J.W. Swain doesn’t want data centers to be his neighbor in southeastern Stafford County.
That portion of the Route 3 corridor is a bucolic area, he said at a town hall meeting Tuesday night, the kind of place where you see eagles and geese.
“That is the last piece of green left in the county,” Swain said.
And he implored county supervisors not to approve a proposed data center campus that would be less than a quarter-mile from where he lives.
Swain and his wife, Lillian, were among 18 speakers who came to Colonial Forge High School’s library to converse with — and ask questions of — Board of Supervisors Chairman Deuntay Diggs and Vice Chairwoman Tinesha Allen, and School Board Chairwoman Maureen Siegmund and Vice Chairwoman Maya Guy.
The speakers brought up topics including economic development, housing and education, and the elected officials, wearing special “One Stafford” T-shirts for the occasion, answered their queries for more than two hours.
Swain said he knows data centers, where data from electronic devices is stored, can generate a lot of tax money. He just thinks they should go elsewhere.
“There’s got to be other places,” he said. “I don’t want to deny you the money, but what I’m saying is this is a pristine area, if you’ve never seen it before.”
Wonda Grayson, who lives in Embrey Mill, agreed with Swain that the natural environment is important.
“With all the data centers, it’s like Stafford’s losing the one thing that was really important, I think, to a lot of people, and like the gentleman said, the trees are important,” she said.
Diggs and Allen said they couldn’t really comment on the data center project Swain brought up because it’s not officially before the board of supervisors yet.
But Diggs said he’s scheduled to go and hear what an electrical substation sounds like because one is proposed along with the data centers.
Noise is one big complaint about data centers, but Diggs said he was surprised when he visited one that it was quiet.
“Well, I went to visit one of the data centers, and I was like, ‘Where is the noise?’” he said. “Because that’s all we’ve heard is about the noise.”
Diggs also said he’s committed to not allowing data centers to pull water from the Rappahannock River or use groundwater. Some data centers use water to cool the facilities.
Molly Denham, who frequently attends board of supervisors and school board meetings, asked how the supervisors plan to help teachers, for example, afford to live in the county.
She mentioned a project called Attain at Stafford that is proposed for near Stafford Hospital in the general courthouse area. The county planning commission recommended approval of it last week, but the supervisors haven’t voted on it yet.
Denham said current county employees won’t be able to afford to live in what is envisioned as “a higher-end apartment complex.” Diggs agreed that it’s important that the county figures the situation out.
“We want our deputies, we want our teachers, we want our doctors, our nurses, to be able to live in Stafford,” he said.
But accomplishing that goal is tough, Allen said. Some residents don’t want too much more residential development, but the developers can’t offer affordably-priced units unless they build a certain number of regularly-priced units. The economics just don’t work out.
As a result, it’s hard to have affordable housing without greater residential density, she said. Or, as Diggs said, the scenario is like one the supervisors recently saw at budget time.
“Community members were saying, ‘Fully fund the schools — but don’t raise my taxes,’” he said.
Alexavier Allen asked what the county government and schools are doing to protect students of immigrant families in the wake of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Siegmund said county schools are committed to keeping children safe.
“Safety is the number-one priority for the students, staff, anybody who’s in our buildings,” she said.
Diggs, a sheriff’s deputy, said local law enforcement agencies don’t necessarily know when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are going to hold raids. But, he added, the Stafford Sheriff’s Office doesn’t want anyone to live in fear.
“What we don’t want, and the sheriff has been clear about this is, we don’t want communities not to report crime because they’re afraid that we’re going to come in and take them away,” Diggs said.
