The Shortline 12-6-24

Quarry Heights development unanimously approved • Agrisolar zoning amendment unanimously denied • A bill to ban investment firms from buying Virginia homes • Who benefits from data centers?

Attorneys from Energix pitch their agrisolar zoning amendment to the Rockingham County Planning Commission on Tuesday.

I’ve seen zero local news coverage of this, but I happened to be sitting in on the Rockingham County Planning Commission meeting this Tuesday, where a request from Energix to amend the zoning ordinance to allow by special use permit “large-scale solar energy facility projects of up to 360 acres so long as the projects maintain or implement active agricultural use” was unanimously recommended for denial. It was a full house, with a few county residents speaking in favor of the amendment, and everyone else speaking in opposition.

In 2021 the Rockingham County Planning Commission approved a solar ordinance that caps the total number of acres that can be used for solar production.

Regulations include a cap of 1,800 acres for large solar energy facilities that require special-use permits and a cap of 50 acres for large solar facilities for certain districts, with an exception that a quarter of the 1,800 total acreage can have up to 150 acres of solar facilities per site. Solar projects allowed by right based on their location’s zoning do not count toward the 1,800-acre cap. (Daily News Record)

The consensus among planning commissioners on Tuesday was that although the agrisolar amendment combines power generation and agricultural uses like pasture for sheep, energy production is still the primary land use. The crux of the energy issue in Virginia right now is that the power generation required to operate Virginia’s voracious data centers has been externalized to other regions. Municipalities like Loudoun and PWC stand to reap substantial computer equipment tax revenue, but don’t have a stake in how or where the electricity is produced. Rural Virginia residents and decision makers don’t want their viewsheds to be covered in solar panels that primarily serve to power data centers owned by giant tech companies. Also, Energix has been cited multiple times for environmental regulations at solar farms in Southside and Southwest Virginia.

I hope to write more on data centers next week. On to the roundup:

• Harrisonburg City Council unanimously approved several requests to pave the way for the proposed Quarry Heights development, more than 900 new housing units on 161 acres on the west side of town. The developer addressed several of the issues from a list of requests from neighbors. (Daily News-Record)

• Open Doors has set up a temporary shelter in the former quilt museum downtown. The shelter’s centralized location made it easy to access for individuals who require its services due in no small part to its proximity to a bus stop serviced by HDPT buses. (Daily News-Record)

• The Harrisonburg Department of Public Transportation is restructuring their service routes, and will implement several changes to city bus routes 1 - 6, effective January 6. (Rocktown Now)

• The town of Bridgewater has created its own local currency called ‘River Roos,’ in hopes of boosting the local economy. Bridgewater officially implemented River Roos on November 1. (WHSV)

• New information from the USDA indicates the most expensive farmland rental rates are found in Rockingham County. More local farmers are turning to renting farmland rather than attempting to buy it. (Rocktown Now)

• Community development practitioners should start asking how schools can be integrated into the community development work they are already pursuing. (Shelterforce) Ryan Good is director of the Washington Community Scholars’ Center at Eastern Mennonite University in Washington, D.C.

Virginia

• Very few of the legislators who voted for the Clean Economy Act are in the districts where utility solar developments are being requested and proposed. Here’s what is in the districts of many of those pro-Clean Economy Act legislators: data centers. It’s data centers that are driving up the demand for power. (Cardinal News)

• Virginia localities continue to approve new data center proposals with little thought given to where and how they will get the power to serve them. (Virginia Mercury)

• A Chesterfield County community group has filed an appeal with the county to challenge Dominion Energy’s proposed natural gas plant and the permitting process behind it. (WRIC)

• Loudoun County Planning Commissioners still see merit in allowing by-right data centers, requiring only staff review, in some areas of the county. (Loudoun Now)

• Virginia Senator Glen Sturtevant (R-Colonial Heights) is sponsoring legislation that would ban large investment companies, like hedge funds, from buying single-family homes in Virginia. (Virginia Mercury)

• The Arlington County Board tasked a lawyer with appealing a decision by a circuit court judge that would limit the amount of multifamily homes that can exist in areas zoned for single-family houses. (WUSA9)

• For all the discord caused by a residential zoning revamp in Roanoke, city staff said the policy change has led to only a few new housing units so far, as expected. Nonetheless, legal challenges persist, as does a shortage of available housing. (The Roanoke Times)

• The Fauquier County Planning Commission has recommended approval for Bealeton Solar LLC’s special exception permit, which could allow a 93-acre solar energy facility to operate in the Lee District. (Fauquier Now)

• A new executive order, on the heels of an announcement about a major manufacturing development near Danville, sets a goal of investing $75 million towards localities that want to bolster housing supply tied to new job creation over the next five years. (Virginia Mercury)

Elsewhere

• Urban form is a key driver of carbon pollution, sometimes in surprising ways; per capita emissions are up to three times lower in compact, walkable cities. Despite the pace and pattern of city-building and urban development, urban form remains a deeply neglected topic in global climate discourse. (World Economic Forum)

• The US is overproducing homes for the traditional family arrangement that characterized American post-WWII society, and underproducing homes for the smaller families, singles, couples, and others who want homes scaled to their needs. (The Corner Side Yard)

• Housing is missing in the sense that people can’t find what they’re looking for, but it’s not like there’s some complicated mystery behind it. At the local level, a whole bunch of housing is outlawed. It’s missing on purpose. (Urbanism Speakeasy)

• A soon-to-be-voted-on plan to rezone the city of Los Angeles will fall far short of its homebuilding goal, according to a new analysis from UCLA researchers. (Los Angeles Times)

• The Solana Beach City Council has approved new ordinances implementing housing density and zoning programs, including an amendment to the city code to allow and permit manufactured homes and mobile homes in the same manner and zone as conventional housing structures, allowing them to be used as primary or accessory dwelling units. (The Coast News)

• Rhode Island voters backed the historic level housing bond by an overwhelming 67%. The intent is to put the state in charge as overseer, developer, partial financier and part-owner of projects that fill the shortfall in affordable housing. (Rhode Island Current)

• It could become much easier to build new co-operative housing, social housing, and supportive housing projects across Vancouver, if new regulations that abolish project-specific rezoning applications are implemented. (Daily Hive)

• The width and traffic speed of state roads in urban neighborhoods now frequently clash with local desires for street safety, quality transit service, and pedestrian comfort. But revising them is rarely a priority for state DOTs engaged in a Sisyphean battle against traffic congestion. (Vox)

• The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is reshaping how local residents commute, and has made the Indianapolis community more receptive to public transportation and aware of the accessibility needs of pedestrians. (Midstory)

A closing thought: it’s easy to think of the transition to renewables as a good thing, and for the most part, I believe it is. I have solar panels on the roof of my house. But context matters. Data centers (and the municipalities and corporations benefitting from them) complicate the narrative. For centuries Appalachia has been the energy provider for much of the country, and has also bourne the brunt of the negative externalities of fossil fuel extraction. Obviously solar panels are better for the planet than coal and fracking. But it’s worth asking where, to whom, and for what the majority of the financial benefits of utility solar are going.

In 50 years, will Virginia be mostly solar farms, gas plants, and nuclear reactors that exist primarily to feed electricity to data centers? Are data centers mostly benefitting Virginians, or tech company investors in Silicon Valley that are chasing the golden goose of AI? Are the utility scale solar farms providing energy that will benefit people near the solar farms? Are those data centers ultimately being used to increase corporate revenue by eliminating peoples’ jobs? I don’t claim to know the answers to these questions, but we should all be asking them.