By Gary Goldberg, MD
It is really important for every caring citizen of Virginia, the USA, and around the world to fully understand the significant risks of the rapid build-out of infrastructure intended to support Artificial Intelligence. The clearest and most visible risks involve the consequences to our environment and the basic needs of the vast majority of real people: affordable electricity, clean air and clean water. Data centers generate significant amounts of heat and require large amounts of water for cooling, frequently done using cooling towers which converts much of the water into non-recoverable vapor.
Other consequences include the large territories of nature, arable land, and natural vegetation that will be destroyed by the massive building footprints, the long-term negative economic impact on surrounding property value, with relatively few jobs created to maintain the equipment. Unfortunately, data center development has not been regulated in any meaningful way to protect the public interest. Just ask anyone who lives adjacent to ‘Data Center Alley’ in Loudoun county, northern Virginia—which has the highest concentration of data centers in the world — how they feel about what has happened to them.
I found this conversation between Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Alex
Bores— a New York state legislator and a former employee of Palantir—to
be very helpful in understanding what is really at stake. Bores is focused on developing legislation for regulating and slowing down the process through which the Artificial Intelligence ‘transition’ in our society and economy is moving, given the significant potential dangers involved.
The importance of generating and supporting a pause on this process by pushing back against the build-out of data centers cannot be overstated. The downside risks are massive. And it is even more important — particularly for people here in central Virginia — to oppose because we already have the highest concentration of data centers anywhere on the planet, supporting up to 70% of the world’s internet activity! Right now Google has plans to build two massive new data center campuses in the greater Richmond area, along with QTS, with future installations being planned for in the White Oak Technology Park in Henrico County.
There are also several data centers now being proposed for central Virginia and along the I-95 corridor, as shown on this map of existing and planned data centers in Virginia:
Third Act and its allies are now focusing on slowing the expansion of data
centers and advocating for a moratorium to protect the environment, conserve limited natural resources, and preserve residents’ quality of life. The risks involved are substantial. They include the direct and indirect impacts of producing the large amounts of electricity data centers require, the depletion of limited freshwater supplies used for cooling the computing machines, and the harm to quality of life and health of people living near these facilities. The Environmental Health Projectprovides a detailed and alarming overview of these dangers, highlighting the serious short- and long-term consequences of large data center campuses.
If you are concerned about the buildout of data centers and would like to get involved in the effort to protect the environment and all Virginians, contact us at: thirdactrva@gmail.com.