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Prince William County’s board of supervisors approved plans Wednesday for a massive data center complex in a mostly rural area near Interstate 66 and a Civil War battlefield site, a controversial project that faced fierce opposition from some nearby residents.
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When completed over the next two decades, the Digital Gateway complex is expected to feature as many as 34 data centers spread through 2,100 acres in the Gainesville area — an effort of at least $40 billion that will make the Northern Virginia county one of the world’s largest hubs for internet traffic.
The development, which will include hiking, biking and equestrian trails on more than 270 acres of open space, was cast as a victory by project boosters quick to note that it is expected to generate an estimated $400 million in annual tax revenue for the steadily growing county when completed.
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“There’s going to be some people who are not going to win in this, and there’s going to be some people who win in this,” said Supervisor Victor S. Angry (D-Neabsco), who introduced the motion to approve the project. “Ultimately, the bottom line is I have to look at this county winning — 487,000 people — and I believe this is that.”
The vote punctuated a 2？-year and deeply personal battle that hinged on whether the county’s disappearing rural area should be protected from more development, with board members focusing their attention on building layouts and where transmission lines would go on the property before ultimately voting 4 to 3, with one abstention, to approve the three rezoning applications that made up the project. Supervisor Kenny A. Boddye (D-Occoquan) abstained, expressing concerns about a portion of the deal.
Nearly 400 people weighed in during an often-heated 27-hour-long meeting that began Tuesday morning, with opposing camps calling one another “morally corrupt” or “elitist” as exhausted county supervisors struggled to stay awake.
Opponents of the plan argued that it would damage the environment by increasing impermeable surfaces, cause noise problems because of the machinery and air conditioning needed to run the data centers, and ruin views at Manassas National Battlefield Park and the 1,863-home Heritage Hunt community a short distance away.
With other data centers coming online in the area — including a nine-building complex about five miles away from the Digital Gateway site that was approved last month — those residents said their community is being overrun.
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The industry expansion in Virginia is fueled by the world’s increasing hunger for smartphones and other technology that require massive amounts of data to be processed. Northern Virginia is one of the industry’s largest hubs for data centers, handling about one-third of the world’s internet traffic.
“We are witnessing a slow death by 1,000 cuts,” Ashley Studholme, executive director of the Prince William Conservation Alliance, told the board. “If we do not hold the line, who will?”
The project’s path to that decision has been marked by controversy and political upheaval.
The idea for a Digital Gateway was initiated in 2020 by property owners who argue that the area is now more suitable for data centers because of the constant rush-hour traffic flooding off Interstate 66 and the massive transmission power lines cutting through their community that serve neighboring Loudoun County’s hub of about 115 data centers. Data centers are sparsely staffed and don’t have the impact on traffic, schools and other county services that residences do.
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The board’s chair, Ann B. Wheeler (D), became an early champion of the project, seeing it as a way for the county to generate more tax revenue and catch up to Loudoun, Northern Virginia’s leader in data centers.
Wheeler then faced backlash against the plan, leading to her primary election loss to Deshundra Jefferson, a vocal critic of the Digital Gateway plan who went on to win the November general election for chair.
That defeat gave hope to opponents who want to keep the area mostly rural, as opposition increased after recommendations from the county planning staff and the planning commission for the proposal to be denied.
In part, those recommendations said, the two companies behind the plan — Compass Datacenters and QTS Data Centers — did not provide enough details on where their buildings would be.
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The companies offered specifics on where buildings would be during the first phase of construction — with the closest building to Heritage Hunt about 1,000 feet away from a home — but argued that it’s too difficult to predict what the construction needs will be during later phases of construction in a fast-evolving industry.
In efforts to ease concerns about the buildings being easily seen, the companies also reduced their heights and noted that the buildings would be painted to blend in with the landscape. Electric substations needed to route energy to the data centers would be in the rear of the buildings and covered so that they’re not easily seen, according to the latest iteration of the plan.
To deal with environmental concerns, Compass said it plans to install a system that will treat runoff from rain, then release it through a strawlike mechanism to reduce the flow into surrounding streams — with the goal of the discharge being as clean as discharge from undeveloped areas.
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The companies noted that the area is occupied by farms whose pesticides drain into area streams during rain and by homes with septic systems that occasionally fail, adding more pollution.
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“The misperception that we’re somehow harming the watershed is, in fact, false,” Mark Looney, an attorney for Compass, told the board during its meeting.
Both companies have offered to replace every tree affected by the development with another one elsewhere on the site, though it would take decades for a newly planted tree to grow enough to be able to filter as much carbon in the atmosphere as a mature tree.
The overall amount of open space set aside, equaling about 16 percent of the complex, is below the 30 percent level targeted by the county, officials said.
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Supporters of the plan — many of them local property owners or union workers who would financially benefit — lauded the companies’ commitments and pointed to the economic benefits.
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“Our county has a commercial tax base crisis,” said Mike Grossman, a Gainesville-area resident, referring to the small percentage of the county’s budget that comes from commercial and retail properties, leaving the county to heavily depend on residential property taxes to fund schools and other services. “This is the solution that we need to embrace.”
Opponents argued that the Digital Gateway would place too much strain on a regional power grid that is already struggling to keep up with energy demands brought by the data center industry’s recent growth, requiring more transmission lines.
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Compass has said its portion of the project will require as much as 1.7 gigawatts of electric capacity when completed, enough to power nearly 1.3 million homes. QTS said it would need about 60 percent of that capacity.
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Dominion Energy officials have said that demand will probably require adding more electric infrastructure to the area.
The county planning staff said it is unclear whether the electric transmission lines and other infrastructure needed to serve the buildings would go through the open space there, ruining its character.
Officials at Dominion Energy and Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative — the company that would construct electric substations at the site — said they have been collaborating with the data center companies to minimize impact to undeveloped areas. But the decision on where to place the infrastructure ultimately rests with the State Corporation Commission, which grants permits for the equipment, they said.
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“The cost to produce that energy is going to be thrown onto Virginia residents by increasing their utility bills,” Erin Price, an Arlington County resident, told the board, noting that at least some of that power would come from fossil-fuel-burning plants. “By approving this project, you’re also choosing to accelerate climate change.”
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With exhaustion setting in Wednesday, the supervisors fought over the plan’s details.
Supervisor Bob Weir (R-Gainesville), who represents the affected area, argued for sending the proposal back to the planning commission before switching course and moving for it to be denied.
Before the vote Wednesday, the companies agreed to require that whoever occupies the buildings commit to using renewable energy for at least 10 percent of their power. Among other last-minute changes, QTS agreed to lower its buildings’ floor area ratios in the southern portion of its development closest to the battlefield site — a move that persuaded Boddye, a swing vote on the issue, to change what he indicated would be a vote to deny.
“I still struggle to support this project in its current form,” Boddye said before that compromise was made.
Those against the Digital Gateway argued that, in even considering the plan Tuesday, the board was violating state and county rules for public meetings by not giving sufficient notice — a sign that the board’s decision will probably be challenged in court.
“Anything that you do at this illegal hearing is invalid,” said Karen Sheehan, a member of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, referring to public meeting notice requirements.
The county’s public hearing notices for Tuesday’s meeting were published Dec. 2, 5 and 9 — which the group said was in violation of a state requirement that notices should be provided six days apart for two consecutive weeks.
With exhaustion setting in, the supervisors fought over that issue and other details of the plan, introducing multiple motions before the final vote was cast.
“Quite frankly, this process has become a circus,” Weir said. “It’s pitted neighbor against neighbor, and it’s got to stop. I’ve never seen this level of acrimony.”
The region’s complicated relationship with data centers was on display before the meeting started Tuesday, during a prayer vigil led by Native American descendants of local tribes who lamented the loss of natural space due to development.
About 30 people showed up to the ceremony, which included sage burning and an enactment of how local wildlife and trees would disappear as data centers multiply.
Those unable to make it to the event and another protest that followed could tune in via a live-stream feed, with the data being processed by the industry they were fighting.
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