This Virginia County Is Ground Zero in the Battle Over Data Centers

In July, Prince William County supervisor Bob Weir died from colon cancer. Weir, who had served on the board of supervisors for two years, was from Gainesville, the area of the county with the most data centers, and he had advocated regulating the supercomputing warehouses. The facilities have sprouted up in this Virginia county at a dizzying speed: Thirty-three campuses have already been built here, and 31 more have received local approval.

When he took office in February 2023, Weir championed the creation of an advisory panel to weigh in on issues of data center growth and noise. When he died, the group was putting the finishing touches on a proposed noise ordinance cracking down on round-the-clock low frequency sounds from data centers.