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.