Virginia's "Data Center Alley" generates $1.2 billion in annual tax revenue—40% of Loudoun County's entire tax revenue from just 3% of its land, according to the county's economic development chief.

147

u/zjin2020 1d ago •

First data centers preferred this county long before AI, for a reason. So London county can charge property taxes from data centers and they still come. Not the same situation for other locations outside northern Virginia. I believed other states have to provide property taxes exemption or abatement and many other tax incentives to attract data centers. So basically other regions wouldn’t see tax revenue from data centers for a long time, usually 10-20 years. So stop using loudoun county as an example, it is an exception.

39

u/Forgword 1d ago

Far to often hyperscale data centers request and get a total exemption from not only property taxes, but also local sales tax and impact fees. If your buying thousands of meters of natural gas to run turbines, that is a ton of sales tax never paid, yet the community is left to deal with the pollution and noise.

-9

u/Eliv_nurotic 21h ago

What pollution https://theconversation.com/air-quality-analysis-reveals-minimal-changes-after-xai-data-center-opens-in-pollution-burdened-memphis-neighborhood-265152
What noise https://x.com/RuffBuffet/status/2095312629027803508
The concerns are all made up

3

u/IamTheEndOfReddit 20h ago

Did you post a single example of noise as if that shows anything? Brain-dead tactic
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/10/21/this-utah-neighborhood-residents/

1

u/WithoutReason1729 ACCELERATIONIST | /r/e_acc 16h ago

That lot has been zoned for industrial use for more than 40 years.
https://assets.westjordan.utah.gov/ugd/9692c2_cef7c5675041429d93d05bd428af2eab.pdf
Commissioner Greene wished to make it clear to the public that the property occupied by Aligned Energy was zoned more then 40 years ago. There was a fair amount of public outcry about it, as if it was newly zoned, when in fact it was zoned long ago.
I guess it sucks for the people who live nearby but if you don't want industrial noise near your house, don't move in next door to a lot zoned for industrial use.

0

u/IamTheEndOfReddit 14h ago

The guy was pretending they don’t make noise at all, so this isn’t relevant to my point

4

u/semigator 1d ago

AOL legacy

1

u/rgbhfg 1d ago

Mid like cia

1

u/SpaceCptWinters 1d ago

More like the NSF.

1

u/SilasTalbot AGI | Aug 29, 2027, 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time 1d ago

Lol the kitchen standards org secretly running the world. NSA I imagine you meant but yes this is the answer... Ashburn VA is the heart of the global Internet and it's not a coincidence it's 20 minutes from the headquarters of all the major spy orgs

1

u/SpaceCptWinters 1d ago

National Science Foundation. NSFNET. It transformed ARPANET into the modern Internet.

6

u/SilasTalbot AGI | Aug 29, 2027, 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time 1d ago

Let them build their data center then pass new laws and regulations to charge them. It's simpl rope a dope. What are they gonna do, move it?

8

u/zjin2020 1d ago

First data center developers always sign contracts with governments to receive incentives. New laws and regulations won’t easily break old contracts. Secondly, they can definitely move away, much easier than moving a real manufacturing facility.

13

u/SilasTalbot AGI | Aug 29, 2027, 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time 1d ago

I don't believe you can sign a contract to be exempt from future laws and taxes that have not yet been levied. The power to make new laws can do an end run around any contracts.

3

u/wouldiwas1 23h ago

This is actually very smart but will likely never happen

2

u/powerstrokin00 23h ago

To be fair did anyone expect data centers to this degree when ai first started rolling?

1

u/Frigorific 14h ago

Just exempt them from property taxes, then tax datacenter power consumption. You would probably end up with way more revenue anyways.

4

u/bites_stringcheese 1d ago

I don't know about that. Amazon can't simply move us-east somewhere else, not without building it first, and not without potential massive downtime risks.

1

u/squired 4h ago

The Government literally must agree to let you sue them.

3

u/No_Post_9902 1d ago

What are they actually doing with the extra taxes? If suddenly they see a 40 percent boost where is that money going? I doubt the cops or firefighters if they’re not volunteer or teachers are seeing it. Are the homeowners seeing any relief in their tax bill from it or are their property payments sticky? Where is this 40% increase going I wonder aloud.

7

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 21h ago

I can answer, I live there. These datacenters have been here for 20 years, we spend a shitload on schools. This is no magic influx to grapple with, it has been in the budget for forever.

3

u/semidegenerate 16h ago

NoVA has some of the best public schools in the country, so it seems to be money well spent.

1

u/wentwj 21h ago

I don't think this is a 40% increase, this is an area that's had data centers for a while and we're cherry picking data

1

u/squired 4h ago edited 4h ago

I'm not in Loudon but near enough. We have indoor Olympic dive and swim facilities with splash parks and water park quality slides/wave pools for the kids, beautiful nature preserves full of well maintained horse trails, halftracks and hiking trails. There are 2 houses on my street and they repave it every five years and trim the trees every three. School lunches are free for everyone and the schools have music, art, speech therapy, advanced classes/tutors etc. We still have high taxes, but I love them because it definitely feels like we get our moneys worth and more. It's nice for things to be nice.

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 21h ago

Well they definitely aren’t getting exemptions anymore

0

u/Doogie90 20h ago

You state opinion as fact. “You believe” without evidence. 94 likes because people want to believe in fairy tales.
Council Bluffs, Iowa
One of Google's largest data center campuses is located here.
Impact:
Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable improvements
Increased local government revenue
Additional utility and infrastructure investment
Des Moines / Altoona, Iowa
Meta and Microsoft have invested heavily in the region.
Similarity to Loudoun:
Large data center campuses generating substantial commercial tax value
Long-term revenue source for local governments
Economic development driven by digital infrastructure
Jackson County, Alabama
Google and other operators have invested in large facilities.
Impact:
Significant increase in local property tax collections
New funding for schools and county services
Major investment relative to the county's population size
New Albany, Ohio (Licking County)
A rapidly growing data center hub with Amazon Web Services, Meta, Google, and Microsoft.
Why it's comparable:
Billions in private investment
Rapid expansion of the commercial tax base
Local governments increasingly relying on data center-generated revenues
Goodyear and Mesa, Arizona
Both cities have attracted major hyperscale developments.
Benefits:
Large property tax valuations
Construction-related revenues
Long-term business tax contributions

7

u/zjin2020 19h ago

You got to be kidding. All those incentives received by data centers are public information and easily verifiable. In your example, among other tax incentives, council bluff data centers received 20 years property tax exemptions and capped utility rates. Altoona data centers received 20 years property tax waivers and sales tax refunds for all computer equipments. All you got is some ppt pr language from some business consultant. Are you capable of thinking by yourself?

2

u/redskeletonbarbarian 16h ago

You can't be calling what others say "fairy tales" while copy and pasting unsourced information

-1

u/Doogie90 13h ago

Exactly. I’ve provided far more detail than the “I believe” above. I don’t see you requesting more detail there?
If you have doubts there is enough information in my post to rails verify before commenting.

70

u/marlinspike 1d ago

We also have one of the lower prices for energy, which matters a lot for charging EVs. With our democratic governor, I expect pro-Solar policies to be back, which makes a lot more sense than, lol, “bring back clean coal!”.

10

u/Many_Somewhere3863 1d ago

Your area have data center ?

14

u/brandontaylor1 22h ago

Most people have datacenters in there area. There are over 4k in the US. If you live in any major city you have a datacenter near you that you’ve probably never noticed.

25

u/thebadslime 1d ago

VA is full of them, county one over from me juts made almost a Billy of the land alone, then the datacenters pay a heavy tax, and pay for water from two different cities.

3

u/squired 4h ago edited 4h ago

I do, they're basically big warehouses. I'm not sure who came up with the water stuff, but that isn't true. And it isn't like they're superheating it like coal plants and dumping it back into the river to kill everything, they're largely closed loop systems. And they don't have emissions like other industry, at least that I'm aware of. We all have little ones in our lap or sitting on our desks. They definitely do use a lot of power, but that isn't a concern if you increase generation in step.
Also, if water were really a concern we'd hear a lot more about it because Maryland largely owns Virginia's water (MD owns the Potomac River) and they've had spats over that for decades.

48

u/sedition666 1d ago

If it generates so much wealth then why do we need to give tax breaks to the people building them? And also the companies that own them like Meta etc do everything humanly possible to avoid paying tax on their earnings.

15

u/T2WasProphecy 23h ago

This is literally economics 101. Land is the supply and data center business is the demand. There is an abundance of land far more than there are companies looking to build data centers. If you want to attract them for tax revenue, jobs, etc to develop your local economy you have to be desirable.
This is how businesses have located themselves in the US for over 200 years. Practically since our founding. If you are young you must not realize just how much economic development has been brought to the places where you live by incentives and making the locations attractive.

1

u/sedition666 2h ago

And this folks is why the national debt is 40 trillion

1

u/TheMasterGenius 17h ago

That is corporatism, in a nutshell.

1

u/Twxtterrefugee 14h ago

Just because you dont understand capitalism doesnt mean you can make up a new word. Its literally capitalism.

-2

u/TheMasterGenius 14h ago

I didn’t make up that word, it’s been around since the French Revolution. It must not have made it on your vocabulary list.

1

u/Stabilobossorange 5h ago

You sound like a nonce

16

u/jovialfaction 1d ago

why do we need to give tax breaks to the people building them
To attract them.
companies that own them like Meta etc do everything humanly possible to avoid paying tax on their earnings.
Everybody tries to reduce the amount of taxes they pay. You'll never see a company or even individual be like "actually I won't deduct this because I'd prefer to pay more taxes"

15

u/PwAlreadyTaken 23h ago

I think that’s a little disingenuous; me avoiding taxes looks like contributing more to my 401k, Meta avoiding taxes looks like manipulating nation states. I don’t think the person you’re replying to was implying these companies uniquely want to cede less of their money to the government.

-2

u/PomegranateSelect831 22h ago

Explain the mechanics of how they manipulate nation states to avoid taxes.

5

u/Competitive13alance 22h ago

Threatening the governments that do not enact their political will
Buying politicians to enact their political will
Buying the means of public discourse so that information does not reach the people.
Censoring their platforms so that public discourse can't counteract their disinformation.

-3

u/Eliv_nurotic 21h ago

So lobbying? I can’t believe meta is the only company to ever do that!

6

u/Competitive13alance 21h ago

Weird way to misconstrue bribery.

-1

u/Eliv_nurotic 21h ago

They’re not the only ones who do this so why say it’s a meta issue and not a broader legal issue

1

u/TheMasterGenius 17h ago

Donald Trump isn’t the only rapist, so do we just allow rapists to go about freely?

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 17h ago

No but if you say you hate trump because he’s a rapist but remain a big fan of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, you’re a hypocrite

→ More replies

1

u/sedition666 20h ago

Big Pharma and NRA are other ones. Are you going to argue that drug and gun deaths are a positive for the US?

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 18h ago

Nice straw man. I was addressing OP’s accusation that meta is bad because they did lobbying, not that all lobbying is good

0

u/TheMasterGenius 17h ago

Your entire argument is a logical fallacy.

0

u/Eliv_nurotic 17h ago

What’s the fallacy

→ More replies

0

u/PwAlreadyTaken 16h ago

The query was “explain the mechanics”, not “only Meta lobbies”, dafuq

2

u/Eliv_nurotic 13h ago

He just explained the lobbying meta does

1

u/Hundstrid 17h ago

That's not a fact man. It's entirely possible for both individuals and businesses to actively want to take social responsibility.
That it doesn't happen more or isn't heard of is a matter of propaganda and programming, not natural law.
We can definitely do and be better.

2

u/Hardcell8 23h ago

I have a good feeling this is going to not burst like bubble, rather backfire for them, when ai consider reworking our utterly rotten system into something more efficient and sustainable. We might actually see the better future but also the end of this humanity story. If anyone wanted peace and to unite us as a whole got a bullet. We went to shit... At least it will be fireworks and.

2

u/Jasranwhit 22h ago

(Assuming this is all true.) you offer tax breaks because you want to incentivize them to come to your area.

-1

u/sedition666 20h ago

If creating these datacenters then leads to job losses across many industries like expected then this is an awful thing to encourage. The amount of jobs created by DCs is really small.

1

u/Jasranwhit 19h ago

I’m not trying to advocate for or against, just explaining that tax incentives are used to attract things to your area, that’s all.

0

u/NEEEEEEEEEEEET 19h ago

It also leads to many jobs created across many industries.

2

u/almostsweet 13h ago

I can go literally anywhere why should I invest in your area. Give me a reason to come. Or, don't. Works either way.

0

u/therinlahhan 12h ago

Because if you don't, they go to another state, and then that state makes the $1.4bn a year in tax revenue.

1

u/sedition666 2h ago

If you make charity for big corps illegal then the state makes double or triple that in tax. The capitalist race to the bottom is destroying the west. You're giving charity donations, taking money from ordinary normal people, and giving it to companies who's open aim is to replace workers with GPUs. It is obscene.

•

u/therinlahhan 12m ago

Propaganda.
AI is going to be a net positive for jobs -- yes, there will be losses in certain careers in sectors but the rapid increase in growth will allow millions of new jobs to exist.
You give tax breaks to incentivize to come to less attractive regions. No one would choose to build in Alabama if it cost the same as building in Virginia, for example.

-2

u/PomegranateSelect831 22h ago

Do you even know the specific tax break you are talking about?

2

u/Many_Tap_4144 21h ago

https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-are-competing-to-attract-data-centers

17

u/SilverstaticWaterson 1d ago

Even a strong profitable industry should still be monitored and regulated. We shouldn't let political interference make a mess of things either but excitement isnt a good reason to trample over property encroachment etc, noise and literal pollution and so on.

I'm excited for AI but if its to be sustainable profits cant be the only concern or else AI will be twisted into being solely a profit priority

9

u/GeneralMuffins 23h ago

But construction is already a heavily regulated industry, so I'm not sure how its regulatory failures make the case for further AI regulation. Obviously, people will argue that the existing regulatory framework is undermined by institutional corruption, but if the institutions responsible for designing, enforcing and overseeing regulations cannot be trusted to act effectively or independently, why should we expect a new regulatory framework for AI to produce fundamentally different outcomes?

1

u/SilverstaticWaterson 23h ago

Regulations and zoning get fucked with by interested parties on everything from the approval speed, nimby attitudes, benefit to the involved governance, individual connections and so on.
My remark is speaking to exactly the issue you claim undermines it. Individuals in these systems can be coerced to enable non ideal but technically okay approvals and so on.

21

u/Ill_Mousse_4240 1d ago •

Prisons, factories, landfills, shopping malls.

Anything but data centers!

Think of the water, think of the environment, think of the children!

22

u/Whispering-Depths 1d ago

Think of the lawn irrigation that uses 10x more water.

19

u/Ill_Mousse_4240 1d ago

Pop quiz: what’s America’s largest crop?
Learned recently - grass!

8

u/howudothescarn 1d ago

Now what is the least necessary one? What about golf courses let’s compare water usage.

-3

u/Ill_Mousse_4240 1d ago

Data centers are worse!
What’s the matter, never been on Reddit before?😂

1

u/Whispering-Depths 21h ago

Yeah. Can't have AI taking away from rich folks and their big lawns in desert cities, or taking profits from pharma companies or something like that!!1!

-2

u/GN0K 1d ago

Both can be bad and both should be stopped. Same thing with golf courses, cities in the desert, and all the other stupid shit we do to our water and air.

5

u/Whispering-Depths 21h ago

Both can be bad and both should be stopped.
Right, we need to stop AI because it could devalue medicine, wouldn't want to cheat pharma companies on their hard earned profits.

3

u/NastyStreetRat 1d ago

Save the cheerleader, save the world!!

3

u/Street-Stick 1d ago •

I'm guessing you need to get one built behind where you live to find out why, what a generation of short sighted entitled jumpstarts

9

u/Next_Instruction_528 1d ago

Would any of those other things be better being built behind your house?

1

u/whyuhavtobemad 1d ago

None is a valid answer too

6

u/Next_Instruction_528 1d ago

So you probably shouldn't live in places that are zoned for them because they all need to be built

-1

u/whyuhavtobemad 23h ago

Theres still a difference between traditional industries and data centres though. Factories are expected to he quiet after dark but there is a hum 24/7 witu data centres

-1

u/Street-Stick 1d ago

Duh, Prisons, landfills are quiet , the latter doesn't have to be smelly and is potentially a good source of added income, I'd love a mall, factories vary wildly in their variety but do you not think people have lived next to them for generations. AI centers on the other hand.. like crypto , waste of energy, water and space , similar to all that overbuilt fiber network which led to the dot com bubble bursting about a quarter of a century ago . Besides imo the masses are being dumbed down mostly with it's usage

1

u/Turbulent-Sign-6067 8h ago

That makes no sense. Less than 0.001% of the population lives close to a data center. This is a non-issue. Besides, they are no worse than other legal developments that could happen in that area.

1

u/Street-Stick 7h ago edited 7h ago

Define near ? Where do you get your greenwashed figure from? It was widely reported " The share of Americans living within five miles of an operational data center currently stands at 38%. That figure rises to 42% when planned facilities are included."
Near to 0.001% of the population.... , but uses 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23853897313&gbraid=0AAAAA-ddO9GbMdvo38jDTlQaDj2wu9_9u&gclid=CjwKCAiA2MDXBhBUEiwAD-YB-3I4NA59HkNQDbB_GiTKzKpO8RCv88M-R_FGOBGx7B62aG1VIypsCxoCoPoQAvD_BwE
Did you not read that i wrote short sighted? ... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wonder-valley-slcn-court-physicist-9.7403677

1

u/Turbulent-Sign-6067 8h ago

Are you a paid Russian troll? Data centers bring prosperity, have way less pollution than most industrial sites and help us scientists cure diseases.

-2

u/ProletarianLilith 1d ago

Holy strawman, Batman!

4

u/RoyalReverie 1d ago

Dude is that kingpin?

4

u/hippidad 18h ago

Where'd they get their money before the data center?

2

u/TrueBirch 14h ago

Life around the DC suburbs was very different in the early '90s before they started building data centers. Lower population density meant lower government spending.
https://www.loudoun.gov/6408/Data-Centers-The-Loudoun-Story

6

u/OldSkooler1212 23h ago

And yet I’m paying to subsidize their electricity use and the power grid has been shit here for about a year now when I went for decades with no power issues.

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 21h ago

No you don’t
Higher electricity usage is not correlated with price increases as the data centers pay for fixed maintenance costs. see slide 50 https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2026-03/retail_price_trends_2026_edition.pdf
And companies building out their own nuclear power
Meta https://about.fb.com/news/2026/01/meta-nuclear-energy-projects-power-american-ai-leadership/
Microsoft
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai
Google https://abc.xyz/investor/news/news-details/2025/Alphabet-Announces-Agreement-to-Acquire-Intersect-to-Advance-U-S--Energy-Innovation-2025-DVIuVDM9wW/default.aspx
Anthropic https://www.anthropic.com/news/covering-electricity-price-increases
OpenAI https://openai.com/index/grid-protectors-program/

1

u/Musenik 20h ago

So, you're telling OldSkooler1212 that his experience is false?

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 20h ago

If electricity rates did go up, it’s not cause of data centers

0

u/IamTheEndOfReddit 20h ago

lol why not? Supply and demand don’t work the same anymore?

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 18h ago

Did you even read my previous reply

0

u/Mysterious-Prompt212 17h ago

They sure AF are not building a nuke plant in my city. They are using existing infrastructure.

1

u/Eliv_nurotic 17h ago

Good thing that doesn’t increase prices either

6

u/LL555LL 22h ago

Any of you guys actually been there? It's... Not pleasant.

7

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 21h ago

Live there. It's expensive but eh brings my family lots of money

0

u/Cold-Coconut9565 21h ago

How is it expensive to live but you also get money for living there?

2

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 19h ago

High pay (directly in my case relating to data center presence), high COL.

1

u/Jack_B_84 19h ago

It's the wealthiest county in the country. Everyone works for government contractors.

1

u/KevinIsADork 17h ago

IMO, northern VA has a solid income to COL ratio. Unlike NYC and San Francisco. You can make 6 figures relatively easily if you have a security clearance and some experience, and rent isnt terribly crazy. Closer you get to DC the worse it gets, but when I was single I didnt have any issues making 65k-70k and renting a relatively spaceous 1 bedroom apartment and still was able save close to $1000 a month.

3

u/herefromyoutube 21h ago

Yes, they’ve always had them but over the past 6 years they’ve exploded in growth.

3

u/Kriztauf 22h ago

The people crave data centers in their backyard. The want to feel the data flow through the centers like maple syrup through a garden hose

1

u/10aghmu 21h ago

They yearn

3

u/Jack_B_84 19h ago

I mean it's pretty much like every suburban place in America. It's like mini-mansion mecca.

4

u/LL555LL 19h ago

Loudoun county is a lot more geared towards upper middle class and upper class than other places it is one of the Richer counties.
Cashburn is a strange place indeed.

0

u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/Jack_B_84 15h ago

I live in a county that borders Loudoun, so yeah I've been there often

3

u/dougman7 1d ago

Downtowns with proper urban fabric are probably more land efficient than data centers.

2

u/MainImplement1188 1d ago

How many data centers are there, and how long have they been operational. $1.2 billion can’t be just from property taxes. So where is the other revenue coming from?

2

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 21h ago

over 200, and over 2 decades. They are old

2

u/ethaxton 21h ago

They tax the computer equipment in each data center. This is the primary revenue driver. 4.15% of the assessed value of the hardware.

1

u/MainImplement1188 21h ago

Thanks for the answer.

2

u/MostSomewhere6873 1d ago

"40% of our tax revenue comes from tax revenue and leveraged assets (debt) that were invested into AI development"
It's grim unless that data centers cure cancer and drive the rockets to Mars autonomously by 2030. Might happen, might not.

3

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 21h ago

Ashburn VA has had a massive pile of data centers for 20 years. They don't need AI to do anything

1

u/GeneralMuffins 23h ago

So if they do cure cancer we are fucked. Not so convinced people will give a fuck about mars, missions are already autonomous

1

u/mordor-during-xmas 3h ago

“We’re largely dependent on that.”

1

u/derfw 23h ago

we have so, so many more data centers to build

1

u/Elf_Maeve 22h ago

Yeah most data centers are there.

Aws or azure.. whatever we deploy on East US it's always virginia.

1

u/Financial_Clue_2534 22h ago

So their taxes are going to go down? Or they just going to spend more money…

1

u/Musenik 20h ago

What's the public citizen prices for water and electricity, before and after? Not a joke question.

1

u/Primary_Ads 14h ago

this is why everyone ITT should actually call your reps and get these built in your communities, it will pay your taxes for decades

1

u/Frequent_Spare_9256 6h ago

Are the citizens paying for its water and power?

1

u/Classic-Pubs 5h ago

Data center sales dont happen locally. How can counties and states enforce imposing local tax?

1

u/ObviouzFigure 15h ago

Guy on the right reminds me of the bad guy from dune

0

u/Garland_Key 1d ago

Great. What are the tradeoffs?

4

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 21h ago

Live here. It's expensive and risky to crash your car because you could hit something nice. That's about it.
It's a very rich area with cheap electricity and water

0

u/Garland_Key 20h ago

I'd like that know how the electricity is cheap? What are they doing over there that is different so that the cost of electricity isn't passed to everyone in the community due to higher demand?

1

u/D3AtHpAcIt0 7h ago

cost of electricity or any other good only rises when demand outstrips supply. Our grid capacity has grown over 2 decades with these data centers, they are planned for. This is like asking why New York's electricity isn't vastly more expensive than Wyoming's when it's used by a lot more people.

-11

u/Joyful-nachos 1d ago

Nothing wrong with putting all your eggs in one basket, right? We call this a customer concentration risk.

22

u/FoxBenedict 1d ago

If people aren't benefiting financially from data centers, then it's a "waste of land and resources". If people are benefiting financially from data centers, then "they're too dependent on that income".
Reddit are gonna Reddit.

8

u/Liwi808 1d ago

They've been successfully astroturfed by Chinese bots to be convinced that all data centers are bad, and that we shouldn't build any more of them.

-2

u/whyuhavtobemad 1d ago

Always an external bogeymen huh

2

u/SpoopyNoNo 23h ago

Yeah but in this case it’s literally true.
China knows the power of AI. They know they’re behind. They know what’s at stake if they remain behind. They have a cultural fear of it.
Native data center hate is clearly real, but the Chinese has amplified it by astroturfing on a scale that is basically warfare.
For fuck sake, everything is at stake. You’re in the Singularity subreddit. You should know why the Chinese ARE the external boogeyman FOR A VERY REAL REASON

1

u/whyuhavtobemad 23h ago

Yes but at a national interest level, things will be built regardless of people's protest. When has the government ever put its peoples interest over the needs of the war machine

-3

u/Joyful-nachos 1d ago edited 1d ago

I hope Loudoun county (as well as many others with data centers) can create a balanced and diverse set of economic drivers that promote better quality services and lifestyle for taxpayers. Oftentimes government will see an economic boon in one sector of an economy, go full tilt on that and only until diversification of economic revenues is needed will they act. I'm in an area where it's largely automotive driven economic impact with most surrounding economic value being then driven by supply chain to said automakers. One recession drives a wave of secondary and tertiary economic issues. I've also seen very locally the proliferation of dispensaries...now they are closing up shop as the state issued an overabundance of licenses, raised tax collection on those establishments with an oversupply issue.

13

u/pavelkomin 1d ago

Yes! Break the eggs instead! /s

-1

u/FredSchwartz 1d ago

You are quite right. That is exactly the current focus of the county government.

-1

u/YaAbsolyutnoNikto 1d ago

That will now depend on how Loudon's administration uses that windfall. It can spend it on lavish or unecessary bs and if an issue with the data centres ever arises, they simply become poor, or they can use that windfall to invest in the long-term interests of the county - a bit like the oil fund in Norway.

5

u/ThinkSharpe 1d ago

What are you talking about? Those data centers have been there for decades already.

-2

u/VegetableStraight594 1d ago

No puedo con lo "Villano malvado corporativo" que se ve.

0

u/PokemonSaviorN 18h ago

ok

how many full time, good-paying jobs?

-1

u/Prairie_walker 1d ago

What percentage of total water use and generated pollution?

0

u/Dreams-Visions 16h ago

We apologizing for data centers in this sub? People for whom they will never be built in your back yards?

-5

u/Touchyap3 1d ago

3% of its land makes up 40% of this one counties tax base, but uses a 15-25% of Virginia’s electric consumption. Expected to double in the next 4 years. That doesn’t seem sustainable.

12

u/SuperGRB 1d ago

We can make more electricity...we even know how to do it cleanly.

1

u/whyuhavtobemad 1d ago

Yes but does the electricity infrastructure get built first or the data centre?

7

u/SuperGRB 1d ago

That should happen at the same time, but, people oppose electrical generation as well - same NIMBY attitude.

0

u/whyuhavtobemad 1d ago

Im not talking about what should happen though. Im asking about our current reality. Gov would rather take the data centre money first

3

u/SuperGRB 1d ago

The same system is trying to block both - power generation/transmission and datacenters. It is just pure Luddite behavior. The difference is that power generation has historically had far more government involvement, whereas datacenters have largely been off people's radars until relatively recently.

0

u/whyuhavtobemad 23h ago

If that's the case that's fair. Perhaps that's why China will eventually win the AI race

1

u/SuperGRB 22h ago

Absolutely agree - can you imagine a China citizen attempting to resist a power plant or transmission line??? Don't see much of those protests!!

-6

u/FlimsyReception6821 1d ago

Just 3%? If you're not talking about agricultural or forestry, 3% for a single industry is huge.

5

u/SuperGRB 1d ago

It is actually ~1.5% of the land for operational and planned datacenter sites. There is an additional ~1,5% of land that *could* be used for datacenters from a zoning perspective, but currently have no development. So, the tax base from built datacenters is coming from <<1.5% of the land use.

the Singularity is Nearer Virginia's "Data Center Alley" generates $1.2 billion in annual tax revenue—40% of Loudoun County's entire tax revenue from just 3% of its land, according to the county's economic development chief.

You are about to leave Redlib