Virginia’s romance with data centers has cooled, but nobody benefits if there’s a full breakup

By: Bob Lewis

Outlets: Virginia Mercury

Published: June 29, 2026

Words: 1,100

Last Updated: 3 weeks, 3 days ago

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Data centers. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.

But we could do with data centers slowing their jackrabbit pace of reproduction in congested suburbs and, instead, building where they could fill a need and do more economic good.

Our romance with data centers has cooled in Virginia, home to the world’s greatest concentration of these power-glutton behemoths. They threaten the sufficiency of our electrical grid, they pollute and they bogart an

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