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In the News

Increasingly, headlines, newscasts and social media are covering the tsunami-size wave of data centers being built – many without a traditional level of public engagement warranted by the introduction of any new industry to a community.  Here’s a recap of local, regional and national stories and articles about the lightening-fast growing data center industry and its negative impact on communities and their natural resources.

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It’s very important to understand that we do not know exactly the type of data centers being proposed.  The developers will not disclose this information, and as we understand it, our elected officials have signed NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS which prevent them from telling taxpayers about the true nature of the projects.  In other words, we are being kept in the dark about the details of a huge industry that is moving fast to establish itself in our rural community.

Note:  for some of the articles below, you may have to agree to enter your email address for access.

Culpeper National Cemetery sits on a corner of land in Culpepper, Virginia, and there you will find "the final resting place for about 1,300 Union soldiers killed in the Civil War.  But these hallowed grounds are about to become a monument to something else: the destruction of the American countryside., which will become 116 acres of data centers. 

Read about it at this link:
https://ci.uky.edu/irj/rural-blog/opinion-virginia-county-resists-growth-maintain-its-rural-character-and-countryside

As AI data centers strain the power grid, bills rise for everyday customers. The huge electricity demand  from data centers driving the AI boom has fallout for everyday ratepayers. Regulators are concerned as costs have already begun going up for customers according to utility planning documents and energy industry analysts and that the tech companies aren’t paying their fair share.  Read about it here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/01/ai-data-centers-electricity-bills-google-amazon/

In Virginia, which has aggressively recruited data center development, new centers alone are projected to increase demand for power up to 50 percent by 2030, according to the consulting firm Aurora Energy Research. Over the next 15 years, the state will need to add electricity supply equal to the amount used by the entire state of New Jersey, Aurora found.  Read more here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/1ghcp3h/as_data_centers_for_ai_strain_the_power_grid/?rdt=33647

Feeding artificial intelligence’s growing appetite for electricity is no small task, and raises an important question: Who should pay for the infrastructure needed to keep these AI ventures afloat, and what happens when the tech giants behind them try to bypass the usual costs?   Find out here:

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4976847-amazon-data-center-energy-grid/

Communities and local governments are fighting back.  After months of discussion featuring lengthy and contentious debate, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia this week passed a new zoning ordinance to tighten its guidelines for data center development.  Culpeper needs this!  Read why:
https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/site-selection/article/55139905/northern-virginias-fairfax-county-tightens-data-center-rules

Data Centers Demand a Massive Amount of Energy. Here’s How Some States Are Tackling the Industry’s Impact.  Virginia, home to the nation’s largest data center market, once debated running data centers on carbon-emitting diesel generators during power shortages to keep the lights on. That plan faced significant public pushback from environmental groups, and an area utility is exploring other options. But localities, such as Culpeper, continue to give lavish tax breaks to data center developers.  Why?  Learn more here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/data-centers-power-usage-washington-virginia

And it’s not just our power grid that is a target of the data center industry.  Our water resources are in jeopardy.  A single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water a day, enough to supply thousands of households or farms.  This is a national problem, but Culpeper will feel a heightened impact that our visionary forefathers

worked so hard to prevent.  Read about the issue here: 

https://utulsa.edu/news/data-centers-draining-resources-in-water-stressed-communities/

Drought-stricken communities push back against data centers.  It’s not just communities in more arid parts of the country that are alarmed.  Researchers at Virginia Tech estimate that one-fifth of data centers draw water from moderately to highly stressed watersheds, like ours.   Learn more about the insatiable demand that data centers place on local water resources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/drought-stricken-communities-push-back-against-data-centers-n1271344

Data center development to support cloud computing and AI is a hot issue locally, regionally, statewide, nationally and internationally.  To better understand the immense negative impact of data centers and what they produce on an already stressed environment read this article: 

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/

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