Welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of Data Center Reporting. I'm David Mell. Today we're talking to Lauren Feiner, who's been spending the last few months reporting on the rapidly developing data center build out in Lao-Din County. Lauren's just published a massive piece detailing the community response to the fast-moving industry, which is especially notable in a county that's been home to data centers since the early.com era. Today, I want to talk to Lauren about what she's learned from her reporting, and what it might tell us about what we can expect in counties across the US.
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Tell us a little about Loudon County, Virginia and how it became Data Center Alley. Yeah, so Loudon County is an area of Northern Virginia that's about 45 minutes and hour outside of DC. It's near Dulles Airport, which is the big international airport here. And it basically is a kind of normal suburban type of town or area in Virginia, except that it has the world's largest concentration of data centers. And that's something that's come about because it used to be home to the AOL headquarters. And because it's just so close to DC and has access to a lot of the things
that are helpful for data centers, it's really become this kind of data center hometown. Just to give people a very basic primer, because I think they've heard the phrase data center being thrown around a lot. Can you explain exactly what a data center is? Yeah, so data centers are it's really pretty simple. They're kind of these big buildings that store racks and racks of servers. And those could be servers for one company or servers for many
different companies. And maybe the data center company is renting out space to companies that need to store their server somewhere. So you mentioned in the piece that a ton of internet traffic used to go through Loudon County, what were those data centers like back then? And how is it different now? Yeah, so they're not entirely different. But I'll say what is different is just the size and scale
of the data centers. So when Loudon County began courting data centers, a lot of them had to do with the cloud. Think about all of the information that you store on the cloud. All of that is being stored in a data center. When it comes down to it, the cloud basically is data centers. So essentially
now, what's changed is that AI also needs data centers. And because they require so much compute, they need more and more capacity than cloud did in the past. So I think what's different is just there's just more of them and they're bigger. Can you explain how these early.com data centers were beneficial to Loudon County? Because I read in your piece that a lot of people were actually happy with the early data center buildouts. Early days, the data centers brought in a lot of tax revenue
for the county. They still bring in a lot of tax revenue for the county. And because of that, that means that the county has to rely less on residential tax income. So that means that property taxes can go down. Real estate values have still gone up at the same time. So it's
provided a lot of extra money for the county to use for building out schools, you know, paving nice roads. So it's really something that has allowed the county to do these public works that might be more of a strain for other communities. What is changing so rapidly that's making the residents of this county upset with the buildout? Yeah, I think for some residents in Lebanon County who were aware that data centers were a big thing in the area, they might have had positive or generally positive to neutral view of them. But I think really what happened for a lot of them was many people just didn't even realize that they were there or they had a vague understanding that, you know, all these big buildings that I drive by on the highway are data centers, but maybe didn't think about it too deeply because it wasn't really having that big of an impact on their day-to-day lives. I think what's changed now is that there's just so many. And what residents
have told me is they kind of feel like they've reached this tipping point where it's becoming harder to ignore or just kind of view in the background of their daily lives because the kind of second order effects of the data centers are becoming more impossible to ignore. Right. What exactly are those second order effects? As Loudon has expanded, just the footprint of data centers that require all of this energy, the local utilities have had to figure out how do we supply enough energy, not only to the data centers, but also to our residents who also need energy. So what you're seeing is things like energy companies coming in and proposing transmission lines, going through people's backyards, or telling data centers that we're approved for construction that we're actually not going to be able to hook you up to the main grid until maybe years later. And then those data
centers have to go and figure out another solution and it might be much noisier. Interesting. So you mentioned the noise. What exactly, what kind of noise do these data centers create and how far away from them do you have to be to hear it? So it can really vary. I think for some of them, they are pretty
quiet. You know, I drove by a bunch of them and found that some of them, it's really hard to hear or just kind of like ambient noise. I wouldn't really be able to tell like, Oh, wow, I'm right next to a data center. But I do think it varies throughout the day or throughout the type of data center. Some people would complain that they're constantly hearing noise from their deck or from inside their home occasionally. Other people say, actually, it's pretty quiet. So I think it really can vary.
But then you have some outliers. So one of those really the main one that I found in Loudon County was a site called the Vantage VA 2 facility. And that's a site that like I was kind of mentioning was told after they'd already made these deals with customers of like, we're going to have you in our new data center that they weren't going to be able to hook up to the main energy grid. And so they decided that until they are able to hook up to the grid, they're going to self-generate, which meant using natural gas turbines to run the facility. And when they need to backing up onto diesel generators, which a lot of them do. So that really creates a different noise and different
kind of environmental considerations that most of the data centers in Loudon County and elsewhere. In your piece that you mentioned that there are some by rights pieces of land where the companies can just build things out without approval from the county. Can you explain what that is? How are these companies able to just come in and do whatever they want? Right. So that term by right is something that is kind of specific to Loudon and I think is
kind of leftover from the fact that Loudon was the first to really do this huge data center build out. You know, when they were starting to do this, it wasn't something that people were up in arms about. It was just like, okay, like this seems fine. So it was in 2000 that a county administrator basically said, you know what, we have land that's owned for office parks and data centers look pretty similar to office parks. So we're going to just let them, you know, if someone wants to come and develop a data center in an area that's owned for an office park, they can do that by right. And that meant that they
don't have to go through this extra set of steps to get approval to build on that land. They could basically just do it with kind of minimal process up to that point. So for a while, that didn't seem like that big of a deal because there were only so many data centers coming in and, you know, they had a lot of space. It wasn't really impeding on people's lives. But I think as we got, you know, further down the road and people were starting to notice the effects, that became more of a problem because sometimes the county might have actually wanted to stop a data center from moving into a particular location, but the data center was able to technically move there by right. And so that was
something that was an issue really only in the recent past. Right. Do you think that that's been super hyper accelerated by generative AI or was this like a progressive we are building more data centers basically since the dot com era, or is it like the last three to five years where it's just been super rapid expansion? I think in Loudon that it's really just that they've reached this level of concentration of data centers that at some point just became impossible to ignore. I think it's possible that the AI expansion played a role in that. But I think for Loudon, it might be different
than other communities where it just they had so many already. And so just like the fact that they had to keep adding and adding, I think it was just reaching that tipping point that really did it. Yeah. How is it that these companies can just come in and build transmission lines in their backyard? Is that something that is just allowed for these companies to do?
It's basically eminent domain. So since these are public utilities, if they say this is a project that is necessary to do, then they can basically take land through eminent domain in order to do it. Whatever shows up around your home this holiday season with ring, you're protected. Battery doorbell 2k plus features retinal 2k clarity and up to six times enhanced zoom so you can get a closer look without losing detail inside the compact indoor cam plugs in almost anywhere making it easy to check in on your home and pets while you're away. And with outdoor cam plus you can keep an eye in your yard and other outdoor spaces all right from the ring app with ring you are protected for the holidays shop cameras, doorbells and more at ring.com. Running a business
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get investments, insurance and advice from someone who gets you. Terms and conditions apply. So there's a number of people in your piece that were very frustrated. You spoke to someone in Vicky who said that Dominion Energy was planning on just building a giant transmission line in her backyard. She's had the home for multiple generations. What was she trying to do to get them to stop
that from happening? Vicky who was involved in the development of the community that she now lives in. She's really been in this area for a long time. I got to visit her backyard. It's a big beautiful backyard. She had all of these trees that were tagged with these pink ribbons that were
meant to indicate where she says Dominion Energy would have to cut down in order to build this transmission line. The idea was that Dominion had to build this transmission line to connect these two substations in order to just have enough energy to power all of the needs that it has now. So I think that's what I'm saying when I say that it's really just becoming impossible to ignore and the capacity is just nearing its limits. Right. You mentioned another resident in your piece who said he spent thousands of dollars trying to insulate his house from the noise. He can no
longer go out in his backyard and just relax on his porch. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So Jason Mellow told me that he already spent about $2,600 getting two new window inserts in his home and was quoted many thousand more for new siding that could further mitigate noise complaints that he had. And this is just something that is a constant for a lot of people's lives.
And they tell me, you know, they live near Dulles Airport. We're used to some amount of noise, but planes take off and they land and the data center noise can be pretty consistent. Now, what I was really surprised about in your piece was that people in the community meetings seemed pretty divided about whether or not they wanted the data centers to continue to be built out. When I read about data centers online, and this could be the silos of social media, generally it is we don't want any data centers built at all. But a lot of the residents in that town seem like they are still fairly pro because of all the benefits that they got from the .com data centers. What were the community meetings like that you attended there and did it seem pretty
split or was it fairly one sided? Yeah, so I attended one community meeting in July. And that was a meeting where the Board of Supervisors chair basically walked through a presentation of what our data centers, how did we get to this point, what was by right zoning. And also tried to remind residents what the benefits were that their real property tax rates had gone down over time. And that property values, even in places that were right up against data centers, which no one considers ideal had actually gone up still. So it was a really interesting meeting because we saw a lot
of people on both sides of the spectrum. And you have to remember that this is a place that has more than 250 data centers in the county. So a lot of people work in data centers or they work in adjacent industries. So there are a lot of supporters of data centers there. And I actually heard a lot of complaints from some residents that they felt like the data center industry had been just well organized to get their early, get seats inside the room. Other residents had to go to the overflow
room. It was first come first serve. I was able to get in the room by the time I got there. But I did hear complaints about that. And you saw people who were supportive of the data center industry, wearing these light blue t-shirts that said, I support data centers, but they had all these caveats of when they're environmentally sensitive. But I support them because they support lower taxes
in schools and all things like this. So I think there definitely are people who recognize some of the benefits and who are supportive of them and feel like the noise concerns, other things can be mitigated. But then I also saw a lot of people who were complaining about some of the things we're talking about, just intrusion on their lives, intrusion on just beautiful bike and running paths, and just kind of changing the character of the community. Yeah, it's interesting to hear that there's more of a split inside this community. It's kind of been dealing with these data centers for a couple of decades now. Through your reporting, have you seen any other communities that are as split on this or
are they more one-sided in all the other developing communities that are putting these measures forward to develop data centers? I think a lot of what we've seen is a lot of intense pushback in other communities. And maybe that's partially because they haven't had the kind of experiences that Loudon County has had. I think they're kind of coming from a different position where Loudon already has so many data centers. And at this point, some residents are kind of asking, do we really need more? Like,
it's really kind of getting to be too much. And they're really starting to feel the effects. I think in other places, they don't necessarily have the same experiences that residents in Loudon do. So I think we're kind of starting from a different point there. And in some ways, these other communities might be in a better position to negotiate than Loudon County was because residents when a lot of these data centers got going didn't really know what the effects would be or how they would eventually impact their lives. Do you think these other counties are pretty well positioned now and have used Loudon
County as a test bed? Or are they just kind of still throwing things at the wall and just trying to do what's best for their constituents? Well, officials I talk to in Loudon County say that they get calls all the time from other communities asking them about their experience. So I think a lot of communities are trying to figure it out. And Loudon County is the obvious place they turn to for their experience with this because there really aren't that many places in the US that have had as deep an experience with data centers as Loudon County has. Yeah, it feels to me that a lot of people online at least
are also frustrated because there's these products that are being developed that they are told that they are going to have to use if they're going to exist in the future. A lot of people just don't want to use these products, but it feels like they're impacting their communities significantly anyway. Right? Would you say that that is the reason that most people seem anti-data center or is it because more of the power usage, more of the water usage type things? I think in Loudon County it's more about the water and energy usage. I think a lot of people there actually do understand that there
is a need for data centers that especially in Loudon a lot of the data centers are for the cloud and that's been the case for a long time. And people understand like we all use our phones, we all have our photos stored in cloud servers. So we understand the utility of these things. I think it's the fact that they're running up against just the total capacity that their county can handle and it's just becoming more of a nuisance than it has been in the past. Does it seem like this is going to spread out to just nearby counties instead? Do you think that Loudon has hit the capacity point where the
county says we've had enough and we want you to put these elsewhere? Yeah, I mean, they're definitely getting to the point where at some point they're not going to be able to host any more data centers. And so these facilities will have to find another place to go. And I think other parts of Northern Virginia will still be attractive to these companies, but those communities are also going to have to decide how much they're going to put up with. And do you feel like most of these other communities have started to figure out these things and like a way to do it kind of where it pleases everybody and doesn't make everyone super pissed off? I'm not sure if we've quite reached that point yet,
but I think we are seeing communities stop and take a breath and say like, what do we actually want here? We've seen some moratoriums go in place across the country and that's been a big push. So I think there is this sense that residents, politicians are having of like, maybe we need to just like, take a beat, figure out what are we doing here? Do we have the capacity? Are we going to be stuck with these things if suddenly space data centers become a thing and just figure it out from there?
Well Lauren, thank you for joining us. Everyone go read her piece. It was really great. Thank you for writing it. Really appreciate it. Thanks David. Thanks for having me. That's it for the VergeCast.
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