No council vote on Amazon data center; public hearing held open for 30 days

The Warrenton Town Council postponed for at least a month a vote on the data center proposed by Amazon Web Services for Blackwell Road. While there was no formal vote on the matter, council members reached a consensus at a seven-hour meeting and public hearing on the matter Tuesday night, where scores of people registered their opposition to the project. The public hearing — and a potential vote — was continued to 6:30 p.m. Feb. 14 at Fauquier High School.

The postponement was prompted by a request from Amazon, whose representative said they wanted more time to consider new conditions the town wanted to impose. The new language in the conditions would require Amazon to test noise levels from the data center daily at every phase of its expansion, and if the levels did not meet town ordinance requirements, Amazon would have 48 hours to resolve the issue or the expanded section would be shut down.

The postponement provided a measure of relief to residents, activists and some council members who feared the council was heading toward a vote Tuesday night on the 220,000 square-foot data center that has been simmering on the town’s burners since April 2022. “It’s great,” said incoming councilman David McGuire (At-large) on Wednesday, speaking of the postponement. “I think there are more questions, and more answers need to be forthcoming.” 

The postponement of a vote on the Amazon application had been forecast during a four-hour work session Tuesday morning, when at-large councilmen McGuire and Paul Mooney who had both just been seated, as well as Ward 5 councilman Bill Semple, asked for more time to consider the voluminous application – especially since some had only seen a new Amazon noise study that morning. Councilman James Hartman (Ward 4) told the group that he, too, supported their request for more time.

Amazon brought its A-team to the work session for its presentation: eight company officials, two civil engineers, one architect and its noise consultant. It was the first time any Amazon officials had appeared before any town planning or legislative body. At one point, after a presentation by Chris Karner, the noise consultant, Councilman Mooney asked, “Why is this the first time we have heard from this gentleman?”

Also for the first time, Amazon and town officials discussed the potential revenue from the project. Becky Ford, from the Amazon economic development team, told the council that the town could see tax revenues of about $4 million over five years. Interim Town Manager Chris Martino said Amazon could apply for tax rebates – both the town and county allow for three years of rebates for new technology businesses – but Martino noted that the rebates would have to be approved by the council.

Some council members also asked why the data center was desirable for the town. Mayor Carter Nevill pointed out that earlier development plans, including one for 177 residences and a 1,000-room hotel, had collapsed with no progress since. “That land’s been vacant for 28 years,” he said.

One of the key points discussed at the work session was a new noise study from Polysonics, a Warrenton firm hired by Amazon. An earlier and much criticized Polysonics noise study submitted by Amazon Sept. 9 was withdrawn because it was discovered after the fact that it was only preliminary. Karner told the council that this newer study took into account decibel penalties in the noise ordinance for operating at night, for being close to residences and for emitting a “tone.”

He said the study was based on modeling from data center cooling equipment manufacturers, taking into consideration several types of muffling that Amazon planned to apply to the equipment. “We’d be surprised if you heard it during the day,” Karner said.

That presentation led to a discussion by council members on how to write conditions for Amazon that would prevent the noise from increasing as the data center is built out. “How do we make sure that when this comes online it will not get louder and louder and louder?” asked Heroux.

He said he had proposed conditions, which Amazon had later agreed to, that the building be tested during each of 10 phases of development. The idea was, he said, that if at any point the data center violated town noise limits, the center, or the part of it that was in violation, would lose its occupancy permit.

Semple, however, argued that these were complicated matters and should not be crafted during a public meeting. “It’s a very bad mistake to make a decision like this one the fly,” he said. He also objected to the idea that Heroux had met ex-parte with Amazon to present his ideas, which were later embraced by Amazon.

Residents speak against the project

The evening session was to include a public hearing during which citizens could speak on the Amazon application. But due to sign-up errors, many who wanted to speak at the hearing were programmed into a general timeslot for public comments called “citizens time.” Thus, before the actual public hearing, when it came time for town officials and Amazon to make their presentation on the application, the council had already heard from more than 50 local residents who were strongly opposed to the data center. Two spoke in favor of the project.

Town planner Denise Harris presented an overview of the Amazon application, but that bogged down as several council members tried to re-write on the spot the conditions that Amazon would have to comply with to gain approval. Much of that discussion was, once again, about the noise conditions. Heroux and Hamby defended the idea that conditions should be written that require the noise from the data center to be periodically tested and that any offending section could be closed if it did not comply.

Heroux even suggested tightening the condition to require that Amazon fix any noise problems within 48 hours – not the 60 days the company was proposing – or be shut down.

But other council members questioned the whole concept.

Semple asked the town attorney if he could provide assurance in writing that such a provision did not fly in the face of state law, and that it would be enforceable. The attorney, Olaun Simmons, said he thought he could do that.

Still, Mooney thought enforcement would get bogged down in time-consuming civil action.

McGuire noted, “There is no teeth to this. We can’t even get in there to begin with,” he said, referring to the high security that surrounds all data centers.

As the discussion dragged on, Mayor Nevill asked Amazon representatives to give their views. John Foote, the company’s land-use lawyer, stepped up and gave a long speech on the need for data centers and how Amazon had done everything asked of it by the town. He said the proposed noise conditions “make sense” but could be “practically difficult” to apply.

A planner with Walsh Colluci, lawyers for Amazon, Jessica Pfeiffer was more assertive. She said they would need time to look at what the town was proposing. “I don’t think we can do this on the fly,” she said.

With that, the council agreed to consider keeping the public hearing open for 30 days and move toward a vote on Feb. 14. Any people who had signed up to speak on Tuesday but left before their turn will be able to speak in February.

The mayor then opened the actual public hearing on the Amazon matter at 10:33 p.m. Fifty residents came up to speak, though a significant number of them had spoken earlier during citizens’ time. One of the speakers, David Dobson, who owns property in town he is marketing to data centers, spoke in favor of the Amazon project, as he had during citizens’ time. All the others were opposed.

John Lyver of Gainesville, a former NASA engineer who has been doing noise studies of data centers, said the new Polysonics noise report was as flawed as the earlier one that had been withdrawn.

Two people who said they had extensive experience in regulatory legal work said the town would find it nearly impossible to enforce the noise ordinance by shutting down the Amazon site. “It will require an injunction – either administrative, criminal, or civil,” said Chuck Cross, a Warrenton resident and a former U.S. Treasury official. “You will be tied up for years.”

John Benedict, a Middleburg lawyer who said he had “35 years of regulatory experience,” said the idea that the town could shut down a data center by withdrawing an occupancy permit was “naïve.” “You will never get an injunction against them,” he said. “The only way is litigation, which is long and expensive, against an opponent who is infinitely better funded than you.”