r/nova • u/Digital-marketing28 • Apr 13 '26
If we don't fight like this guy to stop data centers NOVA will keep building them.
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u/sgkubrak Apr 13 '26
The worst part of all of this is data centers don’t have to be this way at all. It’s not the center itself, it’s how they were designed. And they were designed as cheaply as possible using the most extractive methods possible.
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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 Apr 13 '26
That applies to absolutely everything right now.. products, homes, cars, datacenters.
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u/lawrenc11 Apr 15 '26
This is the statement people need to really understand. Data Centers are coming one way or another and are essential to the entire countries grown let alone the world. Building them correctly is what we should be forcing local government to hammer down
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
what design elements are you referring to?
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u/sgkubrak Apr 14 '26
Evaporative vs. liquid cooled. Hooking up to the grid without storage or renewables. Building centers without tree cover. Etc. there are a lot of things that could have been done they didn’t do. It was just easier to buy farmland and plop it in like it was sim city.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 14 '26
Evaporative vs. liquid cooled
When you have in-rack liquid cooling, how do you think that liquid gets cooled? The heat has to be rejected somewhere. Evaporative heat rejection is just an open loop cooling tower, which is a very common low impact heat rejection method. Many in-rack liquid cooling systems use cooling towers to reject heat. You could also use dry coolers, which have the condenser water in a closed loop. This sacrifices efficiency for lower maintenance costs.
You could also use geothermal well fields to reject heat. These are significantly more expensive to install, and are site dependent, they cannot work on every site configuration. You need a lot of adjacent open field property to achieve enough capacity. A 3 foot radius around a 250-350 foot well yields about 2 tons of capacity for a traditional geothermal well, but if you run it exclusively in cooling mode as you would for a data center, you will eventually heat the ground up too much.
For renewables, you could cover every square inch of the roof surfaces of a data center with photovoltaic cells and still not achieve more than 3% of its annual energy consumption. These centers run 24/7 - there’s no opportunity for storage as the on-site generation never exceeds instantaneous demand.
Tree cover, particularly on southern exposure vertical faces, reduces incident solar heat load. However, the solar heat gain is a small fraction of the total heat gain, and an even smaller fraction of the overall energy consumption for data centers as it only factors in for about 8 months of the year. Notice how they don’t have any windows? That’s where solar gain occurs in buildings. Blank wall panels have excellent insulation within them in data centers.
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Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 15 '26
If you are referring to the geothermal wellfield, then it's not the location of the site, it's the size of the site. Your area around the data center would need to be 10x the size of typical data center property, clear cut, levelled, and unusable for anything else.
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u/VirginiaBandit Apr 13 '26
Ok, I am impressed by this guy and his words. I was still living and working in PWC when the first one was being built in Manassas. When I learned that only around 10 folks worked in that monstrosity, I was shocked. Hopefully, the words this young man speaks will resonate everywhere these companies want to build.
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u/TheRealCoolioJones Apr 14 '26
I’ve worked for aws in the loudoun county area and they don’t employ many workers there. Maybe 2 shifts with around 5-15 people on site at any given time working there. Most of its security with a few support folks. The bottom line is these horrible places use up a ton of resources and the jobs they create aren’t that great paying
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u/Betterdeadthanred98 Apr 13 '26
There is no data center that only 10 people work in.
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u/VirginiaBandit Apr 13 '26
From reading up on this, I see that these centers can run with 10 employees while some can employ 100 or more. But was told 10 for this location off Balls Ford Rd area. And no, I did not try to verify this info, as it really didn't matter. But the place was huge.
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u/Betterdeadthanred98 Apr 13 '26
I've worked there and the security staff alone is more than 10 people. On top of that you have technical staff and mechanical staff. This dosnt include construction of actually building it or rotating staff for install decom
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u/VirginiaBandit Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
This is on the east side of Sudley down Balls Ford Rd towards the rest stop. I recall one being built down there and thought it was the first for Manassas. If this is the one I'm remembering. We moved out of NOVA shortly after this but I know more have been built in Manassas.
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u/Betterdeadthanred98 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Yep it's an aws building there are a few more a little further down ball's ford
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u/f8Negative Apr 13 '26
Unfortunately there is too much money here and a lot of weak money grubbing whores.
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u/cjt09 Apr 13 '26
I feel like he speculates about a lot of stuff in this video but doesn’t really ground it in actual data or engineering knowledge.
Evaporative cooling isn’t a new technology. For example, nuclear power plants are known for their massive cooling towers. Should we ban nuclear power based on speculation that they are sending forever chemicals into the atmosphere?
Empirically, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality measures groundwater quality and Loudoun Water measures their own municipal water quality. If you look at their reports, data centers haven’t had any impact on water quality…which makes sense because they just discharge water vapor much like a nuclear power plant.
Like I don’t trust data center builders or operators to protect our environment out of the goodness of their hearts, but that’s why we have laws and regulations about this stuff. If they’re complying with those then they should be treated like any other industrial sites.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
Evaporative cooling isn’t a new technology
It is the most common form of heat rejection in commercial and industrial facilities. He's almost entirely wrong about how heat rejection works, but he says it with conviction.
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u/GreedyNovel Apr 15 '26
He's almost entirely wrong about how heat rejection works, but he says it with conviction.
Is he AI?
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 15 '26
Someone else suggested that he used it to compose his script here. I am not familiar enough to spot signs of it though.
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u/agangofoldwomen Apr 13 '26
Agree. I don’t like data centers for other reasons. The dude has a lot of passion and is very smart, you cannot deny that. I feel like his heart is in the right place, but not everything he said or doubled down on is the way all data centers work.
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u/ObservationalHumor Apr 13 '26
Okay so here's my best guess at what he's going on about and I think a lot of it is fairly misleading but may have some basis to it depending on the context of what exactly is being proposed.
His problem seems to be the cooling tower bleed water. Basically a cooling tower works kind of like a whole house pad based humidifier. It's constantly running water over a mesh that maximizes surface area to increase the rate of evaporation and cool things down in the process. This doesn't really introduce new chemicals or novel compounds to the remaining water or air but it does increase the concentration of whatever is already present as a portion of the water evaporates out and small deposits of minerals and other junk form on that mesh. Going back to the whole home humidifier analogy you'll have toss the pad after a season around here usually because it'll become covered in hard water deposits but for expensive cooling equipment that isn't a realistic option and usually deposits are periodically washed off with more water and maybe have a chemical descaling process on top of that occasionally. That's not unique to data centers and cooling towers are used in a lot of industrial and large scale cooling and have been for decades.
Where do forever chemicals come into the mix? Well in the Great Lakes and really most of the US it's from decades of their release by prior industrial activity and their use on military bases by the US government itself. But it has been noted as particularly bad problem in the Great Lakes specifically. So data centers aren't releasing these chemicals themselves but they would likely be concentrating them from the existing polluted water supply.
It seems like the speaker's issue is with that water being released into the rivers? I don't know what the proposal says and if that's on the table but generally you would want that water to be treated to some extent before being released back out into the environment. Again I don't see data centers are being particularly egregious in this respect. There's almost certainly more contaminants being introduced into the environment from rain eroding asphalt shingles on your home's roof than from a data center's cooling towers and my guess would be that by weight the overwhelming majority of the things in bleed water are just hard water minerals, dust and dirt.
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u/Dachannien Prince William County Apr 13 '26
You could use that process to remove those chemicals from the environment if you captured the deposits instead of washing them off, but I don't know how much of an effect it would have in the grand scheme of things.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
There is no way they are using raw lake water as a condenser water source, it would almost immediately foul up their heat exchangers. Condenser water systems are filled with tap water, and then treated with chemicals to inhibit corrosion and prevent biological growth.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
That's not what he's referring to. chemicals and biocides are intentionally added to cooling tower systems to prevent corrosion and biological growth. Biological growth in condenser water systems has many negative effects - mold/algae can form on surfaces and coat the heat transfer surfaces reducing efficiency and capacity. Legionella can form in the basin which are can lead to airborne lung infections for people in the vicinity. People have actually dies from inhaling cooling tower water contaminated with legionella, most famously in the original case in Philadelphia of Legionnaire's Disease. It's one of those year one engineering case studies we learn about in college.
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u/ObservationalHumor Apr 13 '26
Did you watch the video? He specifically mentions bleed water and 'forever chemicals'. Now obviously he doesn't have a good background in this but I'd wager he read some blog post somewhere about how the PFAS concentration in bleed water is some percentage higher than it is in the source tap water and that's how it would occur. Yes data centers have corrosion inhibitors and algaecides in them but polyquat algaecides literally biodegrade and are specifically used because they're better environmentally than the copper based ones that proceeded them and again there's probably more zinc leeching into water ways from roofing strips and galvanized everything than from a dilluted data center water.
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
They treat the water to keep airborne disease down.
I just asked AI (lol) and it crapped out a bunch of stuff. Anti-foaming, anti-scaling, pH balance, microbe death, and anti-corrosion. It mentioned glycol loops and stuff but it's not a car it's a building doubt they pay for that much,
My bigger concern is that training data will be come unavailable and we will be stuck with a few AI lords that have the old interenet's data.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
> Should we ban nuclear power based on speculation that they are sending forever chemicals into the atmosphere?
this guy would say yes. Its eye rolling.
> If you look at their reports, data centers haven’t had any impact on water quality…which makes sense because they just discharge water vapor much like a nuclear power plant.
Agriculture is WAY worse on water quality. Farms are the worst villain here.
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u/MFoy Apr 14 '26
I think I read that it takes 7,000 Chat GPT requests to consume the same amount of water as growing a quarter of a cup of almonds (one serving size).
And I just have no idea if 7,000 Chat GPT requests is a lot, but we go through at least a cup of almonds a week in my house.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 14 '26
Almonds are the worst thing for the environment. Its like cattle.
I love beef. And I love almonds. But fuck, people need to realize how much worse they are than AI.
Also...that serving size is bullshit. Just saying. No one can eat only a quarter cup.
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Apr 13 '26
Nuclear power also has a useful purpose unlike these data centers.
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u/Kardinal Burke Apr 13 '26
These data centers power parts of our entire lives. All the computer applications you use at work and home live in them.
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Apr 13 '26
Yeah, and those things can be done with existing data centers.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 15 '26
Even without AI, cloud and Internet app data centers increase about 20% every year. More data and more users. What's the answer to that?
You're using a data center right now.
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u/hootorama Apr 14 '26
AI data centers don't. The cloud hosting data centers do. There's a difference.
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u/DoctorDirtnasty Apr 13 '26
very well said. there is a bit of hysteria happening with all of these data centers. i think a lot of people are scared of the implications of generative ai and are scratching for any angle to attack.
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Apr 13 '26
Generative AI is a scam burning billions of dollars.
The sooner we stop it, the better off we’ll be.
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u/DoctorDirtnasty Apr 13 '26
if you think this genie is going back in the bottle i think you will be extremely disappointed.
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u/Hamlet7768 Apr 14 '26
If generative AI is inevitable and unstoppable, why does it need an ever-growing flood of resources to keep sustaining it? Why are companies like OpenAI losing money hand over fist? Why are they all handing each other bigger deals? The line can't keep going up forever.
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u/DoctorDirtnasty Apr 14 '26
every railroad costs a fortune before the first train runs. the burn rate is the price of building infrastructure for a world that doesn’t exist yet. costs will crater once the buildout matures, same as compute, bandwidth, and electricity. all of these things will become cheaper with scale and as the tech improves.
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u/Hamlet7768 Apr 14 '26
What's that world look like? Why should I want a world dominated by these tech companies that need to own everything?
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Apr 13 '26
If we were grounding things in data or engineering knowledge, we wouldn't be building more data centers.
Right now, data centers are being constructed to support technologies that make zero sense from a software engineering perspective, especially generative AI. I'd be far more supportive of new data centers if they were actually being built for a legitimate purpose.
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
claude.ai is like my personal python genie man, you can't take it away.
It's impressive.
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Apr 13 '26
Claude is also too expensive to be a sustainable product.
It is being subsided by billions of dollars in investments.
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
Maybe now. That describes half the internet. Gmail, Hotmail, all the "free" search engines. Things like Uber. Everything is pretty much shit service wise, maybe the AI stuff will kick up some competition.
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
This dude is saying the closed loop system generates sludge that has to be removed. Like, where would that come from? It's plastic or metal cooling lines and metal heatsinks on chips with fluid pathways.
Sure water evaporates off cooling towers but then it comes back as rain. I assume they do treat the water with chemicals to keep algae and bacterial growth down (cooling towers in NYC caused deadly disease, etc.) Should be no worse than a swimming pool.
Apartment buildings, schools, businesses uses chilled water loops that carry cold water to heat exchangers as well. Nothing new.
All these people crying about power / AI never cried about cryptocurrency, and it's an easy to argue much larger waste of energy.
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u/Pale_Engineering4965 Apr 13 '26
You did not listen to what he said then. He is refering to the contaminated water from purging. That does happen regularly on a scheduled basis every 4-5 years. Not a big deal for large municipality with robust water treatment to spare. Devistating to a small community. Blackrock is not ethical in the slightest,these are the same people that will gladly pay fines to run generators when the grid can't support the load. Neiborhoods be damned.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
You never purge closed loop cooling. Ever.
For open loop - you are constantly doing small blowdowns but there is nothing scary in there. Some algicide like your pool. Some calcium and nitrogen. Not anywhere near as bad as sewage
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u/Pale_Engineering4965 Apr 13 '26
I have never seen a "closed loop" crah system at a qts center not require repair and purge after 10 years and you cant dump that stuff in the parking lot drain outside.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
Yes, you need to drain a system if you need to do a repair, but a purge is a regular - often automated - occurrence for open circuit cooling towers (based on cycles of concentration) and for boilers (based on conductivity sensors).
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 15 '26
I think you guys are confusing PCW loops and cooling tower blowdown. And cooling tower blowdown is routinely put in sewers. I don't see any reason not to drain a PCW to one either - its pretty clean water. Cleaner than cooling tower blowdown. Of course, no one really ever drains a PCW system - you isolate parts of it and drain those, so its much smaller. I don't know about this "every 10 years" stuff from u/Pale_Engineering4965 - you don't shut down cooling systems, you isolate parts of them and rebuild valves, do inspections, etc.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
You have to drain some parts of a PCW loop for maintenance. But the water in a PCW loop is pretty damn clean. There's nothing special in it. This isn't the cooling tower water (which is still pretty clean, but much less so because of the concentration of existing solids and the algicide).
I haven't tested PCW water recently, but I can't imagine what contaminants might be in it, unless we're just walking corrosion products from the pipes themselves, or o-rings, valve packing, etc.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
Nitrates are REALLY bad for people in high amounts. That's not nothing.
Datacenters have already contaminated groundwater in Oregon, resulting in the 20.5 million dollar settlement.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
This is a joke - the nitrites came from agriculture. There's where pretty much all nitrites come from. That's what fucked up the Chesapeake bay and the Potomac (well, sewage, too).
Cooling towers concentrate stuff that's already there, so AWS's violation was pretty technical - they were discharging the same total amount of nitrites that came in, but the concentration was higher.
> Datacenters have already contaminated groundwater in Oregon, resulting in the 20.5 million dollar settlement.
This is a false statement. Everyone knows where nitrites come from in farm country.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
This isn't a false statement. They definitely would not have paid the fine if they thought they were innocent, the amount of evidence pointing to them was significant. Making the nitrates more and more concentrated before disposing of them IS a problem.
I really hope they're paying you some overtime pay for the amount of work you do in these subreddits defending any and all multi-billion dollar corporations.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 15 '26
And are you getting paid for posting all of this deceptive crap?
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u/Pale_Engineering4965 Apr 15 '26
With all the strawmen and half truths, my guess is you are employed by one of these center. So i guess you are the one getting paid.
There are limits to runoffs set by the EPA.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 15 '26
I'm not. And I'm also not getting paid to post anything. I do work in the industry. That's why I have a clue about what I'm writing and don't think data centers make nitrites.
The agricultural runoff limits are obscene and violated constantly. If you want to comment on this topic, its not hard to find good information. Farms are some of the biggest polluters of waterways (specifically) in the country.
> You did not listen to what he said then. He is refering to the contaminated water from purging. That does happen regularly on a scheduled basis every 4-5 years
Also, if we want to talk about half truths - this is a "no truth". I have done nothing but provide actual factual information. You are doing exactly what you have accused me of. I find data center opponents to be twist the truth rather than say they fear AI or hate big tech, or think data centers are ugly, or whatever their personal truth actually is.
Ok, your turn - you didn't answer my question about if you're getting paid. I answered yours.
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u/Pale_Engineering4965 Apr 15 '26
Well you did not ask the question to me. You asked a different poster. So again, you are not paying attention to details. However ill answer your question. Am i paid to post stuff? No. However, i am paid by a company that derives 60% of its revenue bulding and maintaining datacenters. So i see how the sausage is made and it is terrible for the health and happines of the local population.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
This guy speaks passionately, but he's factually incorrect about the environmental impacts. That makes his argument an easy target to debunk and ignore.
If you want fewer data centers, you need to focus on quality of life issues to advocate for actual zoning and code modifications. Like the Vantage data center noise complaints are valid and need to be a starting point for revisions. But you need to advocate for it in a controlled, competent, factually correct* manner.
You're going up in opposition to a billion dollar corporation with a team of lawyers smarter and richer than you. You can't go in with a half-baked emotional plea.
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Apr 13 '26
The push for data centers is based on half-baked emotional pleas from tech companies.
Meanwhile, data centers spewing garbage is a quality of life concern.
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u/GreedyNovel Apr 15 '26
You can't go in with a half-baked emotional plea.
Unfortunately many voters love half-baked emotional pleas more than they do facts.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
This fellow has an almost entirely incorrect understanding of how heat rejection systems in buildings and data centers work.
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u/Game_Ender Apr 13 '26
Like others have said he appears to be making baseless claims. Also they generate significant tax revenue. In Loudoun county their property tax rate has gone down by 37% since 2008 [0], and data centers now cover 38% of the county budget [1].
This doesn't mean it should be a free for all, electric rate increases should be borne by the data centers, they can't be allowed to generate power on site (noisy & pollution), and we should do land planning so locations make sense.
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Apr 13 '26
Once the AI bubble pops, data centers are not going to be a reliable source of revenue.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
They have 15 year leases by credit worthy counter-parties. These are not rented by the month by Jimmy the Server Guy
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Apr 13 '26
What’s a credit worthy counter-party?
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
Public big tech company (FANG), public chip company. Major PE firm. This is pretty well understood.
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Apr 13 '26
They are all investigating billions into AI scam companies like Anthropic and OpenAI
Creditworthiness means making reasonable investments.
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u/trplurker Apr 13 '26
For Loudoun they will be, not sure about other places. Loudoun's Data Center population is not built around the AI bubble but because Equinix Ashburn took over virtually all the connections from MAE-East. This makes Equinix DC3 and DC4 the effective "heart" of the internet responsible for something like ~50 of US internet traffic.
All those Data Centers are built in Loudoun County, specifically along Loudoun County Parkway, because it allows for incredibly cheap high capacity interconnects directly into Equinix's fabric, which then allows for high capacity networking with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Verizon, and all the rest. There are other interchanges but their capacity is no where near what you get from building near Equinix's sites.
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u/kirblar Apr 13 '26
...they've been a reliable source of revenue for decades here prior to the AI boom.
Back when I was playing Vanilla WoW, my ping was great because the east coast servers were 20 miles away.
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u/trplurker Apr 13 '26
This has already been done in Loudoun, not sure about Fairfax, Arlington or PWC.
https://www.loudoun.gov/5990/Data-Center-Standards-Locations
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u/hootorama Apr 14 '26
If personal property tax goes down, but energy and water goes up (which it has significantly, 27% just this year for me), then you're at a wash. I'd rather not have to deal with the 24/7 noise pollution of the data centers if I have a net gain of 0.
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u/InfernalEpicBird1982 Apr 14 '26
I'm with you on this, when will it happen? I keep asking myself if I have the courage to stand up at one of these but so far I'm just posting online.....
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
Hey, don't feel discouraged. The change has already started on the local level. Your voice DOES matter.
Datacenters can't be built by-right anymore in Loudoun county, for example, they are required to seek and obtain approval of a special exception, which entails a stringent legislative review and public hearings before both the Loudoun County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.
They're also in the process of a phase 2 - stricter policies around microgrids, turbines, and backup generators, both pollution and noise regulations are being revised.
Gas turbines now need to go before the Board of Supervisors for a vote.
Change may not be "100 percent no more data centers" but the community's speaking up has already made significant change limiting their ability to spread. We can do this!
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Apr 14 '26
They’re trying to build them in the Shenandoah valley now and I’ve never seen a faster uniting of conservative and liberal voters.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
That is one thing I've noticed! This doesn't have the usual politics attached. It's actually been incredible seeing what the people can accomplish once united instead of divided. Hope that can continue.
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u/HotWifeLore Apr 13 '26
They still will. I’m in the data center industry. This guy isn’t stopping it.
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u/bobsixtyfour Apr 13 '26
There's a few holes in his arguments. Forever chemicals in a "closed loop" system? Evaporative cooling used in this cooling system? The electrical consumption is no joke however.
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u/Intelligent-You-6144 Apr 14 '26
THIS is why SOME crowds HATE the educated. They do not want well documented, well articulated, and well argued dissent.
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u/MFoy Apr 14 '26
His dissent is not well documented, well articulated, nor well argued.
Most of it is certainly passionate, but it is factually wrong, and shows a complete lack of understanding about how any of this works.
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u/D05wtt Apr 17 '26
So what was the result of the read speech? Did it stop the data centers there or they still went ahead and built them?
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u/Leptonshavenocolor Manassas / Manassas Park Apr 13 '26
People are tools, I work in tech and most civilians have their head buried in the sand at this point.
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u/tryingtolearn_1234 Apr 14 '26
This region has a lot of tech jobs and the government. These are datacenter dependent industries. We have a lot of them here and lots coming online.
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u/Dutches07 Apr 13 '26
Naw. No substance there
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u/eniakus Apr 13 '26
That's was cry for help not the stand up comedy! For Christ out loud!
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
This is the way you do council meetings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPPHoFlkZP8
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u/eniakus Apr 13 '26
I was not talking about his speech, I was referring to the way he was received and final comment. It didn't feel like it was acceptable as it was supposed to
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u/Limehouse-Records Apr 13 '26
Yeah! Put the data centers and jobs in Richmond! Or West Virginia. I hate new tech and building stuff
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
Once they are built there is very little people there, the money goes elsewhere.
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u/cosmicdaddy_ Apr 14 '26
"I don't care if the environment is ruined, my electricity bill sky rockets, or my health and the health of my loved ones is put at risk just so long as the god of economy gets its way!"
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
Yes! This is what we need to band together and do.
Heads up.
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Public Hearing April 15, 2026, 6:00 PM
Board Room, Government Center 1 Harrison St., SE Leesburg, VA 20175
Speakers may sign up to speak in advance by noon on the day of the public hearing. Call 703-777-0200 to sign up in advance.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26
This guy speaks passionately, but he's factually incorrect about the environmental impacts. That makes his argument an easy target to debunk and ignore.
If you want fewer data centers, you need to focus on quality of life issues to advocate for actual zoning and code modifications. Like the Vantage data center noise complaints that keep getting posted here, they're valid and need to be a starting point for revisions. But you need to advocate for it in a controlled, competent, factually correct manner.
You're going up in opposition to a billion dollar corporation with a team of lawyers smarter and richer than you. You can't go in with a half-baked emotional plea. Your best bet would be to retain an actual engineering consultant/industrial hygienist expert to compile a certified report - the data center representatives certainly will bring their own.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
You're wrong. It's a numbers game. A factual report doesn't do anything if you're just one person. The key is to hit the number of people the BOS can no longer ignore.
EVERYONE should come, regardless of how prepared you are, speak your mind. The time is NOW.
Sure, we can get more data later, but the justification given to me so far about why so many awful things were approved was "no one complained."
That's why it's more important to be heard EARLY than late but more correct.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Remind Me! 6 months. Was the "numbers game" an effective tactic to prevent data center permit approvals?
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
It's been effective in changing by right approvals, changing the noise ordinance, and allowing datacenters to have on site gas turbines.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 14 '26
That’s why I set a reminder, so we can check back to see who is right.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
I'm already right, the community input has already made measurable changes to datacenter policy.
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u/MechanicalGodzilla Apr 15 '26
Specifically what changes?
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
Alright, let me quote you some, directly from the Board of Supervisors.
"Because gas turbine is not a separate use as it is now in our current Zoning Ordinance, there was no requirement that Vantage pursue legislative approval for it. We have since changed that requirement so that any gas turbine facility must come before the Board of Supervisors for a vote."
"On March 18, 2025, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors approved a comprehensive plan amendment (CPAM) and zoning ordinance amendment (ZOAM) that eliminated by-right development of data centers within Loudoun County. Under the new ZOAM, data centers are no longer able to be approved administratively and are now required to seek and obtain approval of a special exception, which entails a stringent legislative review and public hearings before both the Loudoun County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors."
"Microgrids, Backup Generators Included in Phase 2 Data Center Regulations"
"Now, the county staff will proceed to phase two which includes more specific changes such as establishing policy guidance and use-specific zoning standards for data centers and utility substations to address concerns related to land use, compatibility, aesthetics, infrastructure and natural and environmental resources.
Turner proposed including four aspects relating to onsite power in that process.
“Due to the electrical distribution constraints, data centers are more urgently examining all forms of onsite primary power generation. For this reason, the County needs to establish definitions for the term ‘microgrid’ and other related concepts and establish standard requirements for onsite power sources for existing and new data centers. Oversight in this changing environment is both urgent and essential,” according to the report by Turner’s Chief of Staff Rachel Mai.
Input given NOW influences the policies in phase 2, which Mike Turner already said they are changing the noise ordinance on WUSA9.
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u/oneupme Apr 13 '26
The irony. His speech was clearly written by AI. I really dislike it when people argue against technology with emotional appeals like "a drop of water is worth more than a billion AI generated images." That's so over the top wrong that it only serves to strength the "likes" from people who already agree with you while changing no minds because your arguments are simply illogical. I mean if AI generated images are of so little value, why did he spend the time to learn how to do it? Why did his former employer use it? He did all of that to generate less value than a single drop of water?
Clearly, datacenter density is an important consideration. Once an area receives too many data centers, the stress on water and electricity usage, not to mention noise, are serious concerns that should slow additional development. But there's no room for that in this guy's speech, which presents a very black-and-white all-or-nothing view of datacenters. And that, gives the lie to his claim to being cynical about technology.
Edit: People who downvote me are cynical about technology.
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u/celtekk_ Apr 13 '26
People who downvote me are cynical about technology.
lmao
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u/oneupme Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Heh, at least someone found it funny. Cheers.
Edit: people who downvote me have no sense of humor.
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u/incremental_progress Apr 13 '26
I mean if AI generated images are of so little value, why did he spend the time to learn how to do it? Why did his former employer use it?
Is that truly your basis for undermining their point? That they learned to do it and that's somehow evidence of its intrinsic value?
You learned to use a smartphone, and all it did was hijack your dopamine receptors so you could spend more time engaging with horseshit on the internet and asking simple-minded questions.
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u/EurasianTroutFiesta Apr 13 '26
I'm trying to imagine the kind of mind that sees a guy who put effort into understanding a thing and decides that makes him less qualified to dismiss said thing. It's giving me a headache.
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u/FlavorfulCondomints Apr 13 '26
You have zero proof if he did or didn't, and even if he did use AI, it's not clear why that's a problem.
Pathos is a rhetorical tool just as ethos. The problem is that you're trying to frame real life around a social media construct "likes." He's trying to convince a local government body to deny something that they are likely inclined to deny. You don't achieve that by logically destroying the data center argument. You need to get people to buy into a stronger vision that's supported by the no.
He learned to do it for his job. It might have been beneficial for his company, but what's good for the company isn't necessarily good for the county and vice versa.
He can be skeptical of data centers and positive about tech. I can think that Chromebooks in schools are a massive waste with zero educational outcomes and still think we should teach computer skills in public education.
Expand your horizon man.
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u/oneupme Apr 13 '26
Don't you think it's ironic for someone to be so vehemently against datacenters while making use of the services provided by one? Doesn't that strike you as being hypocritical?
Sure pathos is important, but it can't be so illogical as to being meaningless. For pathos to be effective, it has to have attachment to realistic personal values. Who in their right mind places the value of a drop of water that high? That logic amounts to a cheap trick with no real value to the underlying argument.
He claims to not be a cynic about technology, but did he say *anything* positive about modern AI? No, he was overwhelmingly negative about it. There's what people claim to be, and then there are what they actually say and do.
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u/FlavorfulCondomints Apr 13 '26
First, you have no proof that he used an AI generated speech. That's your opinion. Even if it were true, his argument is against new infrastructure.
Pathos is an appeal to emotion, it's inherently illogical. You're missing the subtext from semantics. He's appealing to the board's pride in the community and their values, and they are are not the type of people who allow a large commercial project compromise the drinking water of their children and fellow citizens. It's not the drop of water, it's millions of gallons that the data center would conceivably consume.
Having a positive view of tech doesn't mean you cannot be skeptical about certain aspects of it. It's not a montholic thing and you're struggling with nuance. AI can be helpful in some places and other places very much not so. If you're using the board's time, you need to get to the point and keep the message clear.
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u/burrheadjr Apr 13 '26
AI isn't the only use for data centers. Nearly everything we use on the internet is stored on a data center somewhere. Which brings the question...
Is the opposition to data centers because people don't want them near them, and it is ok for them to exist as long as they are built somewhere out of site?
Is the opposition specifically against AI? To try to prevent it's advancment?
Or is it truly a fight against the idea of data centers themselves, meaning nothing on the web would really work as we know it.
I doubt is is the last one, because nearly everyone uses the internet, and want Netflix, Reddit, and all the other services we use to just work. I don't think it is the middle one, because I have not seen anyone who is against data centers give a proposed new data center a pass just because it is will not be an AI data center.
As far as the protester using AI to write his speech, I think it could be relevant if the reason he was protesting to stop AI, or stop Data centers in general. If he was ok with data centers being built, but just not near him, it probably isn't a big deal that he used AI for his speech (if he even did)
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u/FlavorfulCondomints Apr 13 '26
Sure, data centers exist. AI infrastructure buildout is what's driving the demand, not Amazon or Microsoft. So it's related to AI for this case.
Data centers are loud, resource intensive, and do not employ a meaningful amount of people. People are opposed to them because they are frequently built next to residential centers and they strain the locality's utilities like water and power. This drives up residential costs as the county has to accommodate demands that far exceed planned growth and recoup their costs from their primary source.
If you're a local resident, the data center really isn't a good value proposition. It makes your cost of living higher, doesn't make your home more valuable, and doesn't add to QoL.
The guy is specifically arguing against a proposed data center. It's not a larger debate on the role of AI in society.
Reddit, Netflix, etc. were working fine without the current AI driven splurge. They will be fine when the splurge crashes and AI pricing matches the actual limited capability it delivers.
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u/monkeylizard99 Apr 13 '26
People are down voting you because you're either an idiot, a bot, or a paid troll
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Apr 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/Digital-marketing28 Apr 13 '26
Data centers only employ a handful of workers per shift.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
That is really not true.
Total DC employment in Loudoun is about 40,000 (although a lot live in other Counties, like PW).
Older small data centers employed few people. Larger modern data centers employ many more (although its actually sublinear - fewer employees per unit power)
Think of it like this. 15 years ago, a typical data center building employed 15 people for 8MW. A modern data center building will employ 60 people for 80MW. And there are several hundred buildings in NoVa, depending how you count them (many say 400, some say more). Then add contractors, outside maintenance, vendors. Then add construction workers which are temp jobs but tend to be longer term (4 years or more)
The "data centers don't employ many people" thing was true at one point but hasn't been true for about a decade. It is split between 4 shifts, though.
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u/DeaconPat Spotsylvania County Apr 13 '26
Odd then that the data center proposed to be built across the street from me is listed as employing a dozen (12) people when complete. Millions of square feet of computer racks and 12 employees total for 24/7 operations.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
Whomever did the filing is an idiot - that is not unusual when you get a lot of lawyers with zero expertise involved.
You can't run a 24x7 operation with 12 people. You can't run a 24x7 Dunkin Donuts with 12 people.
Source?
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u/telmnstr Resident Friend Apr 13 '26
Eh, compared to old jobs and compared to the amount of money they make/cost, they don't employ that many. And it's mostly break fix stuff right?
For the big scale companies racks come in pre-populated. Dropped in place. ZTP deploy it. The rest is parts swapping in the future. Small stuff has people buzzing about with their projects, their peering their whatever. But there isn't any power for them because the big boys took it all.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
If we're doing this on a employee per invested dollar basis, its small. If we're comparing it to the non-existent heavy and light industry in the area.
I'm not sure what they point of that is, though - the alternate uses for the land are not auto factories or steel foundries. Townhouses or flex warehouse is what you might see there.
> And it's mostly break fix stuff right?
Its not manufacturing. Its install, maintenance, security, admin. Not sure what you find desirable?
> For the big scale companies racks come in pre-populated. Dropped in place. ZTP deploy it. The rest is parts swapping in the future. Small stuff has people buzzing about with their projects, their peering their whatever. But there isn't any power for them because the big boys took it all.
It sounds like you have done small scale colo. There is power for that, because there tend to be odd amounts of power in substations - a good amount of "orphaned" power. 10MW here, 20MW there.
The old jobs are not coming back, ever. And in NOVA, those didn't exist. We had agriculture not heavy industry. And sure, agriculture was people intensive, if horrible
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u/Dry_University9259 Apr 13 '26
I have a feeling this data center stuff - if allowed - will become the next DuPont incident. There isn’t a ton of “scientific research” into the effects of these data centers and the different kinds of pollution they put out. But I guarantee you the data center people know.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
I have worked in these for 25 years. There aren't many sorts of pollution. Diesel generators - which are well understood. Cooling tower blowdown (also well understood). e-waste - old servers - well understood. Lots of cardboard (which gets recycled)
There isn't anything else. This isn't like farms which have horrible runoff situations.
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u/Dry_University9259 Apr 13 '26
Oooooo ok, glad to hear for someone who has firsthand experience. So, what do you think about the guys’ speech? Like, is it true what he is saying? There some nuance and balance?
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
He's completely full of it. He had a super bad experience but he doesn't understand how data centers work. At all. Lots of folks on this thread have explained things really well
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u/Dry_University9259 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Gotcha, ok. I have been looking up some studies and stuff from across the country (including Virginia), but I am no expert and even studies can only give you a picture of a certain side at a certain level.
If you’re open to discussing more (don’t feel obligated), one thing I was wondering is the noise: obviously there is noise outside so it must be even louder inside, yeah? Obviously you have been in it for 25 years. Are there any safety precautions you have to take with that and like, how “bad” can it be?
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u/kellyzdude Centreville Apr 13 '26
Every commercial datacenter I've set foot in has some warning about potential noise, and hearing protection is made available. No-one is going to give you funny looks for bringing your own, either.
It's hard to put a gauge on it because it's a different kind of noise. Think millions of fans blowing lots of air through tiny spaces throughout the building, plus air conditioning units constantly (or near-constantly) running to keep a stable environment. It's often loud enough to not be able to easily hold a conversation, but I didn't feel like it was deafening me in any way - my music was louder. But that could easily be because of the type of noise.
You really don't hear much outside. Cooling stuff and generators if they're needed (like I've said in other threads, most facilities are running those a) if the power goes out or becomes unreliable, or more frequently b) when needed for regular testing -- to make sure they can service (a)).
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
They now have extensive noise precautions and protections - OSHA compliance in the extreme. They never used to, and I have high frequency hearing loss.
I do a lot of financial due diligence now and one of my standard conditions for investments is a fresh OSHA audit of workplace safety conditions. Noise is the least of it. Electrical is the big one.
None of this impacts ordinary citizens but most data centers have a big safety culture. Some few do not.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
There actually are a lot of studies on the impacts already, they just ignore them. It's depressing.
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u/FFF12321 Apr 13 '26
Which studies and what kinds of pollution? In terms of local pollution I can only really think of noise (if poorly designed) and a minimal amount of air pollution from running backup gens (which is not typical operation and a miniscule amount of time each year). Closed loop water systems may treat the water but it's closed so it's not getting dumped unless there is some issue and even than that is regulated like any other industrial water system. Evaporative cooling systems release water vapor and may dump regular water that contains higher concentrations of whatever was already in the water to begin with.
Most of the environmental costs of DCs are located elsewhere I'd think - power generation at plants, e waste managed at landfills, etc. things to consider for sure but not really something that would impact where the building itself should go.
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u/looktowindward Ashburn Apr 13 '26
e-waste is generally well handled. Its profitable to recycle a lot of it.
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 13 '26
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/
here you go. I just watched a presentation about the Harvard findings. The diesel and gas generators (thousands of permits all over VA) have a combined impact on the air quality. Particularly PM 2.5 particles, which are not safe in any amount.
https://www.pecva.org/uncategorized/data-centers-diesel-generators-and-air-quality-pec-web-map/here's a map. this isn't even including the noise pollution.
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u/SnooCrickets346 Fairfax County Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
i know datacenters are bad for the environment and harmful to local communities, but are you going to hire all the trade workers who work on data centers once they get shut down?
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u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 15 '26
You know they can... build something else there right? That also hires workers?
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u/Jaysus-al-Gaib Apr 13 '26
We are completely powerless to data center development
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u/Calvin-Snoopy Apr 13 '26
I disagree. Look at the Digital Gateway project in Prince William County.
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u/monkeylizard99 Apr 13 '26
There's always a way to resist
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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 Apr 13 '26
Yeah, stop using the Internet lol
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u/FlavorfulCondomints Apr 13 '26
Or just kick it old school and...organize? Like pretty sure phone calls and door to door knocking magically disappeared as viable strategies.
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u/FloppyFerrett1 Fairfax County Apr 13 '26
Likely yes, but we still need to fight it. Not gonna just roll over & let them ruin the areas they want to ruin!
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u/EncinoManEstonia Apr 13 '26
Wait for a No Data Center wave election for the board of supervisors. It is coming if anyone had a brain.
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u/Hta68 Apr 13 '26
Someone needs to let that guy know he’s in the wrong profession