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The scenic state being eaten by the internet - as furious residents fight back
Residents of Ashburn, Virginia, home to an extraordinary 70 percent of the world's web traffic, are furious that the town's several data centers are ruining their neighborhood.
The six-square-mile town, with a population just over 45,000, sits in Loudon County, has become the epicenter of a raging battle to prevent the state's countryside from being swallowed up by the internet.
Virginia is currently home to the nation's largest data center market with 51 million square feet of the massive groupings of networked computer servers - and there is another 58.6 million planned.
Officials in nearby Culpeper County came up with a plan in 2021 to invite data centers into the area to meet the huge demand while safeguarding the landscape and residential appeal.
It approved plans to turn pasture land into its sixth data hub during a vote last week, leaving locals angry.
Millions of acres of American farmland are being lost to urban development but one state in particular is seeing its countryside destroyed by the internet
Virginia is home to the nation's largest data center market with 51 million square feet of data centers and there is another 58.6 million planned. Pictured: Equinix Data Center in Culpeper
The Culpeper County Board of Supervisors agreed to transform farmland into a data center that stretches across 1.5 million square feet.
They voted to approve the sprawling Red Ace Data Center campus by a tight 4-3 vote despite complaints from locals about potential noise, traffic, energy capacity and wells running dry.
'These data centers will definitely destroy the county,' resident Don Haight said, according to The Washington Post.
'We run the risk of losing what Culpeper is,' local Bob Sachs said.
The only resident who spoke in favor of the project was the man who sold his farm to the developers.
'When it comes down to it, it’s dirt,' he said. 'It’s my right and my family’s right to do whatever they feel with their dirt.'
However, Supervisor Gary Deal insisted that residents 'have to understand that we have to plan for the future.'
He pointed to how the data centers could provide more than $100 million a year in taxes, which is a third of the county's budget.
Economic development director Bryan Rothamel said: 'Overall, we like the picturesqueness of Culpeper.'
He said: 'We’re going to see a lot of construction. We’re going to see a lot of small businesses that are created in support of that — places to eat, places to shop.'
Rothamel promised that any future development projects in the area would be smaller.
Culpeper County has already approved a 116-acre data center that will have 2.2 million square feet of structures. It will need an electrical station nearby to power the 600-megawatt giant.
Culpeper County officials came up with a plan in 2021 to invite data centers into the area while safeguarding the landscape and residential appeal
Supervisor Gary Deal (pictured) pointed to how the data centers could provide more than $100 million a year in taxes, which is a third of the county's budget
The data center will border two others which span across 2.1 million square feet each and joins the site for another 2.4 million-foot center.
Meanwhile, in August, the Board of Supervisors will take another vote on a 4.6 million-square-foot data center six miles out of town in Brandy Station.
The Piedmont Environmental Council believes that Culpeper County has approved plans for 12 million square feet of data centers which is equivalent to 66 Walmart Supercenters.
But there are concerns over the 2.5 gigawatts of power these sites will need to run as it is more than 10 times the county's current electricity usage.
It will also put a heavy strain on the water supply as the plants will need be kept cool.
But only 500,000 of the approved 12 million square feet of data centers in Culpeper are operational.
The county does not have any plans for the increase in power consumption in the area.
Piedmont Environmental Council's Sarah Parmelee said: 'Who’s driving this bus? It’s this absolute lack of planning.'
More than 11 million acres of farmland and ranchland have been lost to urbanization, according to the American Farmland Trust.
Its president John Piotti said: 'Even though we were on a good trajectory for a while to have less cookie-cutter development and less suburban sprawl.
'I think we’re back in a place where it is almost as worrisome as it might have been 15 or 20 years ago.
'Some of the absolute best farmland we have is also the land that’s most threatened.'
Solar fields to help power these sprawling centers will take up an additional 10 million acres of rural land over the next decade.
Prince William County approved a 23 million-square-foot data center last year, which would be the largest in the world.
While Orange County signed off data centers as part of its 2,600-acre rezoning and development plan called Wilderness Crossing.
Culpeper County approved plans to turn pasture land into its sixth data hub during a vote last week but residents are furious that these huge energy-draining machines are ruining the area they live in
The Piedmont Environmental Council believes that Culpeper County has approved plans for 12 million square feet of data centers which is equivalent to 66 Walmart Supercenters
It led to the National Trust for Historic Preservation putting its Civil War Battle of the Wilderness area on 'America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic places.'
Multiple large nuclear power plants will be needed to supply all the planned data centers in Northern Virginia with the required energy.
Nearby Rappahannock County has taken the stance of rejecting most development over the years.
Keir Whitson, vice chairman of the board of supervisors, said: 'I don’t even want to talk about growth. It’s not a word that should be in our active vocabulary.
'Culpeper is going the way of a lot of counties: People are moving there, and they’re having to chase additional revenues. It’s just this Loudoun County-type cycle.'
And it is not only an issue in Virginia.
Big Tech companies are starting to make the move into America’s heartland.
Meta unveiled plans for a massive data center which will bring 1,000 jobs to a rural county in America's heartland.
The social media giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp intends to build the $800 million hub in Wyoming's Cheyenne.
The 715,000-square-foot center is scheduled to open by 2027, Cowboy State Daily reports.
At the peak of its construction the scheme, dubbed Project Cosmo, will generate 1,000 skilled construction jobs, its organizers said.
It is considered the largest ever investment in the tech sector and might explain why several energy companies are building solar farms nearby.
It is considered the largest ever investment in the tech sector and might explain why several energy companies are building solar farms nearby.
However, not everyone is thrilled about the prospect of more big tech in town.
Several neighbors previously expressed concerns about noise and traffic resulting from the build.
Social media giant Meta has unveiled plans for a massive data center which will bring 1,000 jobs to a rural county in America's heartland
Mark Zuckerberg's tech firm, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, intends to build the $800 million hub in Wyoming 's Cheyenne
The 715,000 square foot center is scheduled to open by 2027. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both R-Wyo., were at the unveiling of the plans
'Oh, hell no, we don't want it here,' local Rachel Riter said.
'We bought our house 18 years ago and we could look out the back of our house into somebody else's backyard, where cattle grazed. Nobody is happy about it.'
But Bradley Davis, Meta's director of data centers and economic development, said the company has tried to work with the community.
'In all of our data centers, we're committed to being a good neighbor, a member of the community and looking to make sure that whatever we're doing in our operations are not going to be a disturbance to anybody nearby,' he said.
The facility is designed to house network computers that will store, process and transmit data across the world.
Meta will join the likes of Microsoft and others in bringing a data center to Cheyenne.
It has so far refused to state how much electricity will be needed to power the facility.
However, a similar sized center in Odense, Denmark used 517,718 megawatts of energy in 2022. Cheyenne runs on about 43,800 megawatts per year.
Another threat to the rural towns in America are distribution centers for major retailers like Amazon and Walmart.
Shippensburg in Pennsylvania, with its endless acres of farmland, is seemingly the perfect location for huge warehouses.
It is at most a day's drive away from one-third of the US population and half of Canada's, making it the ideal delivery truck epicenter.
Many farmers who owned the land companies wanted to build on were unable to refuse the bags of cash they were offered to sell up, Bloomberg reported. But this has led to tension among locals.
Some residents acknowledge the presence of industry titans has led to a boom in jobs.
Aerial shot of farmland surrounding Shippensburg during late fall
The Volvo Construction Equipment manufacturing facility in Shippensburg
Others are furious at the farmers for 'selling out' and forever changing the idyllic character of the town they grew up in, with farms destroyed for warehouses and hills flattened for parking lots.
The job growth is hard to argue with after dozens of big name corporations opened warehouses in the Shippensburg area.
Procter & Gamble, which owns Charmin, Crest, Gillette and Pampers, was one of the first to do so in 2014, followed by Amazon.com, DHL, FedEx, Home Depot, Kohler, Lowe's, Office Depot, Pepsi, SC Johnson, Staples, Target, Ulta Beauty, Unilever and UPS, among many others.
Shippensburg isn't the only town in the state that's being overhauled in order to keep up with the nation's massive consumption.
In fact, Pennsylvania has added more than 170 million square feet of warehouse space in the last 10 years, double the amount of office space in San Francisco.
What's happening in Shippensburg is similar to what's already happened to California's Inland Empire, which used to be a major center of agriculture.
Now, this area of southern California is the nation's warehouse capital, home to Amazon and Walmart facilities.