It's sad seeing people impacted by these data centers considering how little voice they have. I don't think anyone wants to live near a data center unless they actually worked there.
It's sad seeing people impacted by these data centers considering how little voice they have. I don't think anyone wants to live near a data center unless they actually worked there.
Much better than living next to a chemical plant. I thought the article and video were grasping at straws to find negative impacts. There’s no pollution on site so they have to talk about sounds that can’t be heard on the video and electrical poles.
I think this is dangerously close to NIMBY territory. People who bought homes in the cheapest land possible in areas with ample available farmland are upset that someone else bought some other land.
It’s quite easy to avoid that if you aren’t just buying on pure dollars per square foot like so many suburban buyers seem to be doing.
When it comes to vibrant urban core you actually benefit by having a lot of different things nearby “in my backyard.” As an added bonus, businesses looking for cheap land for factories and data centers tend to stay away.
But if we live in the city we’ll be “on top of each other” and I won’t have a walk-in closet to store all my clothes I don’t wear, and I won’t have a garage to store the car that I’m required to own to get around because nothing is nearby me, and I need a shed for my lawn mower because I can’t just share with my neighbors and I need my own yard because the public park is too far away, etc etc.
And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities.
You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
I don't think that the data centers are having a negative economic impact on Louden County residents. It's the richest country in the US with a median household income of $156,821. They also get really low property tax rates because the data centers are paying a lot of taxes compared to their costs. If there were lots more people working there, the county would need to spend a lot more money on roads and such. Instead, they're getting close to free money.
I'm not saying that anyone should want data centers to take over their city/county, but there isn't a strong economic argument against them in Louden County. The people there are the richest in the US and they're getting great economic benefits from it. The question isn't economic. The question is whether that's the community they want to live in: rich and making lots of money off data centers or an area where they don't have as much money and don't have to look at the data centers.
To be clear -- the data centers aren't even a slight cause of the high incomes in loudoun county, that long predate the datacenters and the data-center salaries likely bring that number down.
Also the county west of loudoun (Clarke), which has no data centers, has even lower taxes than loudoun. If you compare tax rate in loudoun in 2006 versus 2025 it's 1 percentage point lower now.
>It's the richest country in the US with a median household income of $156,821
Indeed, and it is not a place for average people to live. Loudon county is dominated by the rich and the legacy of the beltway bandits. It's a sad place centered around commuting to Washington D.C. or serving those who do.
But there is an upside to this - you get the benefits of being a city with big business (tax revenue, donations to the local schools, investments in infrastructure), but don't have increased commuter traffic.
Are those benefits the norm in most cases though? I'm genuinely asking and don't know either way, but the companies building these data centers have quite a reputation for aggressively pursuing subsidies and tax avoidance strategies. Amazon for one has paid little to no federal taxes some years and they wouldn't be my first pick as an example of a magnanimous corporate entity, to say the least.
Whatever benefits there are have to be weighted against the very real costs. Residential power bills spiking is a hugely regressive burden for many struggling households.
Then the locality government gives tax incentives so the residents don't get any benefit in exchange for their polluted environment.
There's a lot of work building them, not permanent of course.
And not the locals - as the local community can't sustain that amount of building. People come in temporarily while the work goes, then leave. This adds more pressure on the local community for again very little gain.
Did you read the article? It's about Loudoun County, the wealthiest county in the US. The people "affected" both are the ones making the decision about where to put the data centers and the ones profiting off them. Don't lose sleep.
Also, those same people have the most ability to live wherever they want, and can leave. This isn't mountaintop removal in coal country. This is wealthy DC lobbyists being a little annoyed about a hum.
The fact that there's even an article about it is evidence of the fact that the affected are wealthy. The article is their voice. The wealth that allows them to live in Loudoun County is their voice.
Current and long-time loudoun county resident here.
We mostly don't like them, we mostly do feel disenfranchised, and people are trying to mobilize more political awareness of which politicians are cozying up to data-centers.
One of the biggest complaints isn't the data-centers themselves, but that they use so much electricity that these heinously ugly power-lines have to get put up in what is one of the most beautiful nature areas of the country (i.e. "blue ridge mountains / Shennandoah river / country roads").
> Also, those same people have the most ability to live wherever they want, and can leave.
That's a ludicrous suggestion. The tax alone on selling your house is at a minimum 10%, aside from every other cost, that's basically a 6 figure loss plus all your close family and friends.
> This is wealthy DC lobbyists being a little annoyed about a hum.
No. It's mostly the residents who predate the datacenters who are the most opposed. Western Loudoun was actually mostly farmland one generation ago, and actually had a bit of hippie / homeschooler energy.
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Instead datacenters should be required by law to build underground with noise limits, and required by law to not increase electricity prices and not drain the grid around them. If they can't be profitable without negative externalities then they aren't worth having.
You're only taxed on capital gains. For it to be a six figure "loss" implies a minimum of $1M in gains alone. It really is ludicrous how entitled property owners act about their unearned windfalls.
Requiring data centers to be built underground would dramatically increase the cost. Imagine if we made the same requirement for roads, which are much louder and more dangerous!
On second thought, this negative externality thing really should be applied to roads, especially in cities. Guess I'm on board.
I hadn't heard of Loudoun County before. I also did read the article and here's a sentence from it.
> But while most locals the BBC spoke to opposed the data centres, the industry has many powerful proponents, including US President Donald Trump.
Also moving isn't something to take lightly.
> "I never thought that a data centre would be built across the street from my house," she said. "I would not have bought this house if I had known what was going in across the street."
> "I never thought that a data centre would be built across the street from my house," she said. "I would not have bought this house if I had known what was going in across the street."
and let this be a lesson to anyone looking to buy with vacant land within whatever radius you want to apply. if you think you might be upset by something that could be developed in the future, you can do some basic research on what zoning the lot(s) have, if they are owned by someone/thing that is discernible and not a shell company (if it is a shell company that's probably an indication you won't like what's coming), etc. sure, the ultimate developer of the think you won't like might only purchase the lot just before they are ready to build (specifically to avoid this), ultimately they will have to file for plans. it's possible those plans have already been filed, but if you don't look into it, it's really on you since you have the problem with it.
If I'm correct that the data center shown is on Belfort and Glenn Dr, then you don't even have to "research" zoning, just look across the street.
In 2021/2022 before it was built:
* Here is what that lot looked like [1]. To assume something wouldn't be built there is optimistic at best. (And there was precedent for data centers at the time - there was already a data center less than half mile away on Vantage Data Plz across the street from Tart Lumber.)
* If you look across the street, ie if the video would have panned to the left, you would have seen the "US Customs and Border Patrol" building - not winning any architectural design awards [2].
For someone who bought their house decades ago, then yes - the area has transformed drastically. But grouping someone who purchased recently with someone who purchased decades ago is a bit muddled.
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9991758,-77.4300191,3a,75y,1...
[2]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/IAD146/@38.9981504,-77.428...
The best research one can do is only going to be so useful. Zoning laws might stop an average person or corporation from building something undesirable, but entities with enough wealth and connections can get those changed. Lately the conventional wisdom seems to be that NIMBYs have too much power, but in all of the cases I'm personally familiar with a single wealthy person or corporation was able to re-zone property however they wanted over the overwhelming objections of the longtime residents nearby.
Just because you bought the place doesn't mean everything is finished. If you want to be a NIMBY, then you have to keep up with what's going on around you. If someone wants to rezone a plot, there's normally some sort of cursory public notice about it giving a small window to voice concerns. take advantage of them or not, but if you want to keep the status quo, you have to fight for it. the world is constantly changing
I wonder how much property value is affected.
Since 2017, Louden County housing prices have gone up 59% according to Zillow. To put that in perspective, NYC is up 24%, LA up 56%, Chicago up 28%, SF up 7%, DC up 10%, Boston up 29%, Atlanta up 48%.
Ashburn, which is where the majority of the data centers are in Louden County, is up 56% so even when you look at a smaller area around the data centers, it doesn't seem to have harmed property values.
Even if you look at mansions on an acre of land a couple houses down from a data center, it looks like they've gone up in value at least as fast the average for both Louden County or Ashburn (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/44335-Oldetowne-Pl-Ashbur... this place I randomly looked up is up around 70% according to Zillow).
It doesn't look like it's impacted housing prices negatively. That doesn't mean it doesn't impact how some people care about their homes. Some people might prefer to pay higher taxes than look at a data center across the street. But it isn't economically hurting residents. Their property taxes are very low, they have the highest median income in the US, and their property values are going up faster than most.