Virginia Is the World’s Data Center Hub - at What Cost?

Virginia is home to hundreds of data centers which support a majority of the world’s internet traffic. New investments guarantee more data center development in the state, but some warn the financial benefit may not be worth the environmental cost.

[@WalterBurton]

Balanced. I appreciate that.

[@tonysu8860]

If Virginia has a problem with overbuilding data centers, it's their fault.
Data centers can be built practically anywhere because of Internet connectivity. I'm sure proximity to the centers of US Federal government has something to do with locating in Virginia but otherwise Virginia is no place special for data centers and data can be stored anywhere.
Also, data centers in general are extremely energy hogs and wasteful. Most of the energy is used for environmental controls, ie extraction and releasing heat, but keeping humidity down is important, too. Some data centers explore Green methods to run their operations but most don't. Of course taxing energy usage would be logical but if Virginia is highly dependent on taxing data center revenue, gov4rnment is not incentivized to do anything about the problem.
The citizens of Virginia just need to make some hard choices...
Lower taxes, less government services or lots of data centers.

[@joeyharper4976]

You clearly know nothing

[@nothinglikeburntvag]

We don’t want data centers. Local government doesn’t care because of money.