The Orange Town Council held a data center-focused town hall meeting Monday aimed at educating councilors and the public about the heavily debated industrial developments.
In the spring, town council members began working on a policy that will be used to develop the town’s ordinance regarding data centers. That policy work was halted in order to allow for a town hall meeting on the subject. That town hall was finally held this week after a discussion on the subject was placed on last month’s meeting agenda and subsequently removed.
During the more than three hour town hall meeting, former president and executive director of GenEdge–the state’s sole public manufacturing extension partnership center–Bill Donohue presented information and answered questions regarding data centers. Donohue, who resides in Lake of the Woods, was a former chair and member of the Danville Utility Commission. In May, Danville and Pittsylvania County leaders approved a $100 billion large-scale data center campus by Denver-based developer STACK Infrastructure. The company currently operates 10 data center campuses over 960 acres in Northern Virginia and has projects planned or underway in several other localities including Culpeper County.
Donohue said artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are driving the data center boom with financial investment not seen since the creation of the railroad. He said the infrastructure is one that is relied on for many of the core systems used including power grids, banking and telecommunications. By 2033, he said, AI is going to consume almost 9% of the country’s gross domestic product, but acknowledged there are challenges.
The bulk of data centers are colocation centers with various companies as tenants. Less than 40% of data centers are hyperscale. Donohue said the most desirable type of data center is a fuel cell CHP design which utilizes on-site fuel cells and is efficient with minimal need for backup power and water. He said most colocation data centers in Virginia are 25MW with very few in the 3MW range.
Both county and town residents and council members asked a variety of questions regarding the presentation including how electronic waste is disposed of, cooling, decommissioning and more. Town council member Jason Cashell, who has been vocal in his opposition of data centers, asked the bulk of council-led questions including what is there to stop the town from having data centers?
“Nothing, if the community’s values are that we love taking advantage of what data centers [do], we really don’t have much of a choice that’s the world these days, that’s ok,” Donohue said. He noted that data use is driven by the consumer. “We are the ones that create the demand.”
When asked, Donohue said data centers tend to be located on farmland because it’s cheap and flat and a data center could fit on the 24-acre parcel that was the former location of the now closed American Woodmark plant.
“It comes down to values and needs,” he said. “There’s a 1% referendum coming up because we haven’t been able to afford maintenance on our schools. There’s a $30 million backlog. We all have wants and needs, I believe we have to figure out how to take care of our needs within our values and maybe a data center isn’t the answer for the town, what would be another answer, what would be acceptable?”
Council members began discussing the draft data center policy. Cashell said he had approximately 10 pages of notes on the issue and said the town needs to make some headway as doing so has been “long overdue.”
General consensus among the council members was to prohibit hyperscale data centers in town, possibly also limiting the size of colocation centers. Another suggestion was to require bonds and spell out construction expectations.
Orange Director of Community Development Debbie Sturm suggested council members take time to evaluate the information from the town hall and how what they heard might be incorporated into the policy. Once drafted, the policy will be sent to the planning commission for its review. The policy will then be the basis for writing the data center ordinance which will require public hearings at both the commission and council levels. Sturm said work on the ordinance will begin as soon as the policy is developed.
Council members agreed to discuss the policy at their next meeting later this month.
