GAINESVILLE, Virginia — In July, Prince William County supervisor Bob Weir died from colon cancer. Weir, who had served on the board of supervisors for two years, represented Gainesville, the area of the county with the most data centers, and he had advocated regulating the supercomputing warehouses. The facilities have sprouted up in this Virginia county at a dizzying speed: Thirty-three campuses have already been built here, and 31 more have received local approval.
When he took office in February 2023, Weir championed the creation of an advisory panel to weigh in on issues of data center growth and noise. When he died, the group was putting the finishing touches on a proposed noise ordinance cracking down on round-the-clock low frequency sounds from data centers.
But in October, before an election for his successor had been held, Weir’s former colleagues on the eight-member board of supervisors held a surprise vote and disbanded that panel, undoing Weir’s legacy and gutting years of work residents had put in to mitigate the impacts of the supercomputing boom. The vote took place without a single member of the advisory group present.
What was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill board meeting turned into a contentious back-and-forth featuring allegations of deceit and the exploitation of Weir’s open seat.
