On Tuesday, March 24th, a rally was held in front of the Botetourt Center at Greenfield. It was set for 1 PM, an hour before the Botetourt Board of Supervisors Meeting. The rally was organized by the Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance. This alliance is a non-partisan group of SWVA residents dedicated to protecting our region and its resources from the destructive impacts of unregulated hyperscale data centers.
The Bee asked one of the Alliance’s organizers, Ben Verschoor, what the goal was for the day. Verschoor said, “We’re trying to get as many people as possible to register their disagreement with the entire Google deal and the way that it’s been handled, the implications that it has for things like our water and electricity rates. We know that pretty much everybody we talk to about this is against it once they hear about it. But there’s still a lot of people that don’t know about it.” Verschoor continued, “when it comes to actually being able to register that disagreement, the public officials are really only going to pay attention to what is on the record, and at these meetings, so we’re trying to get as many people turned out for these monthly board of supervisors’ meetings as we can.”
One of the Alliance’s organizers, Julie Bivins, said it was a good turnout, considering the time and day. When asked what message she would like to give to the citizens of Botetourt, Bivins said, “I would love for them to know that they have power against this. […] Our overall goal- it’s idealistic, but we would love to stop this project. We want to stop it because of all the issues associated with it. So letting people know that, and that it’s okay to speak up against that and speak up for themselves, and that they shouldn’t have this project shoved down their throats.”…