This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

Demand for internet access and electronic storage has grown alongside digital technology itself. At the center of that growth are the energy infrastructure and data centers that governments and companies began developing in Northern Virginia in the late 20th century. Today, the region houses the world’s largest concentration of data centers, making Virginia the nation’s digital capital.

That growth has brought major economic benefits for local governments, but it has also divided communities increasingly weary of the facilities’ heavy demands on water and energy, among other impacts.

The commonwealth’s rise as a global digital leader did not happen overnight, said House Technology Committee Chair Cliff Hayes, D-Chesapeake. It was a result of years of persistence, long-term planning and problem-solving.

”This designation for the commonwealth to be the digital capital not only of this country but of the world has taken a lot of stamina, resilience and vision,” Hayes said.

Hayes said leadership also means adapting to new challenges. This year alone, lawmakers passed an entire package of bills aimed at further regulating the industry, while the fight over tax incentives remains largely unsolved.

AOL’s move 

Ashburn’s rise as one of the largest digital infrastructure hubs began in 1997 with the arrival of America Online, or AOL, then the primary internet gateway for many users. Soon after, UUNet/WorldCom and the relocation of the Metropolitan Area Ethernet East, a major internet exchange and traffic hub, helped create unmatched fiber connectivity, turning Loudoun County into a key internet crossroads and destination for other businesses.

Buddy Rizer, executive director for Loudoun County Economic Development, said AOL’s decision to locate in Loudoun helped make the internet mainstream for Americans and anchored the infrastructure that turned Loudoun and Virginia into the world’s leading internet hub.

“You can’t overstate the importance of AOL, right? AOL didn’t invent the internet, but they made it accessible to ordinary Americans at the moment that the commercial internet was starting to take off… by the late 1990s AOL had 20 million subscribers, and roughly half of U.S. homes that had internet were using AOL by 1997.”

Rizer said once Loudoun established core infrastructure and attracted a few anchor companies, growth became compounding: infrastructure drew companies, companies brought more infrastructure and the cycle continued for roughly 20 years.

Data storage and computing explodes 

While data centers have existed in Virginia for decades, the recent rise of artificial intelligence has accelerated demand for the warehouse-like facilities that store and process data around the world.

Ali Mehrizi-Sani, a professor at Virginia Tech, said Northern Virginia had many of the right ingredients to attract the industry even before the state sales and use tax exemption passed in 2008.

“The fact is that we have a lot of customers of data, and that’s really the federal government and their contractors,” Mehrizi-Sani said. “They use a lot of data, so really just proximity to Washington, D.C. has been a main driver of honestly everything in Virginia, including data centers.”

The early development of the internet exchange points in Virginia, combined with large stretches of undeveloped land in Northern Virginia, also helped fuel the industry’s growth. Loudoun County, for example, was far more rural than it is today.

Loudoun recorded 71 operating data centers, the most of any locality in the commonwealth, according to a 2024 study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. Statewide, 131 data centers were operating at the time.

“That’s why you see data centers are coming further south, even to areas like where I live in Roanoke and Botetourt County, essentially in search of land,” Mehrizi-Sani said.

He said data centers have also remained in Virginia because electricity rates are comparatively lower than in other parts of the country. Another major factor is the state’s sales and use tax exemption.

Tax breaks and tax gains

In Loudoun, data center revenue has generated substantial tax income year after year, providing the county with more than $100 million annually to support schools and government services.

The revenue stream — estimated at about $890 million in 2018 — has grown enough that the county has reduced real estate tax rates for homeowners every year for the past decade, according to county officials.

Revenue from data centers has also allowed county leaders to propose reducing the personal property tax rate on vehicles beginning in tax year 2026 and eliminating the $25 vehicle license fee.

In 2008, the General Assembly approved a statewide incentive allowing data centers to avoid the state’s 5.3% sales and use tax, which at the time was estimated to save the industry about $1.5 million annually. Data centers routinely refresh computer equipment and software, the exemption can significantly reduce costs every few years.

Now, however, the cost of the tax break has ballooned to about $1.9 billion annually in foregone state revenue.

While the tax break had previously been extended, and former Gov. Glenn Youngkin sought to continue it through 2050 in his final budget proposal, debate over potentially ending the incentive led to months of negotiations and brought Virginia to the brink of a government shutdown after lawmakers failed to pass a budget until the final days of June.

Some lawmakers argued the industry had benefitted enough from the tax exemption. At the same time, concerns over rising energy costs and environmental impacts prompted legislators to look for ways to reclaim some revenue from the trillion dollar industry.

But Gov. Abigail Spanberger led the push to preserve the tax break, arguing Virginia had “made an agreement” and should not reverse course. The exemption is currently set to expire in 2035 unless lawmakers change it before then.

“We know technology is not bad,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said last month. “We all can benefit from technology, but we, as a government, have not done a good job in managing the regulations and the impact on our communities, and that’s what we’ve got to rein in. But we’ve also got to rein in the fact that data centers – they’re some of the largest corporations on the face of the Earth, trillion dollar organizations – are getting tax exemptions right now.”

While the exemption ultimately remained in the budget, lawmakers approved a new energy consumption tax on data centers expected to bring in a total of $600 million annually, or $1.2 billion over the biennium. The industry will pay 1.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed up to the cap, with any excess refunded at the end of the fiscal year.

Dominion Energy and Mecklenburg, Northern Virginia, and Rappahannock electric cooperatives reported in 2023 that data centers used about 5,050 megawatts of power that year, based on peak-load forecasts, according to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

“What I have found is that some of the businesses coming to our commonwealth, they want to make investments in our communities and in our workforce. The consumption tax, as we’ve conceived of it here in the commonwealth, is one that’s based on fairness,” Spanberger told The Mercury last month.

Lawmakers also approved new water use regulations for data centers in areas designated as water scarce and within the water management area east of Interstate 95.

The changes aim to push facilities away from evaporative cooling systems that consume millions of gallons of water annually and toward more efficient technologies. Also, for the first time, the state will regulate data center noise levels.

The General Assembly also passed bills requiring cleaner backup generators that emit fewer carbon emissions and measures intended to help localities better assess the residential and environmental impacts of proposed facilities.

Public policy 

In 2010, Virginia created a retail and sales tax exemption for data centers, a factor companies have consistently identified as important in site selection.

Loudoun designated large areas for industrial and employment uses where data centers could be built, helping reduce development timelines and support continued growth.

Through successive comprehensive plans, Loudoun also reserved large tracts of land in eastern Loudoun — near Washington Dulles International Airport and the W&OD Trail — for industrial and employment uses close to existing fiber networks and electrical infrastructure. The move ensured a long-term supply of development-ready sites for large-scale data center campuses.

Opposition from residents has grown in recent years, with hundreds of community members attending local government meetings to oppose projects near homes, drinking water supplies and high-voltage transmission lines. Residents have urged lawmakers to impose stronger regulations and seek greater financial contributions from the industry for supporting infrastructure.

What’s next 

Last week, lawmakers ordered a work group to study how the data center tax exemption could be phased out or modified to generate additional state revenue. A report is due in November.

While Spanberger has described the new consumption tax as “fair,” the data center industry disagrees. After lawmakers approved the budget amendments last week, Data Center Coalition CEO Josh Levi said the new tax will “drive away investment and job creation, and tarnish Virginia’s reputation.”

“The message to businesses in all industries is clear — Virginia is no longer a reliable partner,” Levi said in a June statement.

Rizer argued that Loudoun’s and Virginia’s future depends on treating data centers as a foundation for broader technology growth while maintaining a stable and predictable business climate.

“You can’t take success for granted … the principle that made us successful is a predictable, welcoming environment with predictable tax and policy issues,” Rizer said. “The only way that that success can go into the future is by staying grounded in those principles that brought us this far.”

As for federal involvement in an issue that has become a national flashpoint, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who was governor when the tax exemption passed, said states should decide individually how to manage data center growth rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.

“(Data centers are a) global phenomenon, and being a leader in this important area is good for America’s national security and for Virginia’s economy,” Kaine said. “But there are real challenges when it comes to water, power and land use, so local communities must get a say when it comes to how to handle them.”

Virginia has become the state that many others are watching as they weigh to and regulate the growing data center industry. Lawmakers now face balancing the promise of economic investment with mounting concerns from residents pushing back against continued expansion.

After, I headed west, retracing my path up Shooting Creek Road in a rush to spend time on the Appalachian Trail, which I’d hiked from Georgia to Maine six years earlier. That you can spend your day in some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes and still make it to a show or jam by nightfall is one of the underrated features of the Crooked Road.

In the town of Marion, the Wayne C. Henderson School of Appalachian Arts, named for the legendary guitar maker who famously built one of Eric Clapton’s guitars, was hosting a Monday-night jam. Born in Grayson County in 1947, Henderson is such an area icon that a painting of him covers one side of the Skyline National Bank in Independence. This old schoolhouse has been turned into a community hub and arts center. In a former first-grade classroom, I found a dozen people seated in a circle, one person at a time selecting the next song that everyone else then played. Dropping his fiddle to his knee, Jim King, the de facto leader, looked my way and nodded, welcoming a stranger with a smile. His wife, Gert, sat to his right, checking the tuning on her banjo. A bassist stood behind her, another fiddler in turn at his side.

On the drive over, I’d been listening to a set of Smithsonian Folkways recordings by Uncle Wade Ward, a banjo and fiddle player from Independence. He’s been dead for half a century, but his mural remains on a wall there. In those sessions from the early ’60s, he talked about a buoyant fiddle number called “Arkansas Traveler,” one of those “wonderful old tunes…about to fade away.” I’d been at the jam an hour, the sinking sun shining through a bottle of Mountain Dew on the windowsill, when someone asked, “How ’bout we try ‘Arkansas Traveler’?” A young guitarist cued the chords on his iPad, and the fiddle began sawing. Sure, it was wobbly and ragged. It had not, however, faded away.

My last day along the Crooked Road was a rainy Tuesday, and I spent it shuttling between museums. I’d driven through Virginia coal country and McClure, the town where pioneering singer Ralph Stanley was born, then raced two hours southeast to Bristol, getting to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum just before it closed. I teared up when I saw the back of Jimmie Rodgers’s guitar, which read simply “THANKS” in enormous gold letters. It was a note of gratitude to an audience he had likely never imagined when he died from tuberculosis in 1933.

There is only a parking lot now at 408 State Street, right where Bristol splits across Tennessee and Virginia. In July 1927, though, it was home to the Taylor-Christian Hat Company, a building big enough for an ad hoc recording studio set up by the Victor Talking Machine Company. For a few days that summer, musicians rolled in from the surrounding countryside to cut their songs. There was the Carter Family, Ernest Stoneman, and Blind Alfred Reed, all pillars of what has since been called the Big Bang of Country Music. It was that moment, a century ago, when these hardscrabble acoustic sounds began their journey to becoming global exports, when the songs that had once seeped out of these hills began to rush out and form the foundation of country music. It was the moment that made this region’s music famous.

Virginia Tech football embarks on its penultimate road test of the season in late November when it travels to Miami Gardens, Fla., to take on perennial ACC power Miami.

While the Hurricanes haven’t won the ACC title yet — they’ve consistently been near the top, and they won the Coastal Division in 2017 — they’ve been at the forefront of the conference, and this year, they seem to be the lone proven unit that doesn’t have a gaping weakness.

Miami boasts the only top-15 defense on SP+, entering the season with the No. 7 projected deffense. Its offense clocks in at No. 12, which is also tops, while its overall ranking of No. 8 places it 15 spots ahead of Clemson. Notre Dame clocks in at No. 3 overall, but since it isn’t a part of the conference for football, Miami takes the cake for the conference.

That starts under center. Darian Mensah arrives after a hotly contested exit from Duke. Mensah, who projects out as an NFL-level quarterback, tied for second in the nation in both passing yards (3,973) and passing touchdowns (34), while throwing only six interceptions and producing a QBR of 76.6, good for No. 19 in the country.

Mensah isn’t a dual threat quarterback, however. He absorbed 27 sacks last year with the Blue Devils and logged a net-minus-32 rushing yards on 59 totes. He’s on his third school in as many years after coming from Tulane to Duke, and now, from Durham to the Hurricanes. Mensah was named All-ACC Second Team after his near-4,000-yard season — and his passing yard total led the conference, too. He threw for 300-plus yards in six games — including a four-touchdown, 361-yard output against Clemson in a 46-45 win and a 327-yard, four-touchdown contest against Arizona State in the Sun Bowl.

Intriguingly enough, the Virginia Tech-Miami matchup will pit Mensah up against one of his former receivers in Que’Sean Brown, who will likely start at wideout for the Hokies. Brown recorded 846 receiving yards and five receiving touchdowns on 64 catches for the Blue Devils last season.

Mensah wasn’t the only prospect to defect from Duke to Miami. Wide receiver Cooper Barkate is also maing the trek south. Barkate, who’s also on his third school after a prior stint at Harvard, racked up 1,106 receiving yards, seven touchdowns and 72 receptions last season as a Blue Devil, and the returning quarterback-wideout connection should serve the Hurricanes very well.

If that’s not enough, Miami also added Cam Vaughn, a redshirt junior who’s totaled 1,344 receiving yards and nine touchdowns over the past two seasons, which included a season apiece at Jacksonville State and West Virginia. They also brought in South Carolina wideout Vandrevius Jacobs, who totaled 548 receiving yards and four touchdowns for 17.1 yards per catch in 2025.

Oh, and then there’s Malachi Toney. Last season, the then-true freshman led the nation in receptions with 109, finished fifth in the FBS with 1,211 receiving yards and added 10 touchdowns. Moreover, he added 113 rushing yards and a touchdown on 23 totes, went 4-for-7 for 82 yards nad two touchdowns as a Wildcat quarterback and returned 23 punts for 298 yards.

That consistency does not stop when purveying the running back position. Mark Fletcher is back after a 1,192-yard, 216-carry, 12-touchdown season. Over the past three seasons, he’s racked up a daunting 2,313 rushing yards and 26 rushing touchdowns, adding 140 receiving yards in 2025, too.

Miami also returns depth piece Charmar Brown. After a 1,181-yard, 15-touchdown season with North Dakota State in 2024, Brown logged 474 rushing yards and seven touchdowns last season as a Hurricane. Girard Pringle also returns after a 375-yard, four-touchdown output as a true freshman; against NC State, he produced 116 rushing yards (17 carries) and he also added 82 rushing yards (10 carries) against then-No. 22 Pittsburgh in a 38-7 blowout win.

Where Miami may hold a weakness — if it can be called that — is in its front. The Hurricanes lost defensive ends Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor in the first round of this year’s NFL Draft, though they return Ahmad Moten Sr., who logged 31 tackles and 4.5 sacks. Armondo Blount also comes back after a 17-tackle, 2.5-sack season, though the D-line is undoubtedly less proven than a year prior.

When pivoting towards the secondary, one name that jumps out is defensive back Omar Thornton, who comes over from Boston College. Last year, he totaled 82 tackles (56 solo), 5.5 tackles for loss, two sacks and forced four fumbles. Star freshman Bryce Fitzgerald is also back for Year 2 after he totaled six interceptions last season. Xavier Lucas and Ethan O’Connor also return after combining for 15 pass breakups and 13 pass deflections in 2025.

I think Miami should be the No. 1 game circled on Virginia Tech’s schedule this season. It’s also why I believe it’ll be the least-debated of the Hokies’ 12 games. While the Hurricanes haven’t always closed the deal in recent years, Virginia Tech’s relative lack of proven production leads me to side with the known quantity.

The Hokies have not won against Miami since 2019. In 2025, Virginia Tech fell behind 20-3 at halftime and couldn’t recover in a 34-17 loss. The 2024 rendition was far more competitive, coming down to the wire in a hotly-contested 38-34 loss for the Hokies. Virginia Tech initially won on a Hail Mary pass to wide receiver Da’Quan Felton that was overturned following a lengthy review.

Virginia Tech’s clash against Miami will take place on Saturday, Nov. 21, at Hard Rock Stadium, with no time or TV channel announced at the time of writing. Only one game remains after that in the regular season for the Hokies: the Smithfield Commonwealth Clash, coming against archrival Virginia on Saturday, Nov. 28 at Lane Stadium.