The Coalition to Protect Prince William County mentioned me as “an ever-present and dependable Gainesville resident…running for Gainesville Supervisor and promising to continue Bob’s hard work”
Thank you to the Coalition to Protect Prince William County for the mention in their recent article “It’s Time for a Moratorium” published on their website on October 30, 2025. You can read the full article copied below, as well as at the original source:
October 30, 2025 by Karen Sheehan
Dear Coalition Friends and Supporters,
We understand how frustrating this past week has been. We all keep stepping up and demanding better from our local leaders, yet what we are witnessing in return is their blatant disrespect and disregard.
Their unwillingness to open their eyes, and their hearts, to the direct harm that data center proliferation is having on THEIR Prince William neighbors, and beyond, it is simply inexplicable.
More than just campaign donations, this is beginning to feel like a test of wills. As if data center industrialization has been reduced to “winners” and “losers.” In truth, the losers are ALL of us, across the region, if this Board does not change their current trajectory.
Since Supervisor Bob died in July, the 70,000 residents in the Gainesville District have had no voice and no vote. For all the platitudes we heard from Bob’s fellow Board members after his death, their lack of respect for what he cared about most, serving his constituents and watching out for every resident in the county, has been excised from their decision-making calculus.
Here is a recap what has happened in the last 21 days:
October 7th – Supervisor Victor Angry – with no forewarning, and in concert with three of his fellow Democratic Supervisors (Franklin, Boddye, Bailey), motioned to disband the DCOAG, and prevailed.
With ZERO data centers in their districts, eastern Supervisors continue to foist the industrialization on residents that cannot hold them accountable at the ballot box.
October 28th- Board Hearing – over 30 speakers decry the non-scientific last-minute noise ordinance, with only 2 speakers in support – the Data Center Coalition representative and a PW Chamber of Commerce representative.
While Supervisor Bob was not there to defend his constituents, an ever-present and dependable Gainesville resident, Patrick Harders, running for Gainesville Supervisor and promising to continue Bob’s hard work, was there to impress upon the Board of Supervisors that rushing through a significantly diluted noise ordinance, with an election taking place next week, could only be seen through a lens of “opportunism.”
Also on hand at the board meeting were leaders of the now-defunct advisory group, who made their displeasure known.
“For purposes of comparison, since September 2024, Amazon reduced their noise level to 62 decibels, and it has been averaging 62 decibels since,” said Dale Browne, a resident member of the advisory group from the Great Oak community near Manassas, which has numerous data centers nearby. “Your ordinance, Supervisor Boddye, sets 68 at night and 73 during the day – and it’s intolerable at 62 decibels. That is a failed proposal.”
Advisory group members accused Boddye and Neabsco Supervisor Victor Angry, who issued the directive to disband the group, of catering solely to business interests such as the Prince William Chamber of Commerce and the data center industry.”
What if these Supervisors had to participate in a “house swap” with a family who was suffering with the 24/7 noise and vibration from data center operations? What if THEY had to live with the diesel generator stench, the transmission lines consuming their private property, and the proliferating substations? Would that change their minds?
A CLARION CALL FOR CHANGE! October 16 – Merrifield Garden Center sells out to Date Center development.
“Sen. Danica Roem, whose 30th District includes the Merrifield Garden Center, expressed shock at the sale price and disappointment about the loss of a popular retail outlet.”
“To have a garden center, where the business model is about plants and making sure people have greenery in their yards, go south so another data center can come in and contribute to rising energy bills and massive energy consumption is beyond parody,” she said.”
Rubbing more salt into the proverbial open wound, Merrifield Garden Center was more than just a place to buy some plants. Merrifield included a fabulous quaint restaurant, with specialty menu items. Merrifield included a small dog park. Merrifield had entire sections dedicated to a host of interesting plants and herbs for your garden. Merrifield was one of the few local landscape businesses that carried an array of native plants with knowledgeable friendly people to offer recommendations. The reality is that Merrifield’s employment comprises exponentially more long-term jobs than any data center on 38 acres ever will.
We are losing a piece of our social fabric.
What now?
The Data Center Opportunity Overlay Zone was a beginning for oversight in 2016, not an ending.
Before the overlay was adopted, data centers were considered the same as a computer store, like Best Buy, and they were allowed “by-right” in EVERY zoning in the county, except residential and rural. The intention of an overlay is to provide a framework. But no one could have envisioned the unprecedented pressure data centers would put on our critical resources today, which include land, water, and power; or the detrimental impacts to our quality of life.
This county is already absorbing 87 MILLION sq. ft. of data center development — with more square footage being added every week.
From yet another professional consultant hired by the county (but subsequently ignored), the Camoin Report called out a data center buildout CAPACITY threshold of 48 million square feet for our county.
As evidenced above, we have passed that data center buildout capacity threshold by almost double.
Doubling our expected data center buildout means doubling the impacts. And nothing highlights the very real threats to our health and wellbeing more than new guidance from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality being proposed right now:
“…A permitted source with emergency generators receives notice from an electricity service provider fourteen (14) calendar days or less in advance of a planned outage. Power outage events longer than fourteen (14) calendar days normally provide sufficient notice for an operator of emergency generators to acquire and set up temporary mobile (i.e., non-road) generators on a site…”
What this DEQ guidance means, in plain and simple English, is that as the grid experiences planned outages to build out more data center transmission infrastructure, data centers will be removing themselves from the energy grid and will rely on their tractor-trailer sized diesel generators for their power. Yes, your read that correctly: This amazing 21st century technology will be running on diesel fuel generators.
It is time for drastic measures.
The Coalition to Protect PWC urges our elected leaders to act with urgency and implement a moratorium on any further data center development.
The moratorium should remain in place until we understand the true health and welfare impacts of the data center industrialization on our communities.
