Flickering lights across the eastern United States and a new warning about shrinking groundwater supplies are adding urgency to a growing debate in Virginia over data centers.
In an editorial for Cardinal News, State Senator Glen Sturtevant argued that the commonwealth should stop approving new projects until it has a clearer understanding of the power and water they require.
What happened?
In his opinion piece, Sturtevant, a Republican state senator from Chesterfield County and Colonial Heights, said Virginia should immediately stop approving data centers statewide.
Among several reasons he cited were a groundwater study's conclusion that eastern Virginia's water situation is strained and worsening, and a transmission-line fault associated with Northern Virginia data centers that caused widespread electrical instability well outside the region.
Sturtevant leaned on Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in his editorial, noting that the body identified data center expansion as the leading driver of a potential doubling in state electricity demand over the next decade.
The commission also estimated that a typical Dominion residential customer could pay $14 to $37 more per month as a result.
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He cast the debate as a fairness question: localities may get the tax revenue, but households and small businesses around Virginia absorb the costs of the extra power plants, substations and transmission lines.
Or, as Sturtevant observed: "Who benefits, and who pays?"
Why does it matter?
Data centers are a backbone of the modern internet, and they are becoming even more numerous as artificial intelligence expands.
AI can help utilities forecast demand, manage batteries, and integrate more wind and solar power into the grid.
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But the same AI boom is also fueling a race to build more computing capacity, which means enormous electricity use, heavy water demand for cooling and growing concerns about security, potential misuse, and higher costs passed on to consumers.
Virginia has become one of the country's largest hubs for data centers.
Sturtevant noted that the facilities can bring construction jobs and local investment, but JLARC found that many of the economic gains are front-loaded.
A typical 250,000-square-foot data center, he wrote, typically has about 50 full-time workers, with around half serving as contractors.
Water is another major pressure point.
The new groundwater study concluded that an industrial data center using evaporative cooling would be unlikely to secure a dependable, adequate groundwater source anywhere in eastern Virginia.
In western Virginia, Sturtevant wrote, one campus had originally set aside about 2 million gallons of water a day, with room to expand to 8 million gallons.
By comparison, Cardinal News reported, the Carvins Cove treatment facility now produces just 10 million to 12 million gallons a day.
What's being done?
Sturtevant said he has urged Gov. Abigail Spanberger to use an executive order to pause data center approvals across Virginia.
He also said he introduced Senate Bill 552 during the General Assembly session to require broad site reviews and meaningful environmental scrutiny before data centers could win approval.
Other proposals aimed at shielding residential neighborhoods, addressing grid costs and protecting natural resources were also considered, though he said the legislature failed to create a comprehensive statewide framework.
The legislature did direct the Joint Subcommittee on Tax Policy to examine data center incentives and impacts and report back by Dec. 15.
Sturtevant's primary concern is that new projects can still move ahead while that review is underway.
"Before another project advances, the industry should be required to prove it can operate without forcing Virginia families to bear unacceptable costs to their utility bills, their grid reliability and their natural resources," Sturtevant wrote.
"Until then, Virginia must pause the projects."
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