LETTER:
All Aboard the Prince William Digital Gateway Express
July 7, 2022
The
Free Dictionary defines the term “railroading” as “to force the passage or
acceptance of something, especially legislation, by an authoritative body with
such haste and pressure that the standard considerations of its implications
are avoided or ignored.” That’s an accurate description of what’s
happening as the County relentlessly shoves innumerable data centers down our
throats.
The
mother of all downhill-bound locomotives is the atrocious Prince William
Digital Gateway. Over the past eight
months, opponents of this proposal have laid more than
enough fact-based evidence on the tracks to derail it. We asked our county government to consider
the detrimental effects on a national park and a state forest, increased
traffic and the inevitable resurrection of the dreaded Bi-County Parkway,
health effects of the incompatible placement of a huge industrial development
adjacent to residential communities, the fleeting “sugar high” of depreciating
tax revenues, hazards to the Occoquan River watershed and reservoir, and negation
of regional climate change goals. And on
and on and on.
Not
only did none of that matter, those raising legitimate issues were treated as
an annoyance. Input from community
engagement meetings were summarily ignored and these events treated as tiresome
checkpoints on the road to inevitability.
Citizens poured out their souls at Supervisor meetings while elected
officials fiddled with their phones.
Riding
in this train’s club car are the wealthy developers and landowners who
engineered this lucrative boondoggle.
Back in the cattle car are citizens of this county who are clearly being
taken for a ride.
Bill
Wright
Gainesville
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