Washington Lawyer September/October 2026
By John Murph
Located in Sterling, Virginia, Greg Pirio's home is approximately 30 miles from Washington, D.C., 6 miles north of Dulles International Airport, and 200 yards from a data center.
Pirio has lived in Sterling for 14 years, and in that period he saw the steady growth of data centers in Northern Virginia. But it wasn't until a few years ago that these hulking industrial buildings became too close for comfort. The facility in Pirio's neighborhood is one of approximately 250 data centers that exist in Loudoun County today.
Some five miles away from Pirio is the town of Ashburn, the nexus of Data Center Alley — the world's largest concentration of data centers, encompassing 51 million square feet (or 885 football fields). Now, public opposition is mounting against the construction of more of these hyperscale facilities, and local regulations and policies are coming under close scrutiny.
Data Center Capital
Northern Virginia was primed to become the global hub for up to 70 percent of today's daily internet traffic. In 1992 network providers Alternet, PSINet, and Sprint ICM collaborated with Metropolitan Fiber Systems to form MAE-East, one of the first internet exchanges, operating out of an office building in Tysons Corner in Fairfax County. Soon after, America Online (AOL), Verizon, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Telos arrived, investing in fiberoptic and power infrastructures in Loudoun County.
This growth transformed the area from predominantly forest and farmland, dotted with empty lots, into a network of high-tech complexes. OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 signaled a new era in technological advancement, requiring an exponential increase in computing power.
"The fiberoptic cable underground gave us the [lowest] latency rates in the world, and that was a real attractor for data centers," says Michael Turner, vice chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. "That went on just fine until 2015, [when data centers] started to run out of land in the industrial areas" where the county wanted them.
In 2000 the Loudoun County zoning administrator at the time made the determination that data centers were to be considered office buildings, permitting their construction without public hearings or discretionary review by the Planning Commission or the Board of Supervisors, as long as the applicable requirements were satisfied.
"What we did not realize at the time is the data centers began buying land that would allow them to [be built] 'by right' … [as] office parks, [which] were intended to be nestled in among residential neighborhoods," Turner says. "You had to submit an administrative application, get a permit, and then you could build," he says. A data center would just get approved by county staff and then built "because it was a permitted use."
In 2014 Zoning Ordinance Amendment (ZOAM) 2013-0003 added and defined "data center" as a permitted by-right use in 5 out of 41 zoning districts. That same year, the Board of Supervisors approved changes to the county Zoning Ordinance that addressed design standards for data centers. It did not, however, pass provisions that would have required significant noise testing and large land setbacks, two concerns that residents brought up during a public input session with data center representatives.
This is where Pirio, the Sterling resident, now finds himself: living with the constant humming sound coming out of Vantage VA2, the data center only a few yards away. According to Pirio, Vantage invited the public to a meeting at a local brewery in October 2022 to discuss its proposed facility on Glenn Drive. What was not known then was that the data center would be powered by gas turbines.
"I think it was in [early] 2025 that we began to hear all this loud noise," Pirio says, describing it as a high-pitched whine, followed by a lower-pitched sound. "It's been disrupting our lives."
A Tipping Point?
In a white paper published in 2024 and updated in June 2026, Turner writes that Loudoun County went without any changes to its Comprehensive Plan from 2001 to 2019, and without a corresponding update to its Zoning Ordinance from 2003 to 2023.
"The Comprehensive Plan details the Board of Supervisors' vision for land development over the next 20 years in the county and is not legally binding, while the Zoning Ordinance provides the legal basis for the Comprehensive Plan," Turner writes. "These two decades precisely aligned with the growth, from inception to maturity, of the data center sector in Loudoun County."
In his paper, Turner says that in the beginning, data centers were largely accepted by residents. But by 2022, data center companies had begun to exercise their by-right options to build on parcels they had bought years earlier. Many of these sites were zoned for office as well as research and development parks located near residential neighborhoods. Community resistance increased in 2023, when Dominion Energy announced that it would need to construct four new overhead transmission lines to relieve power constraints.
Facing mounting pressure, the Board of Supervisors, in a 7–2 bipartisan vote, ended all by-right data center development in Loudoun County on March 18, 2025. Data center applications must now go through the Special Exception (SPEX) process, which involves rigorous county staff review, public impact hearings, and final approval from the Board of Supervisors.
"There are some data centers that are still in the pipeline that are 'grandfathered,' so they can still build by right," Turner says. "But if the data centers change in any substantive way, [they are kicked] out of the by-right track; they then will have to come to us for legislative approval."
The Price of Progress
Pirio and others living near the Vantage VA2 facility — built by right — have two major complaints. First, the company's land development application, filed in early 2022, proposed a 354,502-square-foot data center on 18 acres, 17 of which were already zoned for industrial use. The remaining acre was zoned for single-family residential use. A few months later, Vantage submitted a rezoning request for the parcel as well as a special exception request to increase the data center's size to 803,085 square feet — double what residents expected. The application was approved.
Second, there was no mention of any power plant being on-site, according to Pirio. "It's the only one presently in Loudoun County not connected to the [Dominion Energy] electric power grid. It has its own power plant with eight gas turbine engines," he says. Residents have noticed gas fumes and black smoke coming out of the facility and have complained of dry eyes and headaches. "It's pretty miserable," Pirio says.
In an interview in April, Vantage Vice President of Global Marketing Mark Freeman told Loudoun Now that the gas turbines are strictly a temporary power solution until grid capacity becomes available. Vantage also reported noise-mitigation efforts, such as upgrading the turbines' exhaust louvers, moving and enhancing the sound-attenuation panels along the existing screening walls, and installing thicker sound-proofing materials.
Emma Dietz, an associate at Weitz & Luxenberg PC focusing on environmental pollution and consumer protection, says that residents can bring common law claims against data centers. "One of the claims that we [have brought] in the cases that we've filed so far [in New York] is a private nuisance claim," she says. "You have the right to quiet and the enjoyment of your property. When a facility is running 24/7, creating loud noise and vibrations that are penetrating the walls and windows of your home, making it so that you can't go outside and play in your yard, drink coffee on your porch, open your windows to feel a breeze, work from home and focus, or sleep through the night — all of those are violations of your private right to use and enjoy your property."
Dietz says public nuisance claims can also be used against the operator of a facility when the air and noise quality is harming the community. "And then there's also negligence, which deals with whether or not the facility operator is meeting the applicable standards of care," she adds. "This is especially important where facilities are coming online so quickly that maybe they didn't even do a noise-mitigation study from the outset and therefore have no noise-mitigation measures."
Powering the Machines
With the explosion of artificial intelligence technologies, Dominion Energy is now dealing with an overburdened grid struggling to meet increasing energy demand. Turner of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors says that Dominion was caught by surprise in 2022 when PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization serving 13 states and the District of Columbia, informed the energy provider that it had underestimated its infrastructure needs. "[Dominion] is in the process right now of building seven new power lines in Loudoun County to power our data centers," Turner says.
Vicky Hu, a longtime Ashburn resident, is feeling the brunt of these new projects. Hu lives in Loudoun Valley Estates, approximately a mile from an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center that's under construction. She has been in a yearlong battle with Dominion Energy, which is seeking to build a 185-foot-tall pole in her backyard to route 500 kilovolt and 230 kilovolt power lines through her neighborhood as part of the Golden–Mars Project, named after two substations.
During an open house discussion in 2024 about the forthcoming AWS data center, Hu understood that Dominion would be building power lines underground. "So, we really did not pay attention," Hu says. "As long as we do not see it, we are all right with it. If it is underground, it does not bother us."
But about a month before Dominion filed its application with the State Corporation Commission (SCC), "it removed every single underground route and placed only aboveground routes directly through schools, neighborhoods, parks, and streams," says Bryan Turner, principal of Turner Law Firm, who represents Hu and the Loudoun Valley Estates Homeowners Association. "They did not leave any good options for the community."
Hu petitioned her county supervisor, state representative, state senator, and even the White House to fight back. Nevertheless, on June 29, 2026, the SCC issued a final order approving the route running through Hu's neighborhood for the transmission lines, stating that underground lines were not feasible.
The SCC approved this route as a backup after the Loudoun County School Board refused to grant easements for Dominion's preferred route, which is less impactful to homes but runs closer to two schools. But even that alternate route now appears closed.
On June 23 Loudoun Valley Estates donated approximately 12.74 acres to the school board, and subsequently, on July 13 the school board approved Policy 6355, generally prohibiting future electric transmission lines on school property, with exceptions for those deemed in the "best interests" of students, staff, and the community.
The battle escalated on July 16 when the school board and the Loudoun Valley Estates Homeowners Association filed separate petitions asking the SCC to reconsider its June 29 order. The regulatory body declined, effectively ending its jurisdiction and sending the legal battle to the Virginia Supreme Court.
If Hu continues to oppose Dominion's plan to cut through her backyard, the energy company will then have to sue and "condemn her property by eminent domain," Turner explains. "That will happen in the Loudoun County Circuit Court."
If Hu ends her fight, she will receive just compensation. "Just compensation would be the devaluation of your property — the amount that your home goes down because of the lines now being there — and what is the value of the easement," Turner says.
In a statement to Washington Lawyer, Dominion Energy said the company is "evaluating a number of options to ensure compliance" with the SCC's final order. "We cannot speculate on specific legal or regulatory paths while that evaluation is underway. Dominion Energy remains committed to advancing this critically needed reliability project to support the continued delivery of reliable electric service for Loudoun County, Northern Virginia, and the broader region," it added.
Finding a Path Forward
Amy Weinhouse, in-house counsel for the Piedmont Environmental Council, is concerned about how Virginia's SCC has been approving the construction of transmission lines to serve data centers. "There are a number of flaws in the process and ways that it could improve," Weinhouse says.
"One is that the public really needs to have a chance for meaningful input. Sometimes the way the application schedule works out, the environmental review [from the Department of Environmental Quality] may not be available until after the public is supposed to provide their comments," Weinhouse says. "Another big flaw is that each of these permits looks at just one transmission line that Dominion is applying for; there is really no analysis of the cumulative impacts of all the lines that will serve these large data centers."
Multistate, a nonpartisan think tank, reported that more than 300 data center legislation bills were filed across 30-plus states in the first six weeks of 2026 alone, "marking a shift from incentive-focused policies to regulatory oversight as energy demands become clearer."
At least 15 states have sought to impose a moratorium on data center construction, although almost half of them have failed, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. On July 14, 2026, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order halting the construction of hyperscale data centers for up to a year — the first ban of its kind in the country.
In Virginia, bills relating to data centers dominated the 2026 legislative session. One of the bills that passed allows the SCC to decide if it will approve shifting more energy costs onto data centers. Other bills addressed water use, siting, diesel generators, waste heat, and taxes, but a proposal to introduce a temporary moratorium on data center construction was carried over to the 2027 session.
Data centers generate almost half of Loudoun County's property tax revenues. In fiscal year 2027, that amount is projected to reach $1.3 billion, Loudoun Now reported. In 2024 data centers added $16 billion in value to the Loudoun County real property portfolio, according to the county's website.
Even with these economic advantages, residents are rising up against the construction of more data centers. "A couple of years ago, [people began to] call and say, 'Data centers are ugly! Why are you still building them?'" says the county board's Michael Turner. "We would say, 'Well, okay, but your taxes in Loudoun County are about 25 percent lower than anywhere else in the D.C. metro area.'"
For a win–win solution, Weinhouse recommends that residents and local community officials assess needs. "What is the real need for this energy generation for AI or any other purpose?" Weinhouse asks. "Once you identify that purpose and need, you can figure out how to best achieve that while not having the most devastating impacts on the communities."
D.C. Bar staff writer John Murph has received three Luminary Awards from the Association for Bar Professionals for his feature articles. Reach him at [email protected].
