HOA Roundtable

  The PW Digital Gateway is becoming a real problem for the Board of County Supervisors (BOCS). The Racial and Social Justice Commission shocked the county staff by passing two resolutions calling on the BOCS to consider all information -- including waiting until the needed studies are completed -- before voting on the data center proposal.  The BOCS has already heard from the Historical Commission, and this is another powerful voice asking that the brakes get pumped before a vote is taken that will create irreversible damage. ---------- CLICK ON THE SHARE BUTTON NEXT TO THE HEADLINE OF THIS BLOG POST TO SHARE IT TO YOUR FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS.

  It's difficult to conjure up a stranger story that what is playing out in the Board Chambers of the McCoart Building where the Board of County Supervisors (BOCS) appear to be ready to ram through approval of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment (CPA) that will empower the destruction of more than 2,100 acres of the most precious historical land in America. While the BOCS has assumed the mantle of being the "applicants" -- and why not since the best attorneys money can buy and a slick PR firm pumping out nearly daily propaganda are promoting the destruction -- the appointees of the BOCS on the County Historical Commission have stayed true to their oath to defend citizens of the County are standing up to some of the wealthiest multi-national companies on the planet. One of the strange elements of the vote that played out -- and it was unanimous -- on the Historical Commission was the warning issued by the Occoquan Commissioner: Commissioner Jim Burgess, who represents the Occ...

 

  Culpeper County Landowner Withdraws Rezoning Application for Data Center   The battle is the same in Prince William County as it is in Culpeper County. Big data center money from multi-national corporations corrupting the governments that are supposed to be protecting their citizens. But sometimes common sense, and the voices of citizens, prevail. It is the way it should be in Prince William County, but it's not. At least not yet.  

Gainesville District School Board Member Jennifer Wall speaks truth to power, and she does it powerfully. Simply put, the rush to pave over Prince William County (literally) with data centers needs to stop, leaders need to take a breath, and everyone needs to start over in the planning process. ---------- CLICK ON THE SHARE BUTTON NEXT TO THE HEADLINE OF THIS BLOG POST TO SHARE IT TO YOUR FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS.

  Why would any politician support a proposal to make Prince William County the largest data center hub in the world when it has enormous adverse impacts on the citizens of the county? Why would any politician support approving data centers that blast dangerous levels of sound next to schools where teachers cannot teach and kids cannot learn -- and next to communities that destroy the quality of life of the families that live there? Why would any politician support approving data centers in a location where they will pollute the Occoquan Watershed that supplies nearly 2 million citizens in eastern PWC, Fairfax, and Alexandria? Why would any politician support approving data centers in a location where they will destroy wildlife habitats and the invaluable rural landscape in PWC? Why would any politician support approving data centers in a location where 4 lane divided industrial roads have to be built that will CREATE the Outer Beltway (aka the Bi-County Parkway) that will make roa...

  It's become a sad truth in politics. Its all about the money. What else can explain why the Board of County Supervisors is willing to turn its collective backs on the impacted families -- and there are tens of thousands of those families who are horribly impacted for every one landowner on Pageland Lane. And it's the real estate developers who are behind the cash flowing around Prince William County from mega-bucks multi-national data center operators? The Piedmont Environmental Council lays out the massive impact on families from the land giveaway being considered by the Board of County Supervisors:  The Digital Gateway application proposes to designate   nearly 2,100 acres in western Prince William County for up to 27.6 million square feet of data center space   along Pageland Lane, converting the rural area beside Manassas National Battlefield to a complex of data centers larger than Data Center Alley near Dulles International Airport in Loudoun County. For scal...

 

    Targeted Industries and SnackWell's   If you remember the 1990’s you may remember SnackWell's. According to an April 23, 2019 article on www.tastecooking.com ,   “SnackWell’s runaway success was a particularly ’90s moment….. the defining moment for the very American idea of permissible indulgence. Here was a cookie that you could eat as much of as you wanted. Because fat and cholesterol were bad, and everything else was…fine.”   Similarly, Prince William County has conferred targeted industry status for data center approvals. This may have made sense when it was first introduced, just like SnackWell's made sense. But now, the targeted industry concept is completely out of balance.   Who is being targeted when the Board of County Supervisors zones 25 million square feet of data center campuses surrounding homes and schools in the Gainesville/Haymarket/Bristow area during a 12-month period?   Particularly as it was a time w...

The Pageland Lane crowd pushing the destruction of our quality of life for their personal economic benefit is spending a lot of money with Madison Avenue style public relations campaigns all designed to mislead everyone about what the real impacts are of noise polluting, water hogging, 70-120 foot high monster sized big box buildings, all packed with energy sucking data storage computers in every Data Center building. Fun Fact #1:   There is almost 40 million more square feet of data centers ALREADY in the planning process which are WITHIN the Prince William County Data Center Overlay Zone.  That is 140% of the Prince William Digital Gateway (PWDG) square footage.   The Dominion Power website claims that about 11,000 Mega Watts of power is the current consumption of electricity for the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. Adding the PWDG and the Data Centers already approved or planned in the Data Center Overlay Zone electricity load will add 15,000 Mega-Watts for Data Cente...

  Data Center noise is real, and it will ruin your quality of life. And the quality of your sleep. And the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, up until now, does not give a damn. But the insanity of Data Center Sprawl has to stop -- or all of us will be forced from our homes or just have to live with the constant noise bombarding our homes every second of every minute of every hour of every day of the year. Check out this news report about a Prince William County community whose lives are being disrupted by an Amazon Data Center. CLICK ON THE SHARE BUTTON NEXT TO THE HEADLINE OF THIS BLOG POST TO SHARE IT TO YOUR FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS.

    Data Centers and Environmental Justice in PWC   According to the EPA website on Environmental Justice:   “Fair treatment  means no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies.”   In the span of about a year, the PW Board of County Supervisors (BOCS) has burdened the residents of Gainesville/Bristow/Haymarket with an extremely disproportionate burden of data centers approved close to homes and schools . There are currently about 40 data centers approvals in this area, and if the Devlin Technology Park which passed Planning Commission moves forward, it will be closer to about 50.     In addition, if the BOCS approves the PW Digital Gateway CPA in Fall 2022, it would allow zoning for another 90 data centers and would basically triple the already severe environmental injustice for this community.   The injus...

  Guest post by Bill Wright, a resident of Prince William County Did you hear?  Our Supervisors want to lower your taxes.  And every drug dealer peddling his addictive drugs wants everyone to kick the habit.   The latest fairy tale from Chair Ann Wheeler is that increased revenue from plowing up our heritage for more data centers will result in a lower tax burden for homeowners.  And more money for schools, parks, police and fire protection.     Did you realize that data centers can also help you lose weight?     Data Centers are the miracle cure for everything that ails us.   Before you fall for this deal with the devil, check out what is already happening.     Right now, Prince William has 27 operating data centers and many others under development.  Yet the annual residential real estate tax bill will rise by an average of $233 in 2022, in addition to a new 4% meals tax on struggling local restaurants.   ...

    Pete Candland is already ensnared in a recall effort launched by his constituents because Candland elected to cash in on the Data Center Boom to the tune of $5 to $10 million, and now the problems multiply with a constituent who is claiming his comments on an official Facebook page of the Gainesville Supervisor were suppressed because they were critical of Candland. All are encouraged to make their own judgments -- read the fill article. https://www.princewilliamtimes.com/news/candland-faces-a-federal-lawsuit-alleging-he-blocked-a-constituents-comment-on-facebook/article_c50e9866-092b-11ed-aeef-5b5281564b73.htmlCandland faces a federal lawsuit alleging he blocked a constituent's comment on Facebook  

There is an old adage in politics that you just have to follow the money to find the truth. The money flowing into Prince William County from some of the wealthiest multi-national corporations on the globe is unprecedented, and it has exposed the ugly underbelly of how money corrupts public officials and community leaders. Gainesville District Supervisor Pete Candland, who had previously pledged he would fight "tooth and nail" against the destruction of the Rural Crescent by developers to protect the families who elected him to office, has come under fire from his constituents because he set aside his commitment to them to sign a contract with data center operators for somewhere between $5 to $10 million for his lot. County Chair Ann Wheeler, immediately after getting elected, started making large investments into data centers and companies that supply them to take advantage of the data center boom that she knew was being proposed as a "target industry" by county st...

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors is considering the most dramatic change in its land use policy in three decades, and if five members of the Board agree it will jettison the long-standing Rural Crescent policy that protected the rural character of our community and preserved of some of the most pristine land areas in the County. One data center project proposed along Pageland Lane, called the Prince William Digital Gateway, will pave over historically sensitive battlegrounds, likely desecrate graves of soldiers and enslaved African Americans, and forever destroy the view shed of the Manassas National Battlefield Park. On the east side of the County, the industrial corridor roads required for the construction of the dozens of data center projects already approved for construction will create the Outer Beltway for truckers to take the short cut from I-95 up into the Dulles Airport corridor. Gridlocked traffic; 18 wheeler noise; unsafe roads; a prescription for disaster for...