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Sterling, Va. residents press Loudoun County over gas-turbine data center running off-grid next to homes
VA
Data Centers
April 21, 2026
Source: Loudoun Now / Loudoun Times-Mirror, April 21, 2026
Residents near the Vantage II data center in Sterling, Virginia are pressing Vantage Data Centers and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors over round-the-clock noise and air-quality impacts from eight natural-gas turbines running as a microgrid — powering the facility off-grid while the serving utility works through the interconnection queue. The site, along Glenn Drive, was approved in 2023 under a zoning definition that folded “associated utility infrastructure” into the definition of a data center, which allowed Vantage to substitute the gas turbines into one of three approved buildings without additional review.
Kasey Hatch lives in a townhouse about a half-mile from the Vantage II site. She told Loudoun Now the humming is audible inside her house, keeps her awake, and has pushed her to take sleeping medication and wear earplugs at home. “As soon as the weather started getting warmer, the days started becoming more frequent where the noise is just super, super loud, like intolerably loud,” she said. Loudoun's noise ordinance caps ambient levels at 55 decibels; Supervisor Koran T. Saines (D-Sterling) told Loudoun Now that county zoning staff has conducted multiple certified-equipment readings and that the average has “never exceeded 55 dBA at the residential property adjacent to Vantage.” Hatch, connected through Reddit and WhatsApp to experts teaching her to take her own readings, says that on an 87°F day she measured 70 to 80 decibels at her home. The gap between the two measurement regimes — how staff isolate “only the turbine sounds” from airplanes, traffic, lawn equipment, and barking dogs, and how an ambient reading at a resident's property compares — is now the active dispute.
The Piedmont Environmental Council hired EmPower Analytics Group to evaluate fine-particulate emissions from the on-site power system. Michael Cork, who conducted the study, estimates the turbines could cause $53 million to $99 million per year in health-related damages. The estimate is based on the facility emitting at the maximum allowed levels under its permit, not on measured emissions; most of the projected pollution travels east on prevailing wind patterns. Cork stressed the finding is a population-level estimate, not a prediction for any specific resident. Vantage Vice President of Global Marketing Mark Freeman said the on-site power plant is fully permitted through the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, is in compliance with the county's zoning ordinance, and “consistently operates well below all applicable emissions limits.” Freeman said Vantage is working with third-party engineers to explore additional sound mitigation.
Loudoun's Board of Supervisors has already closed the specific zoning loophole that allowed the turbines to be added. The Board excluded “associated utility infrastructure” from the data-center definition, required a special exception for power-generation facilities, and adopted a rule that new data-center applications must be approved by the Board rather than by county staff. Those changes are prospective — Vantage II continues to operate under the 2023 site-plan approval. Saines is convening a county work group to review authority, options, and potential recommendations, including regulation of tonal noise, which the current zoning ordinance doesn't cover. Del. David Reid (D-28) has proposed dedicating county surplus funding to analyze and mitigate the impacts; those surpluses reached $194.4 million in FY 2025 and $259.6 million in FY 2024, largely from data-center revenue. Loudoun projects $1.3 billion in data-center tax revenue for FY 2027.
What You Can Do
Loudoun residents affected by noise or air quality: Submit complaints to Loudoun County Zoning Enforcement for noise and to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for air emissions. Reports on the record are what trigger site inspections and form the evidence base for any future enforcement or permit modification. Contact Supervisor Koran T. Saines's office (Sterling District) about attending the planned Vantage town hall.
Read the EmPower Analytics study: The Piedmont Environmental Council commissioned the fine-particulate-matter analysis cited above. The methodology — modeling at permitted emission levels rather than measured — is a standard public-health approach and is the kind of analysis any community hosting an off-grid or behind-the-meter gas-fired data-center generator can replicate. PEC (pecva.org) is a useful point of contact.
For communities elsewhere: check your local zoning definitions now. The specific language that let the Vantage turbines in — “associated utility infrastructure” rolled into the data-center definition — is not unique to Loudoun's 2023 ordinance. Review the data-center definition in your zoning code. If it folds utility infrastructure, generation, or “accessory” power equipment into the principal use, an applicant may be able to add gas turbines or other on-site generation without a separate public hearing. The Loudoun fix — excluding that language, requiring a special exception for power generation, and moving approvals to the elected board rather than staff — is a three-part template worth bringing to your planning commission.
Virginia residents: follow the Board's work group and Del. Reid's proposal. The work group Saines convened is the venue where future-Vantage questions will be answered. Del. David Reid (D-28) is the sponsor of the surplus-funding proposal. The Virginia General Assembly session calendar and the Loudoun Board's legislative committee are the points of contact.
Ask about tonal noise and octave-weighted limits: Hatch's most specific procedural ask — that the county adopt per-octave limits and give dBC readings the same weight as dBA — is a technically meaningful change. dBA weighting suppresses low-frequency noise, which is precisely the frequency range gas turbines produce. Any jurisdiction writing or revising a noise ordinance that may apply to data centers should ask whether dBA alone captures the actual nuisance.
Community Takeaway
The Vantage II fight is the most important operational data-center case in the country right now because it puts on record what “off-grid” actually means at scale. Data-center operators facing PJM-region interconnection queues that stretch four to seven years are increasingly proposing behind-the-meter gas turbines to bridge to grid connection. “Bridge” is the operative word — the 2023 Vantage approval specifies that the turbines run until the utility has the capacity to connect the site to the grid. There is no fixed end date on that condition, which means the 24/7 operation continues until Dominion Energy completes transmission upgrades that are themselves contested and on their own multi-year schedule.
The measurement dispute is the procedural story communities should study most carefully. Loudoun's noise ordinance requires certified-equipment readings isolated to the turbine source. That standard is rigorous and, on its own terms, the county has not recorded a violation. Residents measuring ambient noise at their own property are documenting a different thing: the noise experience in their actual living environment, which includes interactions with temperature and other environmental conditions. Neither reading is wrong; they measure different questions. An ordinance written to protect residents from ambient nuisance should include both property-line readings and some form of ambient-experience metric. If yours doesn't, now is the moment to ask why.
Loudoun's Board deserves credit for closing the zoning-definition loophole prospectively and for moving data-center applications to elected-board approval. But the existing Vantage II approval shows what happens when zoning definitions aren't tight at the moment of first approval: remediation after the fact is far harder than prevention up front. Communities drafting data-center ordinances — the townships and towns from Amwell Township, Pa. to Weaverville, N.C. that are moving through hearings right now — should explicitly exclude on-site power generation from any “associated” or “accessory” clause, require a separate special-exception process for behind-the-meter generation of any size, and specify that the use of such generation must have a hard sunset tied to grid connection rather than an open-ended condition.
The $1.3 billion FY 2027 tax revenue projection is the political fact that sets the weight on every other variable in this fight. Loudoun has built a county budget around data-center assessed value. Any jurisdiction that has accepted or is considering accepting data-center tax abatements should read Hatch's comment carefully: “You're hurting residents' health in the process of getting that money to help residents' health.” When the revenue source and the harm source are the same land use, the political incentive structure shifts. Local officials have to weigh constituent complaints against a revenue stream the county now depends on to operate. Communities earlier in the curve — where data-center revenue isn't yet load-bearing for the budget — retain more freedom to set stricter conditions.
The pipeline question in plain language: Vantage II exists because the 2023 Loudoun zoning definition was permissive enough, and because Dominion Energy couldn't connect a new large load fast enough. Fixing the first without fixing the second just pushes the next Vantage II into another county — or across the state line into West Virginia or southern Pennsylvania, where zoning is generally less developed and grid-connection queues are in some cases shorter. This is not a problem any single county can solve in isolation.
Source: Loudoun Now / Loudoun Times-Mirror, April 21, 2026, April 21, 2026.