Fairfax County supervisors are taking two weeks to ruminate on a deluge of testimony – both for and against – regarding proposed new rules for data centers.
Supervisors delayed a decision after a four-hour public hearing July 16. Sixty-five people spoke at the four-and-a-half-hour hearing, after which the board deferred its decision until July 30.
“To me, it would be a disservice to those who testified to try to act on this at this point,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay (D) said.
Proponents of the new rules say they are needed to protect the public from aesthetic and environmental impacts. Opponents said those objections were overstated and that the massive tech facilities provide significant revenue infusions for a county on the verge of losing residents because of escalating property taxes.
Renee Grebe, Northern Virginia conservation advocate for Nature Forward, called data centers “one of the most pivotal issues of our generation.”
Grebe urged supervisors to focus on special exceptions for data centers, as ones obtained by right do not entail public discussions or negotiations. Failing that, the board should press for larger setbacks from residential areas and Metrorail stations, she said.
But Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, was dead-set against requiring special exceptions for all data centers.
Such facilities “are one of our few economic bright spots in this region in recent years,” providing jobs, spillover economic impacts and tax revenues, he said, adding that they do not lessen residents’ property values.
Fairfax County’s fortunes, including job growth, have dimmed recently and its economic future will hinge around emerging technologies that depend upon data centers, Clower said.
“Without all of these elements of our infrastructure, we will see growth pass us by,” he said. “We have other places that want the investment that we’re in competition with.”
Data centers offer steady tax revenue, while empty office buildings don’t, and their skeleton crews have minimal traffic impacts, said resident Bill Peabody.
“Fairfax needs to get in the game,” he said. “We’re losing residents because of high residential taxes. Here’s a chance to get another source of revenue.”
Douglas Bell, a consultant whose work revolves around industrial noise, said no special zoning amendment was needed to control data centers’ sound.
“From an acoustic standpoint, data centers represent one of the more benign uses permitted on commercial- and industrial-zoned lands,” Bell said. “The noise sources are predictable and controllable.”
Susan Bonney, chairman of the Sierra Club in Fairfax County and Northern Virginia, said the county staff’s recommendations barely address data centers’ environmental and carbon-emissions impacts.
“No climate goals can be met if data centers and tech companies get a free pass on environmental regulations,” she said. “This is a David-and-Goliath situation where Fairfax County citizens’ rights are put behind the rights of wealthy data-center developers.”
Protecting the citizenry is government’s No. 1 job and should take precedence over economic development, said resident Fran O’Neal, who favored requiring special exceptions for data centers.
“I believe that you are opening the government and the citizens of Fairfax County up to a steady stream of unforeseen and unpredictable consequences if you don’t get this one right,” he said.
Land-use attorney Lynne Strobel opposed requiring special exceptions for data centers in the I-5 and I-6 districts, saying those heavy-industrial areas already permit uses that are more “noxious.”
The 200-foot setbacks proposed by staff already are the largest required by county’s code for anything, including interstate highways, Strobel said. Requiring a 1-mile setback around Metrorail stations would too much for people to walk to those data centers, she said.
“There’s a reason that data centers are being built,” she said. “It’s because there’s demand and I would suspect that some of that demand comes from all of us in this room.”
The board unanimously approved a motion by Supervisor Kathy Smith (D-Sully) to defer decision on the proposed data-center policies until July 30.
Smith’s motion also kept the written-comment period open and directed county staff to produce language addressing data-center site plans that had been approved or accepted for review on or before July 16.
Those plans would be reviewed under current zoning regulations, but ones accepted afterward would be subject to any new rules adopted by the board, Smith’s motion stated.
