A third Amazon Web Services data center could be coming to Louisa County, the Engage Louisa newsletter reported on June 4.
Last month, the tech giant filed an application to construct a multi-building data center on 1,370 acres just north of the Northeast Creek Reservoir in central Louisa. The center buildings themselves would cover up to 7.2 million square feet, or about 165 acres — the size of about 125 regulation football fields. For another size reference, Charlottesville’s McIntire Park is about 150 acres.
The land is privately owned by former Louisa District Supervisor Eric Purcell and a few members of his family, and is currently used for timber production.
Data centers are large, warehouse-like buildings that hold many rows of computer servers that store and process digital information. They’re used for everything from email to cloud storage, smartphone apps and artificial intelligence. And as more aspects of life go digital, demand for these centers is increasing.
Debate over the pros and cons of data centers have heated up in Virginia in recent years, the Virginia Mercury reported in May 2024. Some say that data centers can be financially beneficial to a locality by adding jobs and tax revenue, while others say that the effects the centers have on the natural and built environment, particularly the strain on electrical and water infrastructure, negate those benefits.
Amazon is already building two other data centers in Louisa County. This interactive map from Piedmont Environmental Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization, shows all existing as well as planned data centers throughout Virginia.
Read more about AWS’s latest proposal in Engage Louisa.
Take Action
Amazon Web Services and the Louisa County Community Development Department is hosting a neighborhood meeting about the proposal Wednesday, June 11 at 4 p.m. in the Public Room at the Louisa County office building, located at 1 Woolfork Ave. in Louisa. The Louisa County Planning Commission could consider the application as soon as its July 10 meeting, Engage Louisa reports.
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