Digital Gamble

Growing up in Loudoun County, I always assumed that data centers were the norm. When one was built near my old elementary school, I never questioned its construction, nor did I see it as a trend that would come to sweep the United States. 

Really, the epicenter of data center development was Loudoun County long before their extension across the country. A hub of digital communication, the DC suburbs were the perfect place to connect people across the Atlantic. Nearly 70% of the world’s internet traffic travels through Virginia. Data centers in Virginia didn’t start out as hubs for AI. But this year, we made the headlines. The New York Times’ title read, “A County Got Rich From Data Centers. Some Question ‘At What Cost?’” After over two decades of development, I can safely say to other localities across America: the rapid, unregulated expansion of the data center industry was never worth “the cost.”

Data centers’ expansion in Loudoun County has created energy scarcity not only in the county but throughout the entire region. Now with data centers at the forefront of local politics, the county stands at the precipice of energy consumption. Data centers alone now account for 21% of Dominion Energy’s—by far the largest energy company in Virginia—electricity distribution, projected to double by 2040. Loudon’s grid vulnerability, due to its data centers, has earned Virginia a seventh-place ranking in power outages among the other fifty states.

Water scarcity has also become a concern. The data center industry—one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet—uses inordinate amounts of water to cool down the vast computer banks. A study from George Washington University found that “data centers in Northern Virginia consumed two billion gallons of water in 2023—a 63% increase since 2019.” And this water isn’t reserved specifically for data centers—it comes from the county’s drinking water. Jared Mummert, Senior Data Center Reform Campaign Coordinator at the Piedmont Environmental Council, said in an interview with me, “Data centers are not transparent. They don't disclose how much water they use, and, in fact, they will use non-disclosure agreements so they don’t have to say how much water they use.”

This, in and of itself, may not seem overly problematic. The core problem is scaling with time. Many of these numbers may not seem cataclysmic immediately—one of the wealthiest counties may be able to withstand energy and water shortages by investing in new infrastructure—but, data centers in Loudoun continue to grow faster than the county can work to patch up the problems they cause.

You may wonder: why bother building data centers when they come with so many associated problems? The answer is money. Today, the data center industry accounts for 39% of the county government’s tax revenue—over $1 billion. This money, though, has created a dependency on profitable data centers. Without their input, the county would lose almost half of its tax revenue, jeopardizing the standard of living that residents are so well accustomed to.

The story of Loudoun County is a warning to other counties looking to AI data centers for quick cash. Not only are they disastrous for the environment, causing critical health effects, and just plain ugly, but they also threaten the crucial infrastructure that residents need and create a toxic reliance on private industry to support Loudon residents. 

So, when the New York Times asks, “At What Cost?” This is the answer—a disastrous, inescapable cycle that endangers the foundation of counties’ ways of life and culture.