Opinion: The top 10 BOCS priorities for Prince William

Since this Board of County Supervisors took office in January, 2020, Ann Wheeler has marshaled her fellow Democrats on a determined path to open Prince William County to the data center industry with little due diligence to their impacts on the environment or the residents.

Ask yourself, is this why you chose to live in Prince William County?

• Industrialization to rival northern New Jersey.
• A new cross-county truck route from I-95 to Dulles airport.
• More than twice as much data center capacity as Loudoun County.
• Data center facilities directly adjacent to homes and schools.
• Proliferation of ugly new power lines and towers.
• Increased water pollution risk to the Occoquan Reservoir.
• A 60% tax discount to the world’s largest and most profitable big tech corporations.
• Infrastructure costs resulting in increased property taxes, rents, meal taxes and consumer energy bills.
• The world’s highest concentration of noisy, polluting, industrial diesel generators.
• Degradation of nationally-renowned historic areas, state and national parks and African American heritage sites.

Chair Wheeler would claim that this list does not reflect her vision, but her actions tell a different story in the proliferation and pace of Data Centers approved in the past three years.

Without the introduction of some semblance of sanity, this vision will surely become a long-term economic drain and enduring nightmare for the residents of PWC.

We must stop this march to unchecked industrialization and return to a more balanced and compatible approach to civic planning.

Paula Daly
Gainesville

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