AS DATA CENTERS PROLIFERATE, NEIGHBORS KNOCK THE NOISE

In a universe of cloud computing, northern Virginia might be in a perpetual fog.

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More of the data centers that feed the cloud are clustered in the region outside the nation’s capital than anywhere else in the world.

As cloud computing — which enables data storage and other services to be delivered over the internet — continues its exponential increase, the appetite for new data centers continues to grow. And increasingly, communities that abut the centers are complaining about their new neighbors, mostly about the noise from constantly whirring fans needed to cool the computers and servers warehoused within.

“It’s just a constant whir at a frequency that’s obnoxious,” said Dale Browne, president of the Great Oak Homeowners Association. Residents there led a protest recently outside a nearby data center in Prince William County, newly built to support Amazon Web Services.

Browne said he preferred the quarry that used to occupy the land over the data center. And he’s worried that the noise will only get worse in winter, when a line of trees that provides something of a buffer sheds its leaves.

Speakers at the protest said they fear Prince William County is on the verge of joining its neighbor, Loudoun County, which is known as the data center capital of the world.

“We are the canary in the coalmine,” Browne said.

Northern Virginia has been a tech hub since the formation of the internet, and now hosts more data centers than the next five largest U.S. markets combined, according to the Northern Virginia Technology Council.