A Neighbor's Guide to a Data Center Coming Near You
What to do now, before it's built — Goshen & Augusta County, Virginia
This is not a call to panic. It is a call to prepare. The decisions that determine how a data center affects your water, your quiet, your air, and your land are made early — in county meetings and permit applications, often before most residents know a project exists. Once a facility is approved and built, your options narrow sharply. This guide helps you act while acting still matters.
A sheet to take to a meeting: ten questions to ask the applicant through your elected officials, five to ask your own officials directly, and four closing requests for the record — plus a short note on nuclear power for data centers, and the phone number, meeting schedule, and address of every county and city board in the Staunton region. Nothing in it requires opposing a project. It requires that the project be described accurately before it is approved.
A companion reference on what does and doesn't carry legal weight with a Virginia Board of Supervisors — petitions, public hearings, records requests, and the “by-right” question — written for Augusta County and useful to any Virginia community.
1. Protect your water — first, and now
This is the one step that cannot be done later. If a well's flow or quality changes after a data center draws groundwater, you must be able to prove it was fine before. Get a dated baseline while the water is undisturbed: test for coliform bacteria, nitrates, pH, and hardness; measure and record your flow rate; photograph and file everything with dates. Virginia requires no ongoing well testing once a well is built — no one will do this for you.
2. Learn one key fact: “by right” or “special use”?
If data centers are allowed “by right” in the zoning, a developer can build with no public hearing. If they require a special use permit, every project gets a hearing and a Board vote. Ask the Augusta County Planning Department which applies — and if it is by-right, ask the Board to require special use permits, as Shenandoah, Campbell, and Amherst counties recently have.
3. Ask precise questions, on the record
At public meetings, specific questions beat general opposition: What cooling design and how many gallons per day, from where, and who has priority in a drought? How many diesel backup generators, under what DEQ permit and emission limits? What noise level at the nearest property line? What transmission lines and substations, across whose land?
4. When a project is described as something else
Sometimes land is acquired for one stated purpose — often agriculture — when a different use may follow. You don't need to prove intent. You need only ask, on the record: Is any future data center, industrial, or energy use contemplated for this parcel or adjacent parcels, and will any change of use require a new public hearing and special use permit? A genuine farm has no difficulty saying yes.
Know what you have before you spend it. Test the well before the water changes. Get the study before the vote. Ask the question before the concrete is poured. That is not obstruction — it is the ordinary diligence any community owes itself and its children.
The downloadable guide includes a full step-by-step checklist, the impacts and questions in detail, and sources. Written for Goshen and Augusta County; useful for any Virginia community. Informational, not legal advice.