Loudoun County residents used a town hall with Rep. Suhas Subramanyam to hammer the local data center buildout on health, noise, water use, and grid impacts, despite the tax revenue upside.
The concentration of data centers in Ashburn is now being framed as both a national security risk and a physical infrastructure vulnerability, with calls to underground high‑voltage lines that currently dominate neighborhoods and school zones.
Community comments underscored deep distrust of Dominion Energy and local officials, arguing that long-known power, water, and land-use costs were ignored in favor of property tax incentives.
State and federal legislators admitted that efforts to regulate siting, harden infrastructure, and bury lines face resistance from other regions still chasing data center growth.
Local leaders say they are rewriting zoning rules to push new data centers farther from homes, schools, and parks, but residents question whether this will materially slow expansion or address legacy sites.
For AI infrastructure watchers, the story is a signal that grid capacity, line routing, cooling water, and resilience are now political flashpoints that can alter timelines and costs for large GPU campuses.
The article is worth a full read for understanding how the local pushback around AI-scale data centers is evolving into concrete demands on power design, siting, and regulation.
