COMMUNITY VOICES
"Greed is clouding people's vision...or have they sold their souls to the devil?"
H.H. Hunt's proposal
HANOVER COUNTY, Va. -- After a failed plan for a residential project on the same site, HHHunt is back with a new type of development proposal for hundreds of acres it owns beside Wyndham: data centers.
The company, which developed Wyndham four decades ago, has filed plans for a 10-building data center campus on over 400 acres it owns or controls across the county line in Hanover, including the nearby Hunting Hawk Golf Club.
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A 400 acre, 10 building data center campus
If built as promoted by HHHunt, this facility will be a Hyperscale Data Center designed to support 900 megawatts of power. Fully operational, it would be the 3rd largest in the United States today by megawatts.*
This is an enormous data center with significant water usage, significant pollution, and significant noise. The Voluntary Proffer Statement** was received by Hanover County Planning Department on 8/22/25.
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The proposed development spans 400 acres and includes up to 10 buildings totaling approximately 3.9 million square feet. The site was previously zoned for residential use but has now been submitted for rezoning to limited industrial, with additional requests for building height exceptions and accessory uses.
Numbers that matter
SAVE OUR WATER. SAVE OUR WELLS.
The water source for this proposed data center WAS Hanover well water
But now H.H. Hunt has changed it's plan
At a community meeting on Nov. 17th, H.H. Hunt's team stated that they are abandoning the plan to use well water for cooling the data centers.
Instead, the new proposal is for a "closed loop water system". Under this plan, treated water would be "trucked into the site from elsewhere" to fill tanks and would then be used in a closed loop, meaning it is continually treated and recirculated within the site, not drawn from local wells.
Closed-loop chilled water systems rely on a massive external HVAC infrastructure. This equipment—which includes chillers, compressors, and large air-handling fans—runs 24/7 and is the main cause of the noise pollution associated with data centers.
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THE CONSEQUENCES
The noise generated by this cooling equipment is described as a constant, loud hum and can include low-frequency tones that travel long distances and are difficult to block.
This is happening all over Virginia. Here's what it looks like, from communities that have been through it.
The Hidden Cost of the Cloud
Data Centers in Virginia
Data Center Alley
A Cautionary Tale