AnnandaleBlog platform. And that demand is growing exponentially.
Data center engineers respond to the challenge by designing and building ever more efficient data centers that
use 90% less energy for cooling than even 5 years ago and by minimizing the quantity of water required (if any) for cooling.
Again, I am sad you feel you have to insult me when I am forthright, honest, accessible, and not hidden by anonymity.
Daren
If there were any good engineering firms around here they would design and build a lot of the centers underground, creating less of an eyesore and save on cooling costs. But old men have old ideas.
Daren, care to chime in here on how the expense of excavating 1M sq ft far outstrips any “savings” from cooling? This whole “just build it underground is nonsense.
First: where do you put the dirt?
Second: When calculating cooling loads on a data center, loads created by exterior surfaces account for a single digit percentage of the total. For example, doubling the insulation would intuitively have a huge cooling benefit, the heat produced by many Megawatts of computers is so large that the added insulation has no measurable effect.
That said, there are data centers in the world that have been built, for instance, in abandoned mines. So, in concept underground works if the structure is existing but new construction would never be feasible.
Hopefully this teaches or reminds folks that when one political party dominates and decides the outcomes, it is not a discussion or debate that looks beyond that party’s interests, supporters, & especially its donors. It doesn’t matter what level of government (local, state, national); or what the issue at hand is. I’ve lived and seen this happen in many places and by both major parties. It just leads to bad decisions, more mistakes/ waste, and greater division.
Never disagreeing with a lawyer or engineer is foolish. They are self motivated just like anyone else.
As for the noise level requirement, if they are unable to keep it at 45 dB, the county will allow a variance after that fact. The county is very good at that, so it is all meaningless.
Guarantee if anyone who approved this was going to put it in their backyard, they would find some reason not to do so. It is easy to do so when it is not in your backyard.
Everyone here in the forum has been for or against the data center on environmental grounds. Where are the folks that should be arguing against the data center? Based on the amount of heat generation that has been suggested, the teraflops of processing power and and Petabytes of storage one would have to conclude that the FBI is either expecting a HUGE increase in foreign spies on U.S. soil [which I doubt] or that the 278,000 unconstitutional FISA warrants on U.S. citizens is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the expected increase in U.S. citizen surveillance.
Don’t worry Concern Citizen. The Great MAGA will be locked up in prison where he belongs very soon (thank you New York), and the FBI can ratchet down its surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Nothing says democracy like political persecution!
And weaponization of federal law enforcement.
It is misleading to call this a ‘HUGE’ data center. This is rather on the small side worldwide for data centers, which average about 100,000 sq. meters, which is over 1-million square feet (not citing exhaustive research, but the first hit you get on Google). Loudoun County has over 30 million square feet of data centers. Data centers are noisy due to outdoor HVAC systems, a sound that does not carry very far. I have not seen a map of the exact location, but there are very few homes in the vicinity of Rt. 50 and Cub run. The potential for a fuel leak would be my biggest concern, but having worked with fuel storage systems over the years I would say the safeguards in place are myriad and regularly monitored.
The coverage of this issue overall to me seems a bit sensationalized.