Loudoun, the richest county in the United States and home to the heart of the internet and artificial intelligence of the world

Now more facilities are being built.

Emily Kasabian was walking with her newborn son down the picturesque street in her Virginia neighborhood earlier this year when she saw something that stopped her in her tracks.

A sign announced the construction of a data center across the street.

Two years ago, when Kasabian bought her home, she said she was relieved to be away from the data centers that dominated other parts of the county.

He said the lack of nearby centers was the reason many of his neighbors decided to live there.

“I never thought they would build a data center across the street,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bought this house if I had known what was happening across the street.”

The reason she, and many others, oppose these massive facilities is not only their imposing appearance (a typical data center may measure 9,300 square metres, turning entire streets into massive industrial blocks), but also some of their side effects.

A massive bright blue glass and concrete data center is located just steps from Greg Perio’s front door in Loudoun County.

Thirteen years ago, when he bought his house, the land was full of green trees and singing birds.

Today, he deals with the center’s effects in real time; What bothers him most is noise pollution.

“There are no birds here anymore,” he said, noting that the hum emanating from the center scares away many animals from his area.

In addition to concerns about noise, area residents expressed frustration with rising electricity bills.

Over the past five years, wholesale electricity costs have risen as much as 267% in areas near data centers, according to research by the data center. Bloomberg News.

However, while most locals the BBC spoke to opposed data centres, the industry has many influential supporters, including US President Donald Trump.

Data centers are essential for fueling the growth of the booming artificial intelligence industry, an area in which Trump has said he wants the United States to be a leader.

His administration announced that it would “accelerate the federal permitting process for data center infrastructure” to usher in a “golden age for American manufacturing and technology.”

The centers can also have a significant impact on local and state economies.

The data center industry annually creates about 74,000 jobs, representing a total of $5.5 billion in labor income for Virginia’s economy, according to a state audit.

Developers realized that the area was the perfect location for data centers: it was full of flat land and affordable prices.

Local authorities quickly joined in and began giving the green light to companies such as Amazon and Google to begin building their facilities.

The region had an added advantage in its quest to create a home for a thriving new industry: the right talent.

“Northern Virginia was actually the center of Internet growth, where AOL was headquartered, so it was natural that they would have the talent and the staff, and it would have been easier to build (data centers) there,” said Thomas Heaslip, a cybersecurity expert.

Since the industry began to boom rapidly at the beginning of this century, regulation of the centers has been limited.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, vetoed state legislation that would have regulated the centers earlier this year.

The industry needs to better communicate the benefits of data centers and listen to people’s concerns, said Dan Dury, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Alliance, an industry group. However, he does not believe more regulation is needed.

Data centers are not going away, he said. They have been and will continue to be the backbone of the 21st century economy.

But some residents, like Barbara Day, say people shouldn’t have to choose between economics and quality of life.

“These data centers are being built faster than we ever imagined, and then we step back to fix them,” he said.

Market reports show that as of August 2025, there were more than 1,100 data centers across the United States, with nearly 400 new ones under construction.

Activists like Kasabian hope to reduce these numbers by pressuring state and local legislatures to delay or suspend projects.

He added: “This is a beautiful, wonderful place to live, but if this type of development continues and they allow it to expand, they will erode what makes it a great place to live, and we will soon start to see the consequences unless we start to significantly correct the course.”

This mother of two knows that she may not win this battle and that data centers may soon appear in front of her ideal suburban neighborhood, forcing her family to make the difficult decision to move.

“The question is, well, do we want to stay in the county? How do we know where to move next so the same thing doesn’t happen to us?”

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