Hundreds pack Western Henrico meeting about proposed Goochland data centers

People may not come out to trick-or-treat in significant numbers any more or show up to the neighborhood block party, but they will certainly come out for one thing: data centers.

On Monday evening, the looming threat of hyperscale data centers just across the border in Goochland County brought out several hundred Western Henrico residents to a community meeting at Christ Church Epicopal, where standing attendees overflowed past the entrance doors of the sanctuary and packed the adjoining lobby room.

Longtime county residents said it was the largest and most involved community meeting they have ever seen in Henrico.

“I’ve been in this county living here for 38 years. I’ve been to hundreds of community meetings all over the county,” said one resident. “I have never seen such a good support, such a good attendance [until] coming here today.”

At the sanctuary’s chancel stood a group of five Henrico residents, all moms with young children in local schools, who spent the past few weeks researching what exactly a data center could mean for their community, their environment, their property values, and their families’ health.

“We’re just a group of moms, and this all really started at a bus stop one morning. And then we took to meeting around kitchen tables, and mobilizing after bed times and before soccer games on Saturday,” said Courtney Dare, one of the meeting’s organizers. “We live in a neighborhood that we plan to raise families in for a long time – great schools, great community, a safe place to play outside – and all of that is being jeopardized because of decisions that are being made by another county.”

It was early October when Dare and her fellow neighbors found out about four data center campuses proposed in Eastern Goochland that would be located nearby or right along the county’s border with Henrico.

The application for a 900 megawatt data center just west of Route 288 near Henrico’s Tuckahoe neighborhood – named “Tuckahoe Technology Park” – has already been filed with the Goochland Planning Commission by the developer Tract. The proposal will go through a process of community meetings and formal public hearings before the final vote by Goochland’s Board of Supervisors.

But regulatory filings with Dominion Energy have revealed three informal proposals for data center campuses just north of the Tuckahoe Technology Park: a 600 megawatt center just south of I-64, a 200 megawatt center west of Ridgefield Parkway, and a 1,200 megawatt center stretching east of Route 288 and less than a mile away from the Henrico neighborhoods of Fox Hill, Milhaven, and the Colonies.

Unlike the Tuckahoe Tech Park proposal, these three projects fall within Goochland County’s Technology Overlay District – which county supervisors approved last November – meaning no public hearings or board vote will need to be held on the projects. The proposals fall under “by-right” zoning, since the TOD is zoned for facilities like data centers and nuclear reactors.

The “by-right” aspect makes these three cases much different than past projects nearby Henrico in Hanover County that were voted down by leaders, said Henrico supervisor Misty Roundtree (Three Chopt District) – and much more difficult to defeat.

“Folks feel like, ‘well, if we show up and are loud enough, then we can just simply get them to vote ‘no,’’ and it’s not quite that simple,” Roundtree said. “It is a different situation that folks showing up en masse at the Hanover meetings.”

The situation begs a “million-dollar question,” said Roundtree: Are these by-right projects set in stone, and can anything be done to stop them?

Roundtree said she has had conversations with one of the Goochland supervisors, District 5 representative Jonathan Lyle, who was also present with Roundtree at Monday’s community meeting. Lyle has been open to hearing concerns from both Henrico and Goochland residents about the proposed data centers, she said.

“He’s the only one from the Goochland Board [of Supervisors] that I have spoken to in quite some time,” Roundtree said. “I don’t have a sense from him on what his vote might be on a specific project or what have you, but I do think he is making a concerted effort to inform himself on what people are concerned about and try to address them.”

Many Henrico residents are frustrated by Goochland’s “sleazy” approach to the data center proposals and their cross-county impacts. 

“It’s kind of been kept as a secret. It wasn’t really public knowledge before a few weeks ago,” said Tamara Williams, who lives in Fox Hall. “It was so fast to have to get up and organize. So I’ve sent lots of emails, I pinned stuff on the Fox Hall board, I’ve been writing on Nextdoor. Just trying to get the word out.”

For a senior citizen like Williams, the biggest concern when it comes to nearby data centers is the threat of decreasing property values – her house is her biggest asset. She said that she has friends who live in the Mosaic district of Goochland, near the Tuckahoe Tech Park proposal, who had to sell their house for $150,000 less than the initial price listed after the data center project was publicly announced.

Other residents at the meeting cited concerns about the health and wellbeing of young children in the area. Several Henrico elementary schools, including Nuckols Farm and Gayton, are just about a mile away from the proposed 1,200 megawatt site. For parents, the nearby presence of diesel generators, the constant humming sound from the data center, and the project’s potential negative impact on the Tuckahoe Creek ecosystem prompted questions about what their children's childhoods will be like with a data center in their backyards.

At the meeting, residents cited another Henrico connection to the Goochland projects: Henrico County currently sells 5.25 million gallons of water to Goochland every day under a formal contract. Some attendees suggested that Henrico leaders use that water contract as leverage and potentially stop selling water to Goochland if the data center projects go through.

But Roundtree said that while Henrico has no intent to provide any additional water to Goochland, the county is contractually obligated to continue providing water to Goochland until at least 2036. The decades-long contract requires a ten-year notice to terminate, and Roundtree said that even if Henrico supervisors voted this year to end the contract – or tried to get out of the contract via the courts – it would be an “idle threat.”

“I am not trying to go scorched earth,” Roundtree said. “It’s hard to know what the most effective approach will be because I am trying to be careful not to do anything that, for the sake of waving my first, ultimately results in a worse situation for Henrico residents. It’s an uphill battle.”

Roundtree said that she will advocate to expand project buffers and protections for Henrico residents, since the projects currently focus on buffers for residential areas specifically in Goochland. 

Dare said that she wants Henrico officials to make a formal statement in opposition to the data centers. State delegate May Nivar (D-57th District), who represents Western Henrico and Eastern Goochland, published a letter last week written to Goochland supervisors asking for the projects to be rejected.

Roundtree said that while she is “not opposed” to writing a formal letter of opposition, she does not think it “changes the game” when it comes to Goochland’s final approval of the projects. At several past Henrico Board of Supervisors meetings, Roundtree has voiced that she opposes the projects and their proximity to Henrico residents.

For many of the meeting attendees, the strong turnout of the event alone was enough to give them hope that their efforts will not be futile and their voices will not go unnoticed.

“We know a lot of these people [here] and haven’t seen them in years,” said Pam Leaf, who lives in the Glen Gary neighborhood. “Not since our kids’ elementary school days. And we’ve been here a long time in our neighborhood. It’s just encouraging to see how many people are passionate about this.”

Other attendees noted that regardless of whether local officials listen now, they will have to listen come next November, when both Goochland’s and Henrico’s boards of supervisors will be up for reelection.

“Be prepared to fight,” Dare said to attendees. “There are real human impacts that we’re facing in our backyards, but we are not helpless. We have a clear plan to fight back and to make sure our voices are heard.”