HARRISONBURG, Va. – Data centers are not just a Northern Virginia problem. The vast and growing presence of these warehouse-like buildings housing the world’s computing power has implications for quality of life, land, energy and water across the Chesapeake Bay region.
This was the main message of a half-day workshop on May 19 hosted by the Choose Clean Water Coalition at the start of its annual conference held this year in Harrisonburg, VA. The “kickoff” event featured experts mostly from Virginia speaking about the environmental impacts of data centers, which they have seen firsthand — and which they say are imminent for every state in the region.
Northern Virginia is the global epicenter of data center infrastructure and home to about half of all data centers in the U.S. This distinction is not new but has garnered increasing attention as the global race to power artificial intelligence begins to strain regional power supplies. Researchers at the workshop warned that continued unrestrained growth of data centers in the Potomac River basin in the coming years could strain the region’s water supply as well.
Lydia Lawrence, the director of conservation for the nonprofit Nature Forward, said she has been urging the broader clean water community to discuss the implications of data centers for some time now. That’s in large part because she lives in Herndon, VA, where she’s watched data centers replace forests near her home and then seen the trail she runs lined by larger and larger transmission lines…