Orange County Planning Commission passes technology district zoning proposal
The draft proposal is headed to the board of supervisors
During Orange County Planning Commission’s public hearing related to data centers, the message from citizens was: Proceed with caution, keep researching the latest developments in data center construction and impact, and do a better job keeping everybody in the county informed. The commissioners then made some revisions to their technology district draft proposal and passed it unanimously. Now the proposed change to the zoning ordinance heads to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which will hold its own public hearing on Tuesday, Dec. 16.
About 40 people attended the hearing on the “floating” technology district zoning proposal on the evening of Thursday, Dec. 4. The discussion began with Orange County Director of Development Services Michelle Mixell’s overview of the draft proposal that the board of supervisors asked the commission to research and develop. The proposal would not allow data centers to be built by right. (“By right” means that such centers could be built on industrially zoned land with no public hearings or special use permit required.) Instead, under the proposal’s terms, guardrails would be in place: A data center’s developers would have to obtain a special use permit, and the project would be subject to public hearings and numerous specifications.
Several of the dozen citizens who spoke during the hearing said the county presentation had answered questions they’d planned to raise. However, all of them still had concerns, such as air-quality standards for data center generators, the volume of a data center’s water usage and the worrisome nature of a so-called “floating” technology district that could lead to a hodgepodge of data centers across the county. Citizens also expressed their worries about possible hikes in utility rates, increased traffic and the potential for more collisions, health and environmental safety, and the possibility that developers would seek to build small nuclear power plants to fuel the centers.
Commissioner Jordan Marshall: “You should be terrified of [the existing ordinance] with a data center as a permitted use on industrial land”
Of note, after the public hearing ended, planning commissioner Jordan Marshall (District 3) presented the audience with a blunt fact: “What I want to make people aware of is our current [zoning] ordinance. If you look at our current ordinance, in general, industrial, specifically section 70-542, a data center is a permitted use. So I know that there’s a lot of people that are concerned about this technology district, but what I would say is, if you’re concerned about this technology district, you should be terrified of section 70-542 with a data center as a permitted use on industrial land.”
He continued, “We have given a lot of clarity and a lot of thought to a potential district that would alleviate or mitigate a tremendous amount of concerns for residents in this county. And so I certainly understand everybody’s concerns and their fears over all of the language in this potential technology district. But the fact of the matter is, we could have data centers today or tomorrow on industrial land in this county as a permitted use with none of these safeguards in place.”
Bill Frazer: Data centers in Virginia are “much like bunny rabbits … reproducing”
Among the citizens speaking during the hearing was Locust Grove resident Bill Frazer, who said, “Unfortunately, data centers are popping up all over Virginia, much like bunny rabbits, and reproducing. And I think we’ve all been to Loudoun County, and we know what we don’t want to see happen in Orange. And I do appreciate the work that the staff has done on this. I think the SUP [special use permit] process and much of the requirements of this technology zone floating zone are well done.”
But, Frazer continued, “I think we ought to look at size from two perspectives. One is
