Montgomery County officials have confirmed an unknown industry being planned for the Falling Branch Industrial Park is not a data center.
There had been some concern by residents that a requested exception for the height of a building on a 30-acre plot of land would be a data center. The height request to the Town of Christiansburg is over five stories, thus requiring a special permit as it would be over the locality’s limit.
The idea of data centers popping up in southwest Virginia has stirred lots of controversy in the past year.
The Falling Branch development is listed as “Project Beagle.” So far, county and town officials have discussed it behind closed doors with even some of the local government leaders being left out in the cold.
Last week, Gov. Abigail Spanberger unveiled Virginia’s new Data Center Accountability Framework — the most comprehensive and aggressive data center accountability effort in the country.
The governor’s framework is a detailed, wide-ranging plan for the Commonwealth to give communities transparent information and a voice in local approval, protect Virginians from higher energy bills, and enforce the strongest environmental standards for data centers in the nation.
Spanberger said the effort is about holding data center companies, developers and operators accountable.
“This is an incredibly important conversation,” she said. “Because right now, so many of my fellow Virginians are rightfully concerned about the impact data centers are having on their energy bills. They’re rightfully concerned about how so many of these projects have been secretive, devoid of any real transparency. They’re rightfully concerned about the long-term impact these projects have on clean air and clean water. They’re concerned about how rapidly this industry has grown with the rise of artificial intelligence.”
The governor also signed Executive Order 22 to immediately implement many of the core pieces of her Data Center Accountability Framework and create Virginia’s new AI Task Force to address growing concerns and risks posed by the rapid development of artificial intelligence — including workforce displacement, data privacy, and cybersecurity.
The governor said first and foremost, Virginia is putting a stop to the secrecy this industry so often relies on.
“We’re doing that by increasing transparency and giving communities a much more significant voice in the process. Part of that means banning non-disclosure agreements for commercial projects, because oftentimes they keep neighbors in the dark about what’s being planned in their backyards. So many of the decisions being made are done behind closed doors, only to have sprawling complexes pop up seemingly out of nowhere. Communities need a greater voice.”
