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The article details why it wasn't so basic here. Loudoun County allows datacenters to be built by right without a hearing, because they were understood to be (a

The article details why it wasn't so basic here. Loudoun County allows datacenters to be built by right without a hearing, because they were understood to be (and IME still usually are) very low-impact on the neighbors. The gas turbines were approved as a temporary power source, but then the local power company Dominion said "temporary" would have to last for years longer than planned. Now they're changing the rules for datacenter approvals to ensure that projects that might end up producing this kind of impact will get the scrutiny they need.

mindslight 8mo ago
The fundamental problem is that adjusting the regulations for new operations still delivers no equitable relief for people around the site that was let through. An industrial operation shouldn't get an indefinite pass of grandfathered use for finding tricks in the current regulations. Rather the turbines should be shut down in short order (~weeks), and then owners can figure out how to proceed with the foreseeable contingency - wait for the grid operator (or properly incentivize them), deploy their own solar and batteries or some other type of power generation that doesn't produce noise and air pollution externalities, and so on.
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
  The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the county is liable for the costs. You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in their FAQ (https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-business-services/data-center-requests https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-business-servi...), providing power to a large datacenter is itself a substantial construction project, requiring its own permits and specialized components. It's not just a matter of paying enough to get some guys working overtime.
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    > doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone Talking about motivations would seem to be a smokescreen, a politician still trying to grease the wheels to allow the project to continue despite the harm to local residents. The point is that any engineer overseeing the deployment of turbines would have said "these things are loud" - it's an externality eminently foreseeable by the owner. And yes, my point is that the theories of liability that would make the county liable for any of these costs need to be drastically curtailed. The responsibility for a datacenter owner trying to force their externalities onto existing land uses and failing should rest on the datacenter owner, not on the people whom they attempted to harm.
    - phil21 8mo ago
      Yes, we should definitely increase NIMBY regulation by retroactively changing the rules on industrial development. The US is doing such a great job at building such projects already. No thanks. Instead lets fix our inability to build a thing in this country by reducing NIMBY regulation so things like power generation can be built where it makes sense, and we are allowed to do things like build long distance transmission lines again. Also start funding these societal-level projects like our grandparents and great grandparents did to invest in our futures. No datacenter operator wants to deploy their own power plants. It's due to the inability for anyone to get anything done that is not directly under their control. You would be waiting decades for projects to happen otherwise, like many have. Utilities have abdicated their responsibility to build for the future, and regulators have let them. Just like anything infrastructure related in the country. You are now seeing the direct impacts of this, and they will continue to increase regardless of if the cause is AI datacenters or whatever other popular thing we want to argue about next.
      - mindslight 8mo ago
        It's only "retroactively" changing "the rules" because "the rules" are an instance of regulatory capture limiting the policing of externalities to only ones that have been enumerated. Otherwise the general principle is that if you cause harm to other people, you are responsible for that harm. And industrial noise at all hours of the day is harm. You'll get zero argument from me about the need to build more power plants and transmission lines. But this of course must be done with proper compensation to those affected, not just a regulatory giveaway after finding some disenfranchised area. In fact one might say that such regulatory giveaways have artificially lowered the expected cost of building a new plant below the actual cost, thus discouraging investment at the true cost. You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.

mindslight 8mo ago

The fundamental problem is that adjusting the regulations for new operations still delivers no equitable relief for people around the site that was let through. An industrial operation shouldn't get an indefinite pass of grandfathered use for finding tricks in the current regulations. Rather the turbines should be shut down in short order (~weeks), and then owners can figure out how to proceed with the foreseeable contingency - wait for the grid operator (or properly incentivize them), deploy their own solar and batteries or some other type of power generation that doesn't produce noise and air pollution externalities, and so on.

SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the county is liable for the costs. You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in their FAQ (https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-business-services/data-center-requests https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-business-servi...), providing power to a large datacenter is itself a substantial construction project, requiring its own permits and specialized components. It's not just a matter of paying enough to get some guys working overtime.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  > doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone Talking about motivations would seem to be a smokescreen, a politician still trying to grease the wheels to allow the project to continue despite the harm to local residents. The point is that any engineer overseeing the deployment of turbines would have said "these things are loud" - it's an externality eminently foreseeable by the owner. And yes, my point is that the theories of liability that would make the county liable for any of these costs need to be drastically curtailed. The responsibility for a datacenter owner trying to force their externalities onto existing land uses and failing should rest on the datacenter owner, not on the people whom they attempted to harm.
  - phil21 8mo ago
    Yes, we should definitely increase NIMBY regulation by retroactively changing the rules on industrial development. The US is doing such a great job at building such projects already. No thanks. Instead lets fix our inability to build a thing in this country by reducing NIMBY regulation so things like power generation can be built where it makes sense, and we are allowed to do things like build long distance transmission lines again. Also start funding these societal-level projects like our grandparents and great grandparents did to invest in our futures. No datacenter operator wants to deploy their own power plants. It's due to the inability for anyone to get anything done that is not directly under their control. You would be waiting decades for projects to happen otherwise, like many have. Utilities have abdicated their responsibility to build for the future, and regulators have let them. Just like anything infrastructure related in the country. You are now seeing the direct impacts of this, and they will continue to increase regardless of if the cause is AI datacenters or whatever other popular thing we want to argue about next.
    - mindslight 8mo ago
      It's only "retroactively" changing "the rules" because "the rules" are an instance of regulatory capture limiting the policing of externalities to only ones that have been enumerated. Otherwise the general principle is that if you cause harm to other people, you are responsible for that harm. And industrial noise at all hours of the day is harm. You'll get zero argument from me about the need to build more power plants and transmission lines. But this of course must be done with proper compensation to those affected, not just a regulatory giveaway after finding some disenfranchised area. In fact one might say that such regulatory giveaways have artificially lowered the expected cost of building a new plant below the actual cost, thus discouraging investment at the true cost. You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.