Data Center Growth Is Putting National Parks In Jeopardy, Says Report

More than 70 national parks in the Mid-Atlantic states are at risk from the impacts tied to the growth of data processing centers, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

The parks advocacy organization released a report Thursday that outlined the potential threats from the centers to national parks across Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. The report, A Smarter Path Forward: Safeguarding National Parks Amid Explosive AI and Data Center Growth, warns the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure across the Mid-Atlantic is driving ever-increasing demand for land, water, and energy use.

The cumulative impacts on top of the enormous physical footprints of data centers put national park units across the region in jeopardy. For example, the Prince William Digital Gateway is planned to be built adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia and would cover roughly 10 acres located within the congressionally authorized boundary of the park itself.

That proposed center, envisioned to be the largest in the world, has been the focus of a years-long legal battle. The project was blocked last summer by a county judge, who ruled that the Prince William County Commission failed to properly post public notifications of a commission hearing at which zoning changes necessary for the Digital Gateway project were to be voted upon. 

The Virginia Court of Appeals in late February heard arguments in the battle, but has yet to issue a ruling on the matter.

Similarly, a proposed “Potomac Technology Park” would convert approximately 52 acres within the congressionally authorized boundary of Prince William Forest Park into roughly one million square feet of data center development. The report points out that the affected area includes sensitive environmental resources, wetlands, and steep slopes vulnerable to erosion.

Partly due to generous tax incentives for data centers, Virginia has become the data center capital of the world and has more of the facilities than anywhere else on Earth. Across the state, data center growth has spiked more than 500 percent since 2015, according to NPCA

“The rapid and unchecked pursuit of new technologies must not come at the expense of our national parks, which were set aside for the intrinsic values they hold for all Americans,” said Kyle Hart, senior program manager for NPCA. “Our national parks are places where we connect with our history, with nature, and with each other. We’ve seen what can happen when this industry grows unchecked, and we cannot allow it to continue.”

Each data center requires vast amounts of land, water, and energy to operate. They consume enormous amounts of electricity to support power needs from facilities that are often far away from the data centers themselves. They also cause noise, air and water pollution, damaging historic sites and green spaces in and around national parks, NPCA claimed. And it isn’t just the data centers themselves, but the network of power plants, transmission lines, and energy infrastructure that they require. The centers also pull enormous amounts of water from local resources to keep them running.

Currently, about 8 percent of the Potomac River’s permitted water withdrawals during the summer are going to data centers, according to calculations by Alimatou Seck, a senior water resources scientist at the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. Over the next two to three decades, estimated withdrawals could reach 200 million gallons per day, with longer-term projections of total municipal water demand approaching or exceeding 600 million gallons per day, according to the NPCA report. For context, Shenandoah National Park released approximately 212 million gallons of clean water per day to downstream communities in 2023.

The data centers’ thirst for electricity has led to proposed transmission lines crossing the Appalachian Trail and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The National Park Service released a draft Environmental Impact Statement scoping document for one line, warning that the project could threaten rare and endangered species, fragment wildlife habitat, facilitate invasive species, damage soils and floodplains, harm water and air quality, degrade cultural landscapes, and negatively affect visitor experience and local communities.

Construction of the lines may require rights-of-way up to 200 feet wide through protected landscapes and include transmission towers up to 200 feet tall, which would alter viewsheds and affect visitor experience along some of the most scenic sections of the Appalachian Trail, said NPCA.

"In the next few decades, the region could see 60 gigawatts, if not much more, of data center capacity,” explained Ben Alexandro, founder and CEO of Alexandro Strategies and report author. “To put that into perspective, 60 Gigawatts is well over triple the peak energy use of the entire state of Maryland.”

Furthermore, partially because data centers house massive banks of emergency diesel generators, they threaten the clean air and clear views that visitors expect at national parks. A hypothetical scenario put forth by the report’s authors found that if Virginia generated enough electricity to power 60 gigawatts of data center load at a 90 percent capacity factor using its 2024 energy mix, it could result approximately 47,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, approximately 71,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and approximately 150 million tons of carbon dioxide.

The report suggests that the damage being caused by data centers can be mitigated by requiring public reporting on energy use, water use, emissions, and siting criteria; strengthening state and local reviews; establishing buffer zones around national parks; expanding land mitigation requirements; and reassessing tax incentives that accelerate rapid expansion.

To achieve this, a combination of federal, state, and local policies would need to be put in place. For example, at the federal level, agencies could consider impacts to national parks and undertake required environmental and cultural resource analyses for proposed data centers that could harm park resources, visitor experience, or surrounding landscapes. Local governments could reform zoning to require meaningful setbacks (at least one-half mile) that direct industrial-scale development away from national parks.