On Tuesday Feb. 3, the board voted 4-0 to defer any decision until a pending lawsuit, Charles and Marygay Cross vs. the Town of Warrenton, is decided – possibly delaying a decision for years and keeping an alternative legal door open for the data center giant.

Virginia, the home of the world’s largest concentration of data centers, will consider more than 60 bills related to a wide range of data center-related issues during this year's legislative session, lasting from January 14 to March 14.

A panel of several high-profile Democratic officials joined U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va. 10th District, for a town hall Saturday at Gainesville High School focused on data centers, transmission lines and rising electricity bills – setting the stage for the ongoing Virginia General Assembly session in Richmond.

Facing soaring demand for electricity, the Mid-Atlantic power grid operator says it will serve new data centers if they can generate their own power — or agree to get cut off and run on their own generators when the grid is stressed.

Fearing rising utility costs, job losses and privacy violations, residents have blocked or delayed data-center projects around the country.

Virginians overwhelmingly support stricter regulations on data centers, particularly when it comes to where the facilities are built and how much energy they consume, according to new polling from Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Civic Leadership.

Following is an hour excerpted from our November 2025 forum about data centers and water usage (not including the audience Q&A).

Regional grid operators said the federal order is a fail safe. Environmentalists in Virginia worry about increased pollution regulators and residents may not be fully aware of.

From the suburbs of Northern Virginia to the banks of the Columbia River, communities are voicing deep concerns over data centers, often centering on their energy, environmental and affordability impacts.

The U.S. Department of Energy used the Federal Power Act on Monday to allow data centers within the regional grid operated by PJM Interconnection, including those in Virginia, to use generators at PJM’s discretion through Jan. 31. The allowance comes amid PJM’s record forecasts and demands for electricity and heat during freezing temperatures. This will enable data centers in Virginia, which has more of the giant server farms than any other state or nation, to run solely on their diesel backup generators in an emergency situation during the remnants of Fern’s cold weather through Jan. 31. The state’s environmental regulators won’t necessarily be notified when those generators start up, state officials said.

The Louisa County Board of Supervisors voted 7-0 to refer the removal of the Technology Overlay District designation from a roughly 1,920 property that Amazon Web Services just purchased for $72 million to the County Planning Commission.

The Trump administration has overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public, according to documents obtained exclusively by NPR. The sweeping changes were made to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs, and are being backed by billions in private equity, venture capital and public investments. Backers of the reactors, including tech giants Amazon, Google and Meta, have said they want the reactors to one day supply cheap, reliable power for artificial intelligence.

“We acknowledge data centres are part of our modern life, our social life, our economy, but they have got to be sited properly, and it needs to be an open process,” [Burbank] says. “We ought to have a say in where they’re located and how they’re built.” “Virginia has a billion dollars in tax breaks that they give to data centres, which we think is offensive,” [Burbank] says, noting they serve highly profitable technology companies. “Our farmers are struggling, and they don’t get that tax exemption.” (Article is paywalled.)

Bills demanding that data center developers tell local governments more about their potential impacts are moving with new energy through the General Assembly. Similar bills have died in recent years. But the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee approved a measure, Senate Bill 552, that would give state environmental regulators an oversight role to make sure those data centers disclose their impacts on neighbors. (Article is paywalled)

The tech giant has spent more than $6 million on TV ads in state capitals and Washington, with the message that data centers create jobs. Amazon is helping to fund a similar ad campaign in Virginia, where it operates dozens of data centers. The campaign — focused on job growth and electricity costs — began in December 2024 and is still running, backed by Virginia Connects, a nonprofit created by the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group.

Internal forecasts that Microsoft made last year show the company expected its annual water needs for roughly 100 data center complexes worldwide to more than triple this decade to 28 billion liters in 2030. The tech industry’s limited transparency makes managing water use more challenging, said Landon Marston, a Virginia Tech Associate Professor studying the topic. Companies are not required to disclose facility-level data, and few do voluntarily. (Article is paywalled.)

Legislation is advancing through the General Assembly to restrict future data centers to industrially zoned areas. Several of the bills are aimed at helping localities manage the industry as well as temper community concerns over environmental impacts, sound, and viewshed issues around data centers.

How much should data centers pay for the massive amounts of new power infrastructure they require? Wisconsin’s largest utility, We Energies, has offered its answer to that question in what is the first major proposal before state regulators on the issue.

After an initial tie, a bill that would increase oversight of Virginia’s large data centers was reconsidered and passed on a motion to do so, meaning it will now move to local government for review. With Virginia serving as the undisputed No. 1 state for data centers in the U.S. and the world, Senate Bill 552 would tighten oversight on where and how large data centers are built or expanded, with a strong focus on community impact and environmental review.

With community opposition growing, data center backers are going on a full-scale public relations blitz. Although industry groups claim that each new data center creates “dozens to hundreds” of “high-wage, high-skill jobs,” some researchers say data centers generate far fewer jobs than other industries, such as manufacturing and warehousing.

Power plant outages surged along the eastern United States on Sunday as constricted natural gas supplies and frigid temperatures cut the electricity output of the region's generation fleet. PJM's outages are higher than the grid planned, said Pieter Mul, a grid expert and associate partner at PA Consulting's energy and utilities practice. Mul noted that there is less flexibility in the PJM system than a few years ago because of power plant retirements and a surge in demand from data centers.

As an electricity crunch drives bills higher around the country, big tech companies building power-hungry data centers are increasingly offering to pay for more of the energy they consume, so everyday people don’t get stuck with the bill. At least, that is the message from seven large tech companies in new letters responding to three Senate Democrats’ investigation into how data center buildout nationwide is impacting electricity prices.

County officials voted on data center projects without first securing clear, enforceable community benefits, and now — after the fact — residents are being invited to share what they expect in return. Approving them without binding commitments around infrastructure costs, environmental safeguards, and local workforce investment represents a failure to protect the public interest.

Data centers are flocking to America's largest regional electric grid, which covers an area from Virginia to Illinois. But accommodating new large electric loads is a challenge for power grid operator PJM. Now, the White House, along with politicians on both sides of the aisle, is looking for a fix that will keep consumer prices down.

Our region has been a major focus of the data center industry. And data centers can be very water-intensive. So it’s important to ask what the potential impacts might be in the future, both for the Rappahannock and across the commonwealth.