A Recent Amazon Cosner’s Corner DEQ Violation Shows Why Responsible Data Center Siting Matters

A recent Virginia Department of Environmental Quality enforcement action involving Amazon Data Services at the Cosner Tech Campus in Spotsylvania County shows, in a specific local case, why residents are asking careful questions about data center impacts in our region.

Of course, this violation does not mean every data center will violate its permits. But it does show that these concerns are not hypothetical for residents in the Fredericksburg region (Stafford, Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, and King George). These are not only lessons from Loudoun or Prince William County, they are now lessons close to home.

According to the DEQ consent order, the Cosner Tech Campus is permitted for 186 non-emergency diesel generators and 15 emergency generators. During a commissioning activity at the facility, a power outage led to the startup of three non-emergency diesel generators. Once those generators reached the temperature where their Selective Catalytic Reduction pollution-control systems were supposed to begin treating the exhaust, the required urea flow was zero for part or all of the run.

Put plainly, the generators ran, but the pollution-control system failed to work in compliance with the permit’s requirements. DEQ determined that the facility exceeded its permitted hourly limits for nitrogen oxides, or NOx.

NOx is a group of air pollutants associated with combustion, including diesel combustion. It is one of the pollutants communities track because it can contribute to air quality problems and respiratory concerns. That is why permit limits, pollution controls, testing, reporting, and enforcement are an of increasing concern. They are part of how communities understand and manage real impacts. With no framework in place to assess the cumulative impact of multiple, massive data center campuses clustered in specific geographic areas, communities are left with the burden of navigating localized pollution and regulatory gaps on their own. Until regulation

shifts from assessing individual projects to including the management of regional clusters, local communities will continue to pay the physical price for our virtual world.

The same DEQ order also identifies opacity exceedances during later stack testing. Opacity refers to how visible emissions are when they come from a stack. In this case, DEQ found that some reported visible emissions exceeded the facility’s permitted opacity limit. Amazon Data Services later documented corrective action, and follow-up testing showed compliance, but DEQ still issued a formal enforcement action and required payment of a civil charge.

ADS Cosner's Corner DEQ Violation.pdf

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The important point here is not that a worst-case scenario took place, but rather, that a fairly ordinary and routine operational situation failed. The facility was being commissioned, a power outage happened, generators started, and required emissions controls did not function as intended.

This alone should make local governments ask harder questions before approving projects that depend on large fleets of diesel generators placed in close proximity to existing residential communities, schools, and critical wetlands.

This example reinforces the need for diligence, oversight, enforceable conditions, and perhaps chief of all, responsible siting. As they say in real estate, location, location, location. Some places may be appropriate for data centers. Others are too close to homes, schools, or sensitive environmental and community resources.

Responsible siting is not opposition to economic development. It is one of the primary ways communities steward the common good together. Responsible data center placement allows local governments to distinguish between places where heavy industrial scale uses can be compatible, and places where they ask too much of the people and neighborhoods expected to live beside them.

As Stafford and other nearby communities continue to evaluate data center campus proposals, this DEQ enforcement action offers a practical warning. Permit compliance is neither automatic, nor assured and real-world operations can and do differ from assumptions. The best time to protect the public interest is before incompatible projects are approved.