‘We don’t have a lot of information’: Google advances Chesterfield data center amid concern from residents, researchers

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A massive Google data center campus is moving forward in Chesterfield County after the company filed its site plan in early November. It's a project county leaders call an economic win -- but residents and data center researchers are raising concerns.

"Project Peanut is what it's called," said University of Richmond professor and data center researcher Mary Finley-Brook. "It's massive -- it is double the size of Stony Point."

Finley-Brook said Project Peanut is the first of three data sites Google plans to build in Chesterfield.

"We really don’t have a lot of information about what would be done in these specific data centers," she said.

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Officials said it's part of Google’s $9 billion investment into Virginia’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

"We already exist within AI -- the problem is there’s no regulation," Finley-Brook said. "It’s causing so much harm to workers, and people aren’t really thinking about the long-term implications for our healthy society."

Environmental impacts are also at the center of this debate.

Finley-Brook said Google's greenhouse gas emissions increased 48% this year, driven largely by the growth of AI data centers. The proposed campus would be built in Meadowville Technology Park -- the same location where a data center caught fire multiple times this year.

"Not only is the air pollution a major concern, but they are loud," she said. "So the quality of life of people living around data centers ... it really has declined."

County leaders, however, said the project brings economic opportunity. According to Chesterfield officials, the development has been in the works for seven years and will expand the county’s commercial tax base.

They also confirmed Google purchased two additional Chesterfield sites earlier this year as part of the project. That information remained undisclosed until August due to a nondisclosure agreement, raising questions about transparency.

"All of this has been secret -- but even so, they won’t say how much water is going to be used," Finley-Brook said. "They won’t say how many jobs are going to be provided. They’re still only providing a tiny bit of data, so that people don’t have access to the full picture."

Despite pushback, county officials remain optimistic, as they said the project is expected to generate millions in local tax revenue each year. They also said Google has committed to minimizing impacts on Chesterfield’s power grid and water resources.

Construction was expected to begin by the end of the year, though it remains unclear whether work has started.