A new data center campus could be on its way to Loudoun on a scale never seen before in the county. Likely to be the largest campus in Loudoun if approved, the Spring Valley Technology Park is a proposed 362-acre data center campus located off of Evergreen Mills Road. This project would destroy swaths of mature forests and create excessive impervious surfaces close to Goose Creek. It could add up to 3.5 million more square feet of data center servers, which has the potential to counter climate goals and exacerbate Loudoun’s data center crisis by an order of magnitude.
There’s something else about this project that presents a unique challenge to conservation goals: it could be one of the first projects to be reliant on on-site power generation. This concept is one that has recently become a key talking point in Loudoun as the Board of Supervisors considers and implements methods to check the out-of-control data center industry. Ashburn’s district supervisor Mike Turner recently published a white paper detailing the need for on-site generation requirements for proposed new data centers in Loudoun to avoid further stress to the county’s overworked power grid.
Spring Valley Technology Park location.
Spring Valley has proposed to use “natural gas-powered hydrogen fuel cells that generate electricity without combustion, creating a low- or zero-emissions microgrid,”
to power the site. The application also includes special exceptions to request 3 on-site substations. While this method wouldn’t require additional high-voltage transmission lines to bring in power generated elsewhere, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy has serious concerns about how the applicant is over-emphasizing the “sustainable” elements of the data centers. While hydrogen fuel cells and the additionally proposed battery storage are less intense than, say, a coal-fired power plant, the natural gas required to power the fuel cells is still a fossil fuel – a nonrenewable resource that generates emissions that contribute to climate change. The scale of infrastructure needed to power data center buildings of the size proposed is massive. It’s impossible for the emissions to be low enough to negate the effect of cutting the carbon-sequestering forest and further unbalancing Loudoun’s ecosystems by destroying habitat and creating massive impervious surfaces near Goose Creek.
This project is entirely inappropriate for the location in which it is proposed. This is mature forest habitat on the banks of Goose Creek directly adjacent to the rural policy area and in close proximity to protected habitat and Loudoun’s only nature preserve. It has been well communicated by the public and Board of Supervisors that the industry’s appetite for Transition Policy Area land for data centers is no longer to be tolerated without intense scrutiny. We’ve already seen the effects of continued approvals for data center rezonings, and eliminating an additional 325 acres in one fell swoop would be a detrimental blow to the integrity of the Transition Policy Area as a whole.
At the Planning Commission public hearing on July 23rd, the Planning Commission followed county staff’s recommendation and unanimously voted to recommend denial of the Spring Valley application. The commission listened to the record number of speakers and written comments opposing the application, agreeing that the use and scale is entirely wrong for the location. This move bodes well for the upcoming consideration and decision by the Board of Supervisors, but the fight isn’t over yet. You showed up and it made a difference, let’s keep the momentum!
This application is currently still moving through the development process (see the Land Marc entry in the county database here). In the interim before the project comes before the Board of Supervisors, you can help us by continuing to make your opposition known: add a comment on Spring Valley’s Land Application Comment page. Here’s how:
-
- Go to https://arcg.is/euPSW1
- Type in “Spring Valley Technology Park” next to the Plan Name prompt in the upper left section of the screen and click Apply
- The map zooms to a purple pin labelled LEGI-2024-0074. Click on the pin.
- In the bottom left section (which shows comments made by others), click on the green Submit Comments link or use the LOLA Public Comments link to speak your mind on the issue.
Check out these additional resources for more information:
- Packet from the July 23, 2026 Planning Commission Public Hearing
- Comments submitted by Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy to the Planning Commission July 2026
- County Application Webpage
Contact Trinity Mills tmills@loudounwildlife.org with any questions.
*Reference: Active Infrastructure, “Active Infrastructure’s Post,” LinkedIn, October 21, 2024.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.