YOUR AD HERE — REACH DISCERNING READERS OF SERIOUS JOURNALISM
Rates upon inquiry. Clowns extra.
CULTURE✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Data centers’ neighbors weigh in on how to manage them
Filed 1h ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
Royal Banana
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
A survey of 1,004 residents in northern Virginia and Richmond found strong support for regulating data centers, particularly requiring underground power lines, keeping new facilities away from homes and schools, and mandatory public hearings before approval.
Developers withdrew a 2,100-acre, 37-building proposal in Prince William County in July 2026 after organized opposition, and county officials cited that same opposition rejecting a second 2,000-acre rezoning request days later.
Meanwhile the EPA under the Trump administration has moved to reduce public hearing requirements for air-pollution permits tied to data centers, even as Dominion Energy's rate hikes tied to data center growth could raise a typical Virginia household's bill by about $20 a month.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Nearly half the people surveyed actually like having data centers around, they just want a say before the bulldozers show up and the power bill jumps twenty bucks. That's not an unreasonable ask from the people living next to the biggest concentration of server farms on the planet. Somewhere in Washington, though, the trend is running the other way, fewer hearings, not more.
