Virginia data centers: Loudoun, Fairfax and Richmond votes…

Virginia has more data centers than any other state, and for most of the last decade the fights over them were local and lost. That changed this summer. Between July 22 and September 1, the state's largest data center county voted to draft a pause, its most populous county set a hearing on a substation that a congressman has asked it to deny, two more counties asked the governor for a statewide moratorium, and the governor's office said no. Three of the votes that follow from all this land in the next five weeks.

This post is the calendar, with one caveat repeated throughout: in Virginia a "moratorium" is a word the county attorney will correct, and the difference matters to anyone planning to quote one at a hearing.

September 15 — Loudoun County: pause options

On July 22 the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors passed Supervisor Juli Briskman's motion, 6-1-2, directing the county attorney to return in September with options for pausing new data center applications while the county finishes its data center standards, per Loudoun Now. Supervisor Kristen Umstattd voted no; Supervisors Kershner and Letourneau were absent.

The same report carries the limit. County Attorney Leo Rogers told the board it is not legal for the county to enact a moratorium on data centers. What it can do, he said, is "pause" legislative applications — rezonings and special exceptions, the ones that need a board vote — for up to a year. Administrative applications, such as site plans on land already zoned for the use, cannot be paused, because state code sets the review clock.

That distinction is the whole story of Amazon's newest Ashburn filing. In March Amazon Data Services bought George Washington University's Ashburn campus for $427 million, and county economic development director Buddy Rizer told WTOP that "at no time has the Board of Supervisors envisioned data centers on that property." In late July Amazon filed a site plan for four data center buildings on the 122-acre campus, per Northern Virginia Magazine. At an August meeting the company presented the plan, called Bridgefield Tech Center, as roughly 800,000 square feet, and residents and Briskman told WTOP the application relies on 1972-era zoning to proceed as a site plan, with no Planning Commission review, no public hearing and no board vote. If that reading holds, it is exactly the kind of application a Loudoun pause could not touch. Whether it holds is the fight; the county says the site is not by-right. The dossier is here.

October 6 — Loudoun County: the 23 grandfathered projects

There is a second Loudoun item, and it is easy to confuse with the first. Last year the board required new data centers to go through its updated rules and a public hearing, but 23 projects already in development and not yet built were exempted. Briskman and Supervisor Laura TeKrony want those 23 put through the same regulations, hearings and a final board vote. On September 1 the board delayed that vote and asked the county attorney to review the proposal to avoid lawsuits, according to FOX 5. It returns October 6.

Read the two items together. The September 15 vote is about applications that have not been filed. The October 6 vote is about 23 that were approved under the old rules. A resident who wants either should say which one.

September 24 — Fairfax County: the Plaza 500 substation

Fairfax rewrote its data center zoning two years ago. The ordinance amendment adopted September 10, 2024, per the county's own release, requires 200 feet between a data center building and an adjacent residential lot line, 300 feet for backup generators, a mile from any Metro station, full enclosure or screening of mechanical equipment, and noise studies before and after construction. A companion amendment for electrical substations, adopted in December 2025, sets a 100-foot residential setback, a 12-foot solid wall and a 55 dBA nighttime limit at residential property lines, per the county's release — while leaving substations by-right in industrial zones.

Which is why the Plaza 500 fight in Lincolnia runs through a 2232 public facility review rather than a rezoning. Starwood Capital's data center campus is by-right under its industrial zoning; the substation Dominion Energy needs to power it is the only piece with a public process. Rep. Don Beyer wrote to the Planning Commission on July 30 asking it to deny the substation permit, saying data center infrastructure "should not be built in residential areas where its scale and likely impacts are fundamentally incompatible with the character and quality of life of adjacent neighborhoods," per his office. The Planning Commission's review is scheduled for September 24 at 7 p.m.; the dossier has the full timeline back to the 2024 SCC transmission case, and the Fairfax community page has all ten supervisors' district inboxes and the county's speaker sign-up rules.

The ask that Richmond turned down

On July 30, state Sen. Glen Sturtevant wrote to Gov. Abigail Spanberger asking her to use executive authority for an immediate moratorium on new data center approvals while the state assesses its grid, water and infrastructure, per Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Sens. Richard Stuart and Russet Perry separately asked for a special session on groundwater, per NBC4. Two county boards joined them: Spotsylvania adopted a resolution 4-2 on August 11 backing Sturtevant's request, per WJLA, and on September 1 Stafford's board directed staff to draft letters asking for a special session and, failing quick legislation, a temporary pause on new large-scale approvals, per Potomac Local.

The governor's office answered on August 11. Its statement to The Progress-Index, as reported by Virginia Lawyers Weekly, said the administration's regulatory approach "supersedes any effort to block them from being developed," pointing to the new consumption tax and an SCC directive on transmission costs. No pause. The site's state row records it as rejected.

What the state did instead

Two things, and both are worth more at a hearing than a moratorium request that was declined.

First, the rate class. On November 25, 2025 the State Corporation Commission issued its final order in Dominion's biennial review, case PUR-2025-00058, creating rate class GS-5 for customers demanding 25 megawatts or more, effective January 1, 2027. Per the SCC's release, those customers must pay minimum demand charges covering at least 85% of their contracted transmission and distribution demand and 60% of generation demand — the point being that a campus that reserves capacity and never uses it still pays for the wires built for it. The same order cut Dominion's rate request: residential bills rise $11.24 a month in 2026, 23.7% less than the utility asked for.

Second, the legislature. Of 61 data center bills filed in the 2026 session, 15 reached the governor, per MultiState. They include HB 153, a permit process for facilities of 100 MW or more with sound assessments within 500 feet of homes and schools and locality assessments of water, agriculture and historic resources; SB 553, which requires annual water consumption estimates in rezoning and permit decisions; and HB 1393, directing Dominion to petition the SCC for rates that recover new generating-capacity costs from 25 MW customers. The governor's July 6 release says she signed the generator, local-assessment and ratepayer measures, but it names no bill numbers, so confirm each bill's final status on the legislature's information system before quoting one.

What to do with this

If you live in Loudoun, the September 15 and October 6 items are different votes and the board's contact line is one number: 703-777-0204, with all nine supervisors listed on the community page. If you live in Fairfax, the September 24 hearing is at the Planning Commission, not the Board, and you sign up with the Commission. If you live anywhere else in the state, the strongest sentence available to you is not "the county should pass a moratorium" — the county attorney will explain why it cannot — but "the applicant should be required to disclose its contracted demand under GS-5 and its water estimate under SB 553 before this board votes."

Virginia Has Three Data Center Votes in the Next Five Weeks. Here Is What Each One Can and Cannot Do.