On Thursday evening, dozens of Goochland residents donned red t-shirts and held signs that spelled out their displeasure with the idea of multiple data centers being built in the county’s technology overlay district that butts up against Mosaic, a 55+ neighborhood that hosts over 500 homes.

“We want to make sure that everyone understands that we don’t want data centers in Goochland,” resident Cynthia Haas said outside Goochland High School, where data center developer Tract presented its plan to construct several data centers on 870 acres in the rural central Virginia county.

Tract specializes in land acquisition and getting sites “shovel ready” for data center construction. The group secures permits for companies to either purchase land to build or lease out data centers built by Tract’s sister company. 

The company is proposing a 900 megawatt, multi-facility development in the Tuckahoe Technology Park, a controversial plot that was rezoned for this kind of development last year and is at the center of a lawsuit.

At the meeting, Tract representatives did not present a definitive number of data centers that could be developed on the site if their permits are approved and the land is prepared. 

When discussing the project’s potential environmental impacts and the construction process, Tract’s director of entitlements Kara Bowyer provided an example of 12 potential data centers.

Among their chief concerns, residents questioned how the company would handle noise pollution, diesel generators near homes, transmission line placements, and water use. 

Tract also works with the utilities to add data center sites to the power grid connection queue, a process that Dominion Energy said can take up to seven years. 

Bowyer told meeting attendees that most data center companies won’t be interested in the land until about 18 months out from the power connection. Construction on the campus itself would begin as soon as final approvals are given.

The project would require the zoning of some parcels within the technology district to be changed from agricultural to industrial, another pain point residents voiced. Many attendees said maintaining the area’s rural character is a priority for them.

In defense of those points, Bowyer pointed to the county’s comprehensive plan, which they said earmarked the area “for economic development for nearly 50 years.”

“So this is the place in the county that your government has decided is the best place for this type of growth,” Bowyer said.

Goochland’s government also requires a pre-application meeting to allow the company to engage with the public before the application review process begins, which is the origin of Thursday’s meeting.

Tract is still tweaking the full development plan before it submits the application for a conditional use permit to the county. 

In response to some of the community concerns, the company has committed to using air cooling, rather than evaporative cooling, for the computer systems. This would significantly reduce the water usage for the data centers, but air cooling requires far more power, which would be a further strain on the state’s electrical grid.

At the meeting, Bowyer said the company would ensure backup generators would be 1000 feet away from the Mosaic residences and 500 feet from residential structures in other parts of the technology district. 

Those promises were met by boos and angry murmurs from the crowd inside the high school’s gym. 

Bowyer suggested that Tract’s data centers would be able to rely on power infrastructure supporting another major development nearby. The data center complex would be just as beneficial to the county’s tax revenue and local employment rate as the forthcoming Eli Lilly pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, Bowyer said.

But residents are not sold on the two projects being comparable when it comes to permanent jobs for the area. The drug maker’s project is slated to create 650 permanent jobs, developers said last year, equaling $5 billion in investment in the state’s economy. 

“Eli Lilly is bringing an extraordinary number of people to work in their plant,” Haas said. “It’s going to be a really good business. Data centers, on the other hand, the negativity surrounding them is huge.”

Tract was dealt a blow recently in Hanover County, where a similar proposed data center campus was rejected by county supervisors after fierce local opposition, according to WTVR. That result has emboldened Goochland residents to fight back against Tract’s latest venture in Virginia, some attendees said.

“When someone tells you that these data centers are inevitable, I want you to remember something: We were told the exact same thing. We were told the decisions had already been made, and it was a done deal,” said Holly Manke, a member of the anti-data center group Friends of Hanover.

The Mosaic Home Owners Association passed out a list of questions they want Tract to answer before the formal conditional use permit is filed. The list includes queries about impact studies on the years-long construction expected, public health impact studies on sound and pollution and the number of back up generators.

There is no timeline yet of when the formal application will be filed or when county supervisors will begin their official review of the proposal. Residents can learn more about the proposal on the county website.