WOODBRIDGE, VA – Prince William County's Board of Supervisors Tuesday night unanimously rejected a sprawling new data center proposal after nearly six hours of public comments involving dozens of residents and a rally outside the government complex ahead of the vote.
The board was considering whether to launch a comprehensive plan amendment, the first step toward approving the Dulles South Innovation Center, also called Dulles Cloud South. The envisioned tech hub would have been nearly 2,000 acres and 43 million square feet of data centers, far larger than the Digital Gateway Project, which was finally scrapped last week after three years of court battles between developers and county residents.
To accommodate the tech hub, county supervisors would have to vote to change the designation of land in the Gainesville magisterial district, outside the already existing data center opportunity zone, from mostly agricultural and forestry use to industrial use.
In the end, all eight supervisors declined to move forward on the project.
Residents weighed in
Residents and other interested parties spoke with passion for hours during the meeting. Most opposed the project, as did those who attended the rally ahead of the meeting. They argued that the data centers create air and noise pollution, threaten residents’ health, decrease property values, encroach on historical places and otherwise degrade their quality of life.
Proponents of the project say it would bring more than $1 billion in tax revenue to the county.
Many of the residents who spoke in favor of the proposal weren't only interested in new funding for the county. Rather, they argued their rural way of life had already been degraded beyond recognition. Describing traffic and other issues driven by development, landowners said the rural nature of their corner of the county was a thing of the past. Now, they hoped to sell their lots to developers to make some money off property that wasn't providing them with the lifestyle it had decades ago.
Rally held ahead of the vote
Attendees at the rally organized by the Coalition to Protect Prince William County ahead of the board meeting called on the board of supervisors to reject the requested amendment and to reject the developer's last-minute request for a deferral of their vote.
“We are sick and tired of having to show up here to protect our quality of life … this needs to end today,” said Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William.
“We have just defeated the digital gateway after three years of blood, sweat and many tears - we are not going to do it again,” she said. “We believe the supervisors have an opportunity to show Prince William County and the world that they can get it right this time.”
Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, one of the speakers at the rally, urged supervisors to “Just say no” to data centers and what he said they bring: higher utility bills, pressure on the electrical grid, and other issues. “This will permanently damage our community.”
Procedural drama
The developer's deferral request caused a moment of procedural drama, when, in an apparently unprecedented move, the supervisors first voted on whether to allow the developers' deferral request after an objection was raised over Chair Deshundra Jefferson's initial plan to defer the vote at the Dulles Cloud South developer's request, which she said was standard. After a break to consult with the board's parliamentarian, the board voted against deferring the vote, and the public hearing continued.
Ultimately, Jefferson said, "I don’t believe that data centers are an answer to all of our problems."
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Woodbridge, VA Patch
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