A Community Rejected the Build of a US$100 Billion Data Center

[marcus]

From https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/largest-data-center-project-ever-190000713.html
Title : Largest Data Center Project Ever Proposed Is Officially Dead
By Charles Kennedy , July 2026

Poster's Note : Blackstone's market value is approximately $145.8 billion (Google AI , 05 Jul 2026)

Blackstone-owned QTS Realty Trust withdrew its appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on July 2 (project had "advanced through years of planning, analysis, and public review"), closing out a 3 years' legal fight over the Prince William Digital Gateway, a planned 2,100-acre campus in Prince William County, Virginia that would have packed 37 buildings and 22 million square feet of data centers next to Manassas National Battlefield Park. At full build-out, the project carried an estimated US$100 billion price tag and would have been the largest data center complex in the world...

approval, granted in 2023, was voided by the Virginia Court of Appeals in March, which found the county's public notice for the rezoning hearing fell short of the state's 6 days spacing requirement between newspaper notices...

What the Prince William outcome shows is that even the biggest players in the space can lose a fight over land use once local opposition organizes and the legal process runs its course.

Several states have floated moratoriums or tighter permitting rules as utilities warn that data centers are driving an outsized share of new electricity demand, and grid operators in some regions have started asking developers to bring their own power generation rather than compete for scarce capacity. A Gallup survey released in May found 71% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, with 48% strongly opposed, running higher than opposition to a local nuclear plant...

 

[snpark]

Now complain when your internet is slow or FB is down. Lol.

 

[snpark]

If everyone stopped posting their dinner pics we could have our old fast bandwidth back

 

[harryopal1]

Such enormous data centres would seem incredibly vulnerable were there a conflict with sabotage and attacks by drones possibly causing billions of dollars in damage and potentially disabling much military capability. Great possibilities for criminals to quietly place a drone somewhere and threaten to explode it unless a huge amount is paid as blackmail.

I have also seen reports that these huge centres create an intrusive and never ending hum for anyone in the neighbourhood.

 

[snpark]

They are also very hot which is why they are being built in the artic or one smart farmer somewhere cold used the heating to heat his chicken coops industrial scale. Since half his utility bills were on heating. Now he has free heat for his billion chicken breeding and incubation

 

[Bob]

Now complain when your internet is slow or FB is down. Lol.

Not that that data center would have made much of a difference in internet service, but that area is infested with data centers already. They're not hurting for interwebs.

 

[Bob]

Such enormous data centres would seem incredibly vulnerable were there a conflict with sabotage and attacks by drones possibly causing billions of dollars in damage and potentially disabling much military capability. Great possibilities for criminals to quietly place a drone somewhere and threaten to explode it unless a huge amount is paid as blackmail.

I have also seen reports that these huge centres create an intrusive and never ending hum for anyone in the neighbourhood.

It's, um, interesting that the DC area with it's high dollar real estate has so very many huge data centers (with very high security), This would have been another.

 

[marcus]

From https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8959...billion-as-data-centers-drive-63-billion-cost
Title : PJM Power Auction Hits $16.4 Billion as Data Centers Drive $6.3 Billion Cost
By Khac Phu Nguyen , July 2026

PJM Interconnection, the operator of the largest U.S. electric grid serving 13 states and Washington, D.C., is facing rising pressure as power-hungry data centers push electricity demand beyond the pace of new supply...

The grid came up 6.8 gigawatts short of the capacity needed during periods of peak demand, an amount equivalent to the output of almost 7 traditional nuclear reactors...

Regulatory attention may intensify at a July 23 commission conference focused on PJM's governance, rising power bills and delays in connecting data centers and generators to the grid. With PJM power prices rising 76% in the first quarter due to strong data-center demand, investors may view the widening supply imbalance as an important factor for the utility, power-generation and grid-infrastructure sectors.

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Thailand Plans Higher Power Tariffs for Data Center Owners (Bloomberg , Jul 2026)

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New York became the first U.S. state on Tuesday to halt construction of large new data centers, imposing a one-year moratorium as concerns grow that the facilities driving the artificial-intelligence boom are raising power costs, straining water ‌supplies and burdening local communities... (https://www.reuters.com/world/new-york-becomes-first-state-impose-data-center-moratorium-2026-07-14/)

 

[pantaiema]

Data centres consume enormous amounts of electricity and to some extends water, depending on how they are cooled. So, many people oppose having them built near where they live, especially if they or their families are unlikely to receive any direct economic benefits through jobs, business opportunities, or local investment or it will drop the value of their properties.

At the same time, almost everyone expects fast, reliable, and uninterrupted digital services. They want seamless online shopping, social media, banking, and investment platforms with minimal downtime. In healthcare, they expect doctors, healthcare professionals to have instant access to patient records and for advanced computing to support faster diagnosis, medical research, and the development of new treatments.

This is a classic example of the "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) phenomenon, which is frequently seen in major infrastructure projects such as data centres, power plants, transmission lines, airports, and waste treatment facilities.

 

[Bob]

Data centres consume enormous amounts of electricity and to some extends water, depending on how they are cooled. So, many people oppose having them built near where they live, especially if they or their families are unlikely to receive any direct economic benefits through jobs, business opportunities, or local investment or it will drop the value of their properties.

At the same time, almost everyone expects fast, reliable, and uninterrupted digital services. They want seamless online shopping, social media, banking, and investment platforms with minimal downtime. In healthcare, they expect doctors, healthcare professionals to have instant access to patient records and for advanced computing to support faster diagnosis, medical research, and the development of new treatments.

This is a classic example of the "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) phenomenon, which is frequently seen in major infrastructure projects such as data centres, power plants, transmission lines, airports, and waste treatment facilities.

And they emit a never ending irritating humming noise.
Many of the new data centers are for AI and not so much for internet.