“BEVs [battery electric vehicles] are stacking up on our lots,” the auto dealers stated in the letter. “Last year, there was a lot of hope and hype about EVs. Early adopters formed an initial line and were ready to buy these vehicles as soon as we had them to sell. But that enthusiasm has stalled. Today, the supply of unsold BEVs is surging, as they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships – even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives.”
3:15 p.m. update — A Bealton man died in a plane crash on Sunday.
Virginia State Police responded to a report of a plane crash in Fauquier County. The crash occurred Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, at 3:54 p.m., near Midland Road and Ebenezer Church Road, near the Warrenton-Fauquier Airport.
According to Virginia State Police, a preliminary investigation shows that a single-engine plane was attempting to land when it collided with several trees, which caused it to crash into a field and catch fire.
The pilot, Simmie A. Adams, 62, of Bealeton, Va., was the only occupant. He died at the scene. Initially, police reported two victims in the crash.
No one on the ground was injured.
The NTSB tells us they’re on the scene today, investigating the crash. It doesn’t have information about where the plane took off.
NTSB’s comments to PLN: “NTSB investigations involve three primary areas: the pilot, the aircraft, and the operating environment. As part of this process, investigators will gather the following information and records:
- Recordings of any air traffic control communications
- Radar data (Flight track data)
- Weather reports,
- 72-hour background of the pilot to determine if there were any issues that could have affected the pilot’s ability to safety operate the flight,
- Witness statements,
- Electronic devices that could contain information relevant to the investigation, and any available surveillance video, including from doorbell cameras.
- Aircraft maintenance records
- Weather forecasts and actual weather and lighting conditions around the time of the accident
- Pilot’s license, ratings and recency of flight experience
VDOT: “While snow might not be at the top of most people’s minds right now, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is at the height of preparation for the upcoming winter season. Equipment, materials and staffing are in place and ready to go the moment winter weather arrives.”
“Those traveling in and through the Commonwealth can be confident in VDOT’s preparedness as the seasons change,” said VDOT Chief of Maintenance and Operations Kevin Gregg. “With more than 57,000 lane miles of roadway to maintain across the Commonwealth, our focus remains on the safety of the traveling public, especially during inclement weather. Recent operational improvements mean our crews are trained, experienced and equipped to get the job done when snow arrives.”
Winter Weather Resources and Readiness:
- $220 million set aside for winter weather
- More than 2,300 VDOT crew members, not including additional contractors, available for snow removal statewide
- Currently more than 10,200 pieces of snow-removal equipment, including trucks, loaders and motor graders
- More than 702,000 tons of salt, sand and treated abrasives and more than 1.9 million gallons of liquid calcium chloride and salt brine
- Real-time Progress: Online VDOT Snowplow Tracker
“Across the state, if snow reaches two inches or more, VDOT activates an online snowplow tracking map. Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technology is operational statewide. All VDOT-owned and contracted plows will be equipped with AVL, allowing them to be monitored on the snowplow tracker.”
Virginia State Police:Â “Virginia experienced a 53% decrease in the number of fatal traffic crashes over the 2023 Thanksgiving holiday.? Preliminary data indicates nine people lost their lives over the five-day holiday statistical counting period, compared to 19 fatalities in 2022. In a majority of the crashes, those who died were not wearing a seat belt.”
“During the five-day counting period, which began at 12:01 a.m. Nov. 22, 2023, and concluded at midnight Nov. 26, 2023, nine people lost their lives to eight traffic crashes on Virginia roadways.? The crashes occurred in Amelia, Buchanan, Fairfax, Henrico, Henry, Madison, and Wythe counties, as well as the city of Chesapeake.”
“?To prevent traffic deaths and injuries during the Thanksgiving holiday, the Virginia State Police participated in Operation C.A.R.E., the Crash Awareness and Reduction Effort The 2023 Thanksgiving Holiday CARE initiative led to state troopers citing 4,520 drivers for speeding and 1,840 for reckless driving.??State troopers also arrested 89 drivers for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, and wrote 427 citations for not wearing a seat belt.”
“Overall, state troopers worked 1,359 crashes, a decrease of nearly a hundred traffic crashes compared to the 2022 Thanksgiving holiday.?Of the 2023 traffic crashes, 137 of them resulted in injuries.”
Capital News Service
Virginia is home to the largest data center market in the world, but citizens and lawmakers have urged leaders to temper the onslaught of development and consider the impact.
Data centers have brought hundreds of millions in tax revenue and thousands of jobs to Northern Virginia, and increasingly, other areas of the state. But among environmental groups, there is mounting concern that the rapid growth of the industry might offset climate goals laid out in past legislation.
Data centers are physical locations that power online activity “in the cloud,” according to the Data Center Coalition. The centers support online activities that individuals, governments, organizations and businesses of all sizes do every day, according to the group’s president, Josh Levi.
The growth of the industry shows no signs of slowing. Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a deal with Amazon Web Services in January to establish multiple data center campuses across the state. The company plans to invest $35 billion in Virginia by 2040.
Amazon Web Services filed in September to develop two campuses in Louisa County, including a seven-building data center campus, Lake Anna Technology Campus. The campus would occupy almost 2 million square feet of Lousia County’s land, including about an acre of wetland.
“These areas offer robust utility infrastructure, lower costs, great livability, and highly educated workforces and will benefit from the associated economic development and increased tax base, assisting the schools and providing services to the community,” Youngkin stated about the partnership with Amazon Web Services.
The state also developed a new incentive program to help clinch the deal. An amount not to exceed $140 million in grant money will go toward the company and end no later than 2044, according to the recently passed budget. The grants help with infrastructure improvements, workforce development and other project-related costs. The grant awards $8,642 for each new full-time job and $3,364 for each $1 million of capital investment made the year before.
Money and jobs
The two primary benefits of data centers are local revenue and job creation, according to Levi.
A report by the Northern Virginia Technology Council found that data centers provided approximately 5,500 operational and over 10,000 construction and manufacturing jobs in 2021. The report estimated that data centers were “directly and indirectly” responsible for generating $174 million in state tax revenue and just over $1 billion in local tax revenue around the state.
Every data center proposal in Virginia to date has been approved, according to Wyatt Gordon, senior policy and campaigns manager of land use and transportation with the Virginia Conservation Network.
The high concentration of data centers in the state is a significant problem, according to Gordon.
“If this is going to support global internet traffic, they need to be across the globe instead of just within one region of one state,” Gordon said.
There is no future without data use, Gordon said, but the impacts of data centers need to be studied closely.
“I think our immediate concern is just, how are we making sure that the impacts of these data centers as they’re coming here are really being negotiated in a way that makes sense for Virginia,” Gordon said.
Del. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, and Sen. J. Chapman Petersen, D-Fairfax, worked with the Virginia Conservation Network on a bill this past session to have the Department of Energy study the impacts of data center development on Virginia’s environment and climate goals. The bill failed.
The legislators attempted to pass other bills with measures to regulate where the centers could be built and to employ conditional stormwater runoff management.
“It’s the biggest corporations in the entire world on one side, and then you have Virginia residents and a ragtag group of environmental folks on the other,” Gordon said. “So, I think you know who won.”
Environmental concerns
There are three primary impacts of data centers on the environment, according to Gordon: the space they take up, the groundwater demand for cooling and their energy use.
The facilities set to come out of Youngkin’s Amazon deal, alone, will be the size of 151 Walmart stores, according to Gordon.
“That is massive amounts of land that are currently forests, farmland, wetlands, and are going to be bulldozed and converted into gigantic boxes hosting servers,” Gordon said.
Overall, energy use in Virginia has gone down due to increased energy efficiency, according to Gordon. But data centers are a growing sector of electricity demand in Virginia, according to a report prepared for the Virginia Department of Energy.
Data center electric sales will increase 152% in the next decade, while other sectors will remain mostly the same, according to the Energy Transition Initiative. The forecast does not include projected electricity demand from electric vehicles.
The overall increase in Virginia electricity sales is forecasted to be 32% over 10 years, and accounts for increased energy efficiency.
Dominion Energy filed an Integrated Resource Plan this year that anticipates a higher demand for electricity from data centers than originally planned. Recently, Dominion filed permits for natural gas and coal power plants to meet data center energy demands, according to Gordon.
This contrasts the Virginia Clean Economy Act, according to Gordon, which mandates the state’s two largest utility providers, Dominion Energy and American Electric Power, produce 100% renewable electricity by 2045 and 2050 respectively.
“Despite being the only Southern state to pass such a huge climate law … that could all collapse because data centers are putting such a demand for power that there’s no way to supply them in a timely manner without relying upon dirty energy,” Gordon said.
At present, Dominion Energy is “writing checks that Virginians can’t cash,” according to Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council. The group has looked at data center development in its service region since 2017.
Virginia is compromising its conservation and climate goals to meet in-service dates, with costs of development falling on utility ratepayers, according to Bolthouse.
“We have to, now, meet that in-service date that they committed to and we have to build out this infrastructure with a rate schedule that’s unfair to us because we’re sitting here paying for all of this when it’s benefitting this one industry,” Bolthouse said.
A Dominion Energy representative did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
The utility and data centers negotiate electricity contracts together, then determine an in-service date when the utility will begin providing power, according to Bolthouse.
“The industry needs to wait for us to be able to provide that power in a sustainable manner,” Bolthouse said.
Powering Virginia’s data centers with renewable energy is a realistic goal “over time,” according to Levi. Amazon Web Services, for example, states that it plans to fund 18 solar farms in Virginia that would provide enough energy to power 276,000 homes by 2025.
Though there are many ways companies can pursue clean energy, the challenge is how fast they can provide it, Levi said.
“I think that’s where some of the hand wringing around this issue is really coming from,” Levi said.
Looking forward
Prince William Digital Gateway is the “epitome” of everything the data center industry is doing wrong, according to Kyle Hart, the mid-Atlantic program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association.
“We wouldn’t be where we are today, in terms of broad calls for industry-wide reform, if this terrible proposal hadn’t existed and had never sort of marched forward under a Democratic board majority for the past two years,” Hart said.
The group became involved in the conversation because of data center projects like Prince William Digital Gateway, which would share a border with Manassas National Battlefield Park, according to Hart.
Most recently, the Prince William County Planning Commission voted to recommend denial of all three rezoning applications involved in the Digital Gateway project. The debate moves next to the board of supervisors for a vote.
Hart and Bolthouse offered policy suggestions in a paper that provides an overview of data center development from a land use perspective. They suggested a study on the various impacts of development, a grid impact statement by the State Corporation Commission for all new data center-related power demand requests, and a framework for a regional review board to evaluate these large project proposals.
The data center proliferation in Virginia has outpaced any other state, which ultimately left Hart and Bolthouse without much framework to work off, Hart said. The suggestions are based on what they would want to see.
Elena Schlossberg is executive director for the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, a grassroots effort at the forefront of the resistance against the Digital Gateway. Schlossberg encouraged people to educate themselves on why they should care about the issue.
“You can make a difference by telling your neighbors,” Schlossberg said. “You can make a difference by getting on a bus and lobbying your state legislators that there needs to be some real oversight for an industry that is, up until this point, pretty unregulated.”
The data center debate is apolitical, according to Schlossberg.
“Money knows no ideological boundary, nor does doing the right thing,” Schlossberg said.
Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.
“The report from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), provides a breakdown of energy prices throughout the United States while demonstrating the relationship between big government policies and high energy costs.”
The report comes after Prince William County adopted a sustainability master plan to reduce the effects of climate change by 2025. According to the plan, by 2023, Prince William County will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent and switch to 100 percent renewable electricity in Prince William County Government operations.
Because of the revenue sharing agreement with Prince William County Public Schools, the actual amount in taxes that would possibly need to be raised to cover these amounts would be north of $960 million by 2030 and over $2 billion by 2050, states Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega.
Virginia is on its way to banning gasoline-powered cars by 2045 after Senate Bill 851, passed in 2020, requires the state to switch to 100 percent renewable energy.
Department of Motor Vehicles:Â “All Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) full-service customer service centers will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday from Thursday, November 23 through Saturday, November 25, and will reopen on Monday, November 27.”
“During the closure, customers can still access more than 50 services available on our newly revamped website. As Thanksgiving travel ramps up, DMV reminds Virginians to buckle up to stay safe and arrive alive.”
“Last year during the Thanksgiving holiday, 10 people who were unbuckled died in crashes. DMV urges drivers to make sure you and your passengers are buckled up. Visit our website for more information on seat belt safety.”
“These types of fires peak on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), many home cooking fires involve the stovetop/cooktop with unattended cooking as the common cause of these fires.” Read More
Virginia State Police: “Virginia’s highways and roads are likely to be crowded this holiday season, as people head out for parties, family trips, and visits with family and friends. While time is precious, rushing to get to your destination may end up meaning not getting there at all. Virginia State Police urge motorists to take a moment, assess the conditions, and give other drivers the correct time and space so that everyone arrives safely at their destination.”
“In 2022, there were 24,633 crashes caused by drivers following another vehicle too closely, 11% of all crashes that occurred on Virginia roadways. Last year, seven people died in Virginia traffic crashes resulting from vehicles following too closely.”
“The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles recommends using what is known as the ‘two, three, and four-second rule’ to guide whether you are following behind another vehicle too closely. If you are driving 35 MPH or less, allow two seconds between you and the vehicle in front of you. If you are driving 35 to 45 MPH, allow three seconds between vehicles. Four seconds should be allowed between vehicles for speeds above 45 MPH. These times are for dry surfaces. “
“Drivers driving in wet conditions, drowsy conditions or behind a motorcycle or bicycle should add additional time.”
