Virginia already has roughly 650 data centers.
Meanwhile, groundwater monitoring in counties with the highest number of these centers, such as Loudoun County found an average decline of about 22 feet in Waterford from 2006–2021. In Middleburg, roughly one-third of measured wells declined more than 85 feet compared with 2004.
Yesterday President Trump declared that communities resisting data centers apparently want to be “backwards and poor.”
No.
People who don't want their farmland industrialized, their power bills increased, and their water resources put at risk aren't backwards.
They are protecting their communities.
Virginia has been the data-center experiment.
Before we volunteer the rest of rural America for it, perhaps we should find out what that experiment has actually cost.
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As an example of how this is affecting power costs in Virginia:
"Virginia's JLARC concluded that data centers are the main driver of the enormous projected increase in Virginia electricity demand. Without that growth, demand had been essentially flat from 2006–2020.
JLARC estimated that a typical Dominion residential customer could ultimately pay an additional $14–$37 per month by 2040 in generation and transmission costs associated with the growth scenario, in constant dollars, meaning that's before inflation. It also excludes some distribution and intrazonal transmission costs.
More immediately, Dominion's fuel expenses have risen about 88% in five years, to a projected $4.35 billion by mid-2027. Reuters reports that data-center-driven demand is forcing Dominion to rely more heavily on the PJM wholesale market: purchases are projected to supply 23% of its electricity versus 14% in 2021.
Dominion's current fuel-cost problem could raise the average residential bill from roughly $173 to $195 per month, about 13%, if the entire increase were recovered immediately."
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