#transparency-and-disclosure

Around 80% of Virginia localities with data-center activity have NDAs in place. Where reporting is mandatory it is widely ignored: the EU database's first cycle saw 36% participation with no consequences for the rest.

Where a community has rezoning leverage, convert it into a binding agreement with numeric terms: decibel limits at named receptor addresses, an annual water cap, disclosed load, local hire percentages with a definition of local, and payments — all with funded, non-judicial enforc

Require each facility above a size threshold to report metered energy, water withdrawal and consumption to a public register, with a real penalty for non-reporting, and prohibit local NDAs that cover utility impacts. The EU tried this without penalties and got 36% participation.

Set a Tier 4 baseline for new generators, meter and publish runtime hours, define emergency narrowly so scheduled outages do not qualify, and enforce permits before equipment operates. Virginia adopted a 0.60 g/hp-hr baseline from July 2026.

Replace single-number dB(A) ordinances with limits that also constrain C-weighted and per-octave-band levels at the nearest residence, set as a permit condition rather than a complaint threshold. Prince William County proposed exactly this after observing a 90 Hz tone at a specif

One of the first substantial community benefit agreements attached to data-center development in the United States, covering three facilities totalling roughly 2 million square feet, with a 20-year term. Financial terms…

A case where a noise limit existed, was set at the wrong level, and consequently protected nobody. Texas's statutory 85 dB limit is the highest in the United States, roughly 45 dB above the WHO Europe night-time guidanc…

Prince William County, in the densest data-center market in the USA (Northern Virginia), is updating its noise ordinance to add dBC and octave-band limits alongside dB(A), explicitly because the A-weighted scale fails t…

The clearest documented failure of permit-before-operate enforcement for data-center on-site generation, across two adjacent jurisdictions in the same metropolitan area.

A public records case documenting the cost of obtaining basic operating data without a mandatory register. The city of The Dalles litigated for 13 months to block a newspaper's public records request for Google's water…

The first mandatory facility-level sustainability reporting regime for data-centers, established under the recast EU Energy Efficiency Directive, with its first reporting cycle in 2024. Participation was 36% despite the…