Supervisors to vote on huge data center
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to hold a hearing on Jan. 23 on a huge data center in Chantilly that could have a negative impact on the county’s drinking water.
An affiliate of Penzance is seeking a rezoning and special exception to build a 110-foot-tall data center in a resource protection area. The project would include 27 diesel generators storing nearly 150,000 gallons of flammable diesel fuel and toxic diesel exhaust fluid.
Opponents of the project charge the diesel fluid could leak into the Cub Run stream, which flows into the Occoquan reservoir. The reservoir supplies drinking water to over 800,000 county residents, including those in Annandale, Bailey’s Crossroads, and Lincolnia.
Related story: Huge data center could threaten water supply
“Data centers are a necessary part of our existence now, but the lack of regulations and the willingness of the county to do whatever is necessary to attract them and shoehorn them into any available open space should be raising alarm bells,” says Cynthia Shang, president of Save Pleasant Valley.
“You may think this doesn’t concern you if you’re not located near one, but be aware, you may soon be,” Shang says. “Our once beautiful county, and Virginia in general, is being overrun by these industrial structures, and crisscrossed with transmission lines to support the world’s data needs for which we’re footing the bill.”
Save Pleasant Valley is part of a coalition of community groups seeking changes to the data center proposal, along with the Sully District Council of Citizens Associations, the West Fairfax County Citizens Association, and the Virginia Run Homeowners Association.
They are urging the Board of Supervisors to require a reduction in the size of the data center, the relocation of the diesel generator yard away from Cub Run, a more accurate noise study, and the elimination of a warehouse that would bring heavy truck traffic through the community.
The coalition notes the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has reported 69 spills or leaks from above-ground storage tanks since 2018. To clean up those spills, the fire department uses chemicals hazardous to waterways and human health.
The requirement for a new electrical substation and transmission lines to serve the data center is also troubling. As data centers go vertical, their power and cooling demands increase.
“No matter what people say, there isn’t enough green energy in the Commonwealth of Virginia to power these things,” says Jeffrey Parnes, president of the Sully District Council. Dominion Energy expects Virginia to pull out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to allow the utility to continue to use carbon-emitting resources to meet the demand.
The Fairfax County Department of Planning and Development recently released a set of recommendations that would address some of the environmental and energy concerns raised by the coalition. The Board of Supervisors, however, could approve the Chantilly project before acting on those recommendations.
Related story: County planners recommend more robust reviews of data centers
Meanwhile, a group of people in Prince William County filed a lawsuit against the county’s approval last month of the huge Digital Gateway project next to the Manassas Battlefield. They charge the plan to transform a rural haven into “a digital hellscape” violates state and local zoning laws.
More than 20 environmental, conservation, historic preservation, and climate advocacy groups across the state recently formed the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition to push for more state regulation of data centers.
Fairfax County supervisors traditionally vote in favor of a project supported by the supervisor of the district where it’s located, says former planning commissioner Jim Hart, an opponent of the Chantilly project. In this case, Sully Supervisor Kathy Smith supports the data center.
During the hearing next week, Hart says, supervisors who have stressed their pro-environment agenda “may not want it reported that they voted to support a filthy, high-impact use like a controversial mega data center in an environmentally sensitive stream valley over the objections of many citizens and environmental advocates.”
Under a new statute, the board will either have to vote on the issue at the public hearing next week or start over with advertising a new public hearing.
“150,000 gallons of flammable diesel”
Diesel is not flammable.
https://www.anl.gov/article/7-things-you-might-not-know-about-diesel
This is incorrect, all diesels are flammable. Some diesels with higher flash point may not be combustible/ignitable which I think is the point you are trying to drive. Diesels are not combustible in the way that gasoline is, e.g. throw a match on it and hoo boy, but let’s not assert that 150k gal of diesel fuel is not flammable given the appropriate conditions of temperature and pressure.
Mr. Z – you are 100 percent wrong – diesel is flammable – if it wasn’t flammable it could not be used as a fuel. Gas is more flammable.
The problem with these centers is that they are easily vulnerable to attack. They’re above ground where electro magnetic bombs could render them useless. Several RPG’s could destroy hundreds. Bombed packed drones could wipe the out entirely Nobody on the board has the ability to think like a terrorist. The county is not requiring solar energy on the roofs nor water catchment basins for watering what little green there is. Where are the trees a? Where are the walls to hide these monsters? Where’s the backup? Understand protected from terrorists attacks. THINK BOARD. YES IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
*Understabd should be underground
It won’t matter if it is flammable or not if it gets into our drinking water. The trucks coming in and out are the danger and spillage into Cub Run which feeds our drinking water is just a when not an if proposition. It happens all the time. Why our Supervisors are considering something like this monstrosity is hard to understand. Their motivation is money, not the safety of its residents.
Money, money, money. That’s what it’s all about. The supervisors see that green (money, not foliage) dangled in front of them and that’s all they see. Put them in the shoes of their constituents and it may be a different story. They are simply out of touch with reality.