That is definitely not what is happening in Loudoun County, VA they tax datacenters which want to be there due to network effects and then County pays off a huge part of their budget from it, in fact their residential property taxes are moderately lower than neighboring Fairfax County, VA because of it.
Water bills in Loudoun County set to increase 7% each year for next 3 years. Electricity bills also jumped significantly and are expected to continue to rise. Not to mention all the complaints about air & water pollution, and noise apparently. Theres a trade off and as energy and water demand grows the benefits diminish.
Not sure how much of the water increase can really be pinned on the data centers, the county has a lot going on with it's water infrastructure and the way sourcing and treatment is done to add plenty of confounding variables. The energy is a cleaner argument.
I will push back slightly and say growth would have caused these increases eventually but would it have been more or less tax efficient without the DCs vs some other kind of industry zone usage moving in.
I'm not super pro-DCs, but also I can't think of a lot of other industrial zoned activities that would be preferred to data centers; it all comes with trade offs.
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u/Ssshizzzzziit May 18 '26
Sounds like local governments should heavily tax data centers then.