"Battlefield Trust Joins Suit vs Data Center At Manassas ..." Topic

Another fight regarding a land development site near the Manassas Battlefield Park has begun!

The world's largest planned data center is looking to develop a piece of land immediately adjacent to the Manassas Battlefield Park in Virginia.

Battlefield Trust has signed on to the suit to help stop this development from happening at this location …

YouTube link

And here is the link to the location on their site for signing the petition and donating to the legal effort …

link

Just top be clear, this is the American Battlefield Trust, not the UK based Battlefields Trust.

Data Centers are becoming more and more prevalent in Northern VA due to the water availability and telecom networks. They consumer vast amounts of land and last I checked Ashburn, Virginia had nearly 30 of these centers.

It would be a shame if development negatively affected the Manassas battlefield area. I've walked those grounds many times and it's a national treasure.

Correct … it's the American Battlefield Trust.

Thanks for posting the petition link!

I watched the video.

It would appear the data center is adjacent to the battlefield, not on it. When dealing with private property my position is: if you don't want the data center, buy the land yourself.

Now, improper permits and not following the law, yup that's bad. Go back and do it right. If the project doesn't get passed legally, I guess you get no data center.

From a practical standpoint, why do want to concentrate data centers? Sort of defeats the idea of the internet. Spread out, you're one regional disaster from an outage

Louis, good question…I had heard a few years back that something like 95% of the world's email/Internet traffic went through Northern Virginia. That's not to say that there isn't redundancy should something happen.

From what I understand, and I'm no expert, data Centers require massive amounts of water for cooling and you also need a fairly robust fiber optics/telecom network in the area. There's only a finite amount of places that can support this.

In any case, preserve the battlefield. There are also only a finite amount of places where iconic history was made, and we tend to monetize and overbuild anything and everything.

Joshua Chamberlain said:

"On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls."

preserve the battlefield

Except there is no threat to the battlefield land. If it's the view of neighboring property, then the Trust buy the land as a Visual Buffer.

No threat now. But it will be surrounded by land greedy businesses. Buffers are great, but they meaning buying prime industrial land, I guess. Expensive.

Send the ABT some $ to hire good lawyers. I did. D--- developers!

Of course it's not on the current battlefield park, and although from an audio and visual perspective it won't do good things for the park either. In a manner of speaking, not being a threat to the battlefield land, such could be all in how this is interpreted.

It'd have been helpful if the developers had been appreciative enough of the park, and bought land elsewhere for their project. Except that time is past, they bought, they planned, and they got approval for a "rezoning" of the 1750+ acre area in "an unprecendented, lame duck, marathon session", and the proposal is for the world's largest data center campus in the world. The foot print of this project is 3 times the size of Disneyland, and 4 times the size of the Pentagon. Immediately next to a battlefield park.

And by the way, sure the Amer. Battlefield Trust could try buying the land. The area did serve as the launching point for the Southern attack during the 2nd Battle of Manassas. However, first this project needs to be stopped, and the effort has begun.

There's no guarantee that it's defeat will occur, yet if it does, the eye sore that it will be so close to a battlefield park, and the droning of the compressors and the fans that will be ever producing noise won't happen there.

Overturning the "rezoning" can block this development. So … if you're interested in helping, it's appreciated greatly if the petition is signed, and any contribution to their effort is made.

Thank you!

According to what I received in the mail today from the Battlefield Trust, the planned data center is 37 buildings on an area 3 times the size of Disneyland.

The area of the battlefield currently being threatened was also under development threat and rescued from a large development many years ago. It is hard to stay in front of these developments. I am a big property rights person, but I agree with protecting our national treasures such as Manassas. It is hard to purchase land for preservation when it was never offered for public sale.