Our position
The rules we're asking for
Opposition that only says no is easy to set aside. So here is the specific thing we want written into the zoning ordinance.
The premise
How do you stop a data center?
You protect the energy grid, the environment and animals, and the people — by writing strict requirements a data center must meet before it can be built. Where the state will not act, federal protections for endangered species provide leverage a locality can use.
Start here: Data centers should have their own zoning classification and their own zoning rules, rather than being permitted as an ordinary industrial use.
How to read this
This is an opening position, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Some items here are more aggressive than what a county would ultimately adopt, and some would need legal review before they could be enforced. That is the point of publishing it. When a developer's own draft becomes the starting document, everything that follows is a negotiation down from their terms. A published resident position moves where the middle sits.
Protect the environment and animals
Water is the county’s stated top concern, and this watershed carries federally protected species. Study first, build second.
- Require all water and cooling systems to use closed-circuit, recycled, non-potable water.
- Allow no access to the public water supply.
- Require a five-year study of environmental impacts to the local water supply and to indigenous flora and fauna.
- Require a five-year study covering every endangered or threatened species in the affected area.
- Require that any mitigations identified by those studies be implemented before work or further approvals may continue.
Species that must be covered by the study
- Roanoke Logperch (Percina rex) — Federally Endangered
- James Spinymussel (Pleurobema collina) — Federally Endangered
- Green Floater (Lasmigona subviridis) — Federally Threatened
- Orangefin Madtom (Noturus gilberti) — State Threatened / Highly Imperiled
- Small-anthered Bittercress (Cardamine micranthera) — Federally & State Endangered
- Virginia Cup-plant (Silphium connatum) — Globally Vulnerable
Federal listings attach protections that do not depend on state or county preference, which is what makes a species study one of the most durable conditions a locality can require.
Protect energy and infrastructure
JLARC found that new generation and transmission built for large customers raises system costs for everyone. The county should make the developer carry what the developer causes.
- Require all substations and power upgrades to be paid for by the builder, then leased from the county on a 99-year term with built-in annual increases based on usage and inflation.
- Require data centers to subsidize county power bills as a condition of grid access.
- Require construction truck routes to be pre-planned and restricted to designated roads.
- Require those roads to be repaved at the data center’s expense upon completion.
- Require annual water pressure and quality testing for all public water within 10 miles of the site during construction.
- Require annual testing of a 100-well sample of private wells within 20 miles of the site during construction.
- Require all testing to be performed by an independent private company, with results published at a county meeting or town hall.
Protect people
Residents should hear from a developer directly, on the record, before any negotiation begins — not after terms are already set.
- Require any applicant to attend a county meeting in open public forum, with press permitted, and take questions before any discussions — even initial ones — take place.
- Require a five-year study of mental and physical health impacts on residents within a five-mile radius.
- Require the data center to accept responsibility for future health issues of residents in the immediate and extended area, including those on private wells.
- Require construction to use local contractors, or contractors from one to two counties over.
Protect heritage
Henry County already has large industrial buildings standing empty. Directing data centers into them protects open land and gives the county a defensible position: business is permitted, on our terms.
- Require data centers to use existing commercial and industrial real estate rather than new construction.
- Permit large existing factory buildings to be used to create a distributed, mesh-network data center.
- Create a moratorium on all new building construction for data centers in Henry County.
- Create a retrofitting code that enforces historical remodeling and does not allow building exteriors to be significantly changed — only restored.
- This pushes data centers into existing buildings: if a developer genuinely wants to build here, they use what is already standing.
Ask for these by name.
You do not need to ask for all of it. Pick the two or three requirements that matter most to you, name them specifically, and send them to your supervisor. Specific asks are much harder to file away than general opposition — and they give a supervisor something concrete to carry into a Planning Commission conversation.