Read the full article by Tom Cassauwers (Sierra).
“In suburban Virginia, a cluster of monumental gray buildings rise up around the unincorporated settlement of Ashburn in Loudoun County. Ringed by fencing and humming with AC, this is the new front of the digital economy—a place that has become known as Data Center Alley, the biggest data center hub in the world.
Popular large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and MidJourney—marketed as artificial intelligence—need data centers to work. This has caused a boom in the construction of colossal compounds that require a massive amount of electricity and water. The companies building these compounds have brought billions of dollars in investments to Virginia, along with promises of jobs and improvements to the local economy.
For the Virginians living nearby, however, those promises have largely failed to deliver. Data centers take over the landscape, bring air and noise pollution, and guzzle as much as 2 million gallons of water a day. They also hit people in the pocketbook. According to one recent report, energy prices in states like Virginia have skyrocketed by up to 267 percent in the last five years as utilities have scrambled to build out the infrastructure needed to accommodate the data center boom.”…