WaPo: “Look east from the cemetery, to an adjacent field where cattle graze, birds sing and a brook babbles: This will become a 116-acre data center housing 2.2 million square feet of massive structures with concrete walls up to 70 feet high. Look to the south from the cemetery at another green field: Here will rise the electrical substation powering the 600-megawatt monster.
This soon-to-be eyesore, in turn, borders the approved sites for two more data centers of 2.1 million square feet apiece, one of which adjoins the site for a 2.4 million-foot center, which abuts the Keyser family’s farm. Last week, the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors voted to turn that farm’s pasture land into yet another data center of 1.5 million square feet, over passionate objections from residents who complained about wells running dry, noise, traffic, insufficient electricity and the loss of Culpeper’s vistas.
“These data centers will definitely destroy the county,” pleaded resident Don Haight.
But Supervisor Gary Deal lectured constituents that they “have to understand that we have to plan for the future.” That future, he said, involves millions of dollars in tax revenue from data centers. “We have a low tax rate right now,” Deal acknowledged, but he thinks Culpeper can “even do better.””