The Augusta Citizen

Virginia is the data center capital of the world. Northern Virginia alone has more than 300 data centers — roughly 13 percent of the world’s operational data center capacity and a quarter of the capacity in the Americas, according to JLARC. That growth, once concentrated in Loudoun and Prince William counties, is now pushing into Central, Southside, Southwest, and the Shenandoah Valley.

Augusta County sits at the convergence of I-81 and I-64, with the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport, industrial land near Verona and Weyers Cave, and Dominion transmission lines — exactly the profile developers look for. Neighboring Rockingham County adopted a dedicated data center ordinance in September 2025, Frederick ended by-right approval in 2024, and Shenandoah, Campbell, and Amherst counties have since required special use permits; Page and Warren have not yet acted.

This is not a debate about AI. AI is here to stay, and so are the buildings that power it. The issue is that operating data centers at the scale AI requires carries real costs to our water, air, and land — costs borne by everyone, including those who will never use AI.

Augusta County is Virginia's second-largest agricultural county by sales, behind only Rockingham (2022 Census of Agriculture). Our economy, our identity, and our scenic value run through working farms, the Blue Ridge and George Washington National Forest viewsheds, Skyline Drive, and the Middle, North, and South Rivers that drain into the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

The county's Shenandoah 2045 Comprehensive Plan emphasizes rural preservation, agricultural land protection, and infrastructure alignment. The question before us is whether by-right data center zoning — written before this industry existed at its current scale — still serves that vision, or whether the time has come to require a special use permit, public hearings, and binding standards on water, noise, light, and air for any future proposal.

The Land

Data center campuses require flat, cleared acreage and miles of new high-voltage transmission lines, sitting behind chain-link fencing under lighting that runs all night. Statewide, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that 29 percent of operational data center properties stand within 200 feet of residentially zoned property — possible because Virginia zoning historically placed these buildings in the same category as office space. For Augusta, the question is whether industrial buildings of 100,000 to 500,000 square feet belong in the same by-right category as a doctor's office.

The Water

Cooling servers requires enormous volumes of water, often drawn from the same supply that serves homes and farms. Virginia's data centers used an estimated 2.1 billion gallons in 2023, and the burden is concentrated: one building alone used 243 million gallons, and in Loudoun County data centers now account for about 9 percent of potable water use on an average day (Loudoun County, 2025). Augusta sits in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and our karst geology means groundwater and surface water are connected — what gets pulled from one well often affects the next.

The Air & Sound

Most data centers rely on rows of diesel backup generators that produce emissions regulated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and a growing number install on-site natural gas turbines as their primary power. The cooling equipment itself produces a constant low-frequency hum that residents describe as inescapable inside their homes. A peer-reviewed review article in Frontiers in Climate (Gour, Ortiz & Maibach, 2026) found that the research on chronic noise of this kind links it to sleep disturbance, hypertension, and cardiovascular effects. Unlike traffic, a data center never has a quiet hour — the hum is the same at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon, every day of the year.