Keep data centers away from national parks. That’s the message from Northern Virginians in a new National Parks Conservation Association poll released Tuesday.
According to the poll, 96 percent of the 300 residents surveyed in April would be in favor of their elected representatives taking “a strong stand in support of protecting Virginia’s national parks from the impacts of data centers.”
Northern Virginians polled don’t just overwhelmingly want national parks protected from data centers — they want those data centers kept far, far away.
Eighty-six percent of voters of every stripe support a ban on building data centers within 1 mile of a national or state park, or any other historically significant site.
And 77 percent of Northern Virginia voters want current zoning laws, which prevent data centers from being built in certain places, to stay the same.
“This new polling confirms what we always knew. Virginians care deeply about our national parks and want to see them protected from the looming threat of industrial-scale data center development,” Kyle Hart, the NPCA’s mid-Atlantic program manager, said in a news release.
“Manassas National Battlefield protects powerful lessons and stories from a war that ripped our country apart. Prince William Forest Park protects a rare gem of vast green space along an increasingly urbanized landscape. National parks in Northern Virginia were protected for their precious natural resources and complex history and for the benefit of future generations. There is no place for data centers near our national parks,” he said.
The NPCA poll comes just a few months after the Prince William County Board of Supervisors tabled a vote on the proposed Devlin Technology Park data center in Bristow. At that February meeting, residents vociferously opposed building data centers near their homes and schools.
The vote had been rescheduled for March 7 — but it got kicked down the road “indefinitely,” according to Brentsville Supervisor Jeanine Lawson.
The NPCA commissioned TargetPoint Consulting to conduct the survey of residents living in Alexandria, Fairfax City, Falls Church, Manassas, Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William, and Stafford counties. Three hundred interviews with registered voters were conducted online from April 13 to April 17. The margin of errors is +/- 5.7 percent.
Feature photo of Manassas National Battlefield Park courtesy Zack Frank/stock.adobe.com
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