By Michelle Moore, Bridge2Blue
Data centers promise big returns, but the truth is they deliver very little to the communities where they’re built. Most of the jobs they create are short‑term construction jobs that disappear once the building is finished. After that, a mega-data center – the size of dozens of football fields—operates with only a few dozen permanent workers. And as AI and automation expand, even those jobs are shrinking.
The infrastructure and environmental costs passed onto Virginians are enormous. Virginia’s own independent auditors found that data centers avoided $2.7 billion in state sales and use taxes from FY2015–FY2024, and $1.9 billion in 2025.
Tax incentives for companies that contribute little to sustained economic growth make no sense. We can invest in good‑paying, permanent jobs in other ways that do not undermine affordability or burden local communities.
Unlike manufacturing or tech campuses, data centers do not create sustained supplier relationships, attract large numbers of local jobs, or infuse local economies. They operate as sealed, self‑contained facilities that require massive amounts of energy—so large that new high‑voltage transmission lines and substations are often built solely to serve a single site.
Data centers’ use of enormous amounts of electricity and water forces costly upgrades to the power grid, roads, and public services. Those costs fall disproportionately on taxpayers and ratepayers. Families and small businesses end up paying higher utility bills while data centers benefit from tax breaks that can amount to more than a billion dollars a year – savings going to some of the world’s richest corporations.
It is important to keep in mind that these data centers support the same industry that is actively working to reduce jobs. The tech industry is actively cutting labor needs through automation of server maintenance, remote monitoring, AI‑driven cooling and energy management, and robotics for physical tasks inside facilities. Even those few jobs created could be reduced before the data center is built and operational.
Data centers must be treated as the industrial facilities they are. That means subjecting them to full environmental reviews, including assessments of air emissions, noise, water use, and impacts on local ecosystems. It also means requiring limits on water consumption to protect municipal systems and groundwater and ensuring that any pollution or effluence is monitored and controlled.
We can all agree that Virginia needs good‑paying jobs, including union jobs, that contribute to real economic growth and community prosperity. Tax incentives and subsidies should be tied to investments that directly create long‑term employment, not to facilities that generate only a few dozen permanent jobs while saddling Virginians with huge back‑end infrastructure costs and significant environmental consequences.
Data centers should pay their fair share of taxes—no exemptions—just like other companies in Virginia. Infrastructure costs associated with their operation should be paid by the data centers themselves, not by Virginia residents and small businesses. And environmental protections must be enforced so that our air, water, and communities are safeguarded.
These are minimum requirements to ensure that the operation of these facilities does not transfer cost to Virginians.
We should not try to prevent progress, but we should also not allow it to run over us.
