A proposed data center project in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County is stoking debate between local residents, officials, and developers.

The implementation of Prince William Digital Gateway, one of the largest data center developments in the world, has been debated in rural Gainesville for years. When the Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved the project in 2023, 11 local residents, backed by the Oak Valley Homeowners’ Association, sought to block the development with lawsuits. A judge ruled last week that one lawsuit would be allowed to proceed, dealing an initial blow to the county and two multi-billion-dollar data center companies, Compass Datacenters and QTS, which had attempted to dismiss the case. 

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Mac Haddow, president of the Oak Valley HOA, accused county officials and developers of failing to act with transparency throughout the project proposal, including through the use of non-disclosure agreements he says kept important information about the project and its mitigation efforts hidden from the public. 

“They were trying to forestall our learning too much about it because of the very thing that’s happening right now,” Haddow said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Had we known in advance all these things were going to happen, we could have obviously alerted the community. And I think things would have been different. They used non-disclosure agreements against their own citizens, and they let these companies come in, these multi-billion-dollar multinational companies come in and dominate a decision which is the most significant land use decision in Prince William County since it was created.”

The opposition to the expansion of Northern Virginia’s data centers echoes fears about such developments across the country, as states ranging from Georgia and  Minnesota to  Pennsylvania are eying similar projects. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has sought to provide massive government incentives for constructing new centers, which increasingly are tied to artificial intelligence, most recently announcing in Pittsburgh earlier this month plans to funnel more than $36 billion into new data center projects. 

Debates over data clusters often center on the tradeoff between the economic growth and technological modernizations they foster, and the concerns from residents about diminished quality of life and the erosion of local character.

County finance officials estimate that the Prince William Digital Gateway represents a potential investment of $24.7 billion and annual tax revenue of $400.5 million, according to the Data Center Frontier. The county board’s Democratic majority supported the PW Digital Gateway from the outset, due to optimism that the data cluster will be a boon for commercial tax revenue, per the outlet. 

But in rural Gainesville, Lelia Bartruff, who sold her property to PW Digital Gateway developers, told the Washington Examiner that top concerns from locals revolve around noise pollution, how much water the development would use, and changes to the area’s historic landscape. 

The PW Digital Gateway development calls for the creation of 37 data clusters spread among 1,760 acres on land adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park, a land mass nearly triple the size of Arlington National Cemetery, sparking concerns it could detract from the historic area. 

Residents also worry about a slew of indirect consequences related to the project, which will take roughly 22 million square feet of data center space. Many have voiced unease that the development would legitimize county officials’ aims to change rural Gainesville’s dynamics by expanding traffic lanes and building new electric lines near homes, as the regional power grid has already struggled to keep up with the demand. The problems stem partly from nearby Loudoun County, the current data center capital of the world, which holds data center inventory of about 27 million square feet.

“[Authorities] tend to link a lot of things that aren’t directly linkable,” Bartruff said during an interview. “So they’re saying, Okay, well, you want to build data centers here. Well, now the road is going to change to four lanes. Like, no, this road was always going to change to four lanes. The county knew for years that this road had enough traffic on it daily that it needed to be a bigger road. It’s always been on the plan.” 

Bartruff’s own experience with the development has been disastrous, she said, even though she was among hundreds of families on her street who agreed to sell their properties to developers seeking to expand data clusters on the land. Since agreeing to sell out, her property taxes jumped from $6,000 to nearly $41,000.

“Everything becomes like, ‘Where can I save money, and can I even get another job?’” she said. “We don’t know how we’re going to do it moving forward. I mean, in the past, it was like, Well, I guess that was what our savings was for. But my husband and I, we don’t make enough money to be able to do anywhere even close like this… This tax bill is more than my annual salary, like, my husband’s a teacher. Like, between the two of us, we cannot cover this.” 

“We’re stuck in a very, very like, small path of, like, where we can go, because we can’t just move over somewhere else and move into a cheaper house or get a job that pays more, because we can’t leave this house while this is ongoing,” Bartruff added. “So it’s causing a lot of challenges.”

While she’s not as skeptical about potential problems caused by data centers as some other locals, moving from her family home to make room for a data cluster was never on Bartruff’s radar, she said. Now, her husband and kids live in uncertainty as they scrape to get by until the court comes down on one side or the other. 

“Our first thought was, like, No, we don’t want to, like, we love our place. We want to live here.  But again, in all fairness, like there are hundreds of families on the street and lots of neighbors. And you know, when all of your neighbors are doing it, and you’re not it kind of, I don’t want to say it, [but] it becomes a peer pressure thing within a certain extent,” she mused.

Data centers power the internet through “cloud” computing, using powerful computers and servers to store, manage, and process data used by millions every day. The facilities support everything from scrolling social media and backing up photos to iCloud, to navigating with Google Maps or running business software. Big tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon depend on data centers to keep their platforms online and the digital world running. Small businesses, streaming services, online retailers, and many others also rely on these centers for data storage and cloud-based computing services.

The U.S. has by far the most data centers worldwide, with estimates placing the number of clusters around the country to range up to just under 5,500 facilities. Virginia, especially northern areas of the state, where Prince William County lies, is the regional center of data center development in the East. And it has achieved global status, often ranked as the largest data center market in the world. 

Haddow blamed the county’s latest data development expansion in rural Gainesville partly on former Prince William Board of County Supervisors chair Ann Wheeler, saying the Democrat backed the project because she wanted political revenge against GOP-leaning voters.

“There’s a credible argument that can be made that she did so because she hates the western end of the county that voted against her elections, and it’s the only red area left in Prince William County, so she punished us with this data center,” he said. 

As it stands, Haddow’s lawsuit alleges that Wheeler and the rest of the county board failed to provide sufficient public notice ahead of its 2023 rezoning vote on Dec. 12 that ended up greenlighting the project. The county asked the Washington Post to run ads ​​marking the public hearing on Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, but, due to miscommunications, the ad didn’t end up running until Dec. 2, 5, and 9. Some citizens who requested to review rezoning materials referenced in the ads were told that the materials wouldn’t be available until Dec. 7, according to plaintiffs. 

Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving is set to rule in the next few weeks over whether the newspaper or the county board is to blame for the delay in posting notice. If she rules in the plaintiff’s favor, the rezoning would be void, and the proposal would need to go back to the Board of Supervisors for a new round of hearings and votes. 

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“The bizarre thing is,” Haddow claimed, is part of the attorney team fighting the Oak Valley HOA “ is being funded by Prince William County, so our tax dollars are being used to fight us, in order to let a group of multinational multi billion dollar data center companies to just trash us, small, small group of people, millions of dollars fighting us, and all we can do is play the David and Goliath routine.” 

“We just want the quality of our life to be maintained, that’s all,” he said. “And we want the county to play by the rules.”