For many Virginia homeowners, the growth of the digital economy has come with unwelcome side effects: a constant industrial hum and, at times, the smell of diesel exhaust.
After a recent power failure at a data center campus in Loudoun County, residents said an already troubling quality-of-life issue became even harder to ignore.
What happened?
According to 7News, people living near Vantage Data Centers’ Ashburn II facility in Sterling have been pressing county leaders about ongoing noise from the site and fumes from generator operations that they say disturb sleep and affect their health.
Neighbors say the campus emits a continuous hum even during normal operations. They told 7News that after a July 16 outage shifted the three data centers on the 18-acre site to auxiliary diesel power, the situation became much worse…