We’ve Been Here Before

If we're smart, lessons learned from past experience also can come from elsewhere. Loudoun County, Virginia is worth a look.

We’ve been here before

Whenever someone points to another state’s trouble with data centers, I hear the same answer: Wyoming is different. We have more space, fewer people and a deep respect for property rights. All true. But Wyoming has lived through booms like this one before, and our own history is the best evidence that the risks are real.

Some of you may recall that in the early 1970s, coal development brought workers to Gillette so fast that a psychologist gave a name to what followed: “Gillette syndrome.” Rising crime, strained mental health, weakened community ties and a cost of living that outran paychecks. In the middle of that boom, in 1975, the Legislature passed the Industrial Siting Act so that large industrial projects would be reviewed before they were built, not after. Wyoming also requires mines to post reclamation bonds before they break ground. Planning ahead is a Wyoming tradition, not an outside idea.

We’ve also seen what happens when we don’t. Natural gas development in the Upper Green River Basin pushed winter ozone above federal air standards, and in 2012 the EPA declared the area out of compliance. On bad winter days, Pinedale residents have been told to limit time outdoors. And earlier this year, here in Cheyenne, a Meta contractor was named as the source of bacterial contamination in the city’s reclaimed-water system, and the public didn’t learn of it for months.

Different, but not exempt

While the differences are real, that doesn’t necessarily diminish the risks we face, and some differences actually increase them:

  • More space doesn’t mean more water. Our land is wide open; our aquifers are not bottomless.
  • Fewer people means less cushion. A smaller tax base and a smaller county staff have less room to absorb a costly mistake.
  • Property rights cut both ways. The rancher whose well drops, the family whose nights fill with a steady hum, the homeowner whose property loses value: their rights matter too. Guardrails protect them.

That’s why Loudoun County, Virginia is worth a look. Loudoun hosts more data centers than anywhere on Earth, and this month its Board of Supervisors began drafting a one-year pause on new ones. When the place that did the most to welcome this industry starts hitting the brakes, we should ask why. Not because it’s so like Wyoming or Laramie County, but because it made the same bet Wyoming is tempted to make: build first, fix it later, then add protections.

Loudoun’s bargain

Loudoun’s residents got real benefits. Data centers sit on about 4% of the county’s commercial land but produce about 38% of its general fund revenue. That money cut the property tax rate to the lowest in Northern Virginia, eliminated the vehicle license fee, and paid for schools, deputies, firefighters, parks and mental health services.

They also paid a real price, much of it traceable to one decision. In 2000, a county zoning official ruled that data centers were basically office buildings. That meant most could be built “by right,” with no public hearing. For the next 25 years, neighbors often had no formal chance to weigh in.

What followed:

  • Constant noise. The low hum of cooling equipment is, in the county’s own words, “among the most persistent issues” residents raise. Rules to address it are still being written.
  • Diesel fumes. Most sites rely on older backup generators that run for testing every week. The county has no authority over air quality; the state set cleaner standards only this summer.
  • Power lines through neighborhoods. Electricity demand grew about fivefold in seven years. New high-voltage lines were routed near homes and schools, and requests to bury them at the industry’s expense were turned down by state regulators.
  • Too many eggs in one basket. With nearly 40% of the budget riding on one industry, county leaders now warn the revenue will level off within 5 to 10 years.

Loudoun ended by-right approvals in 2025. Its rules on noise and siting are still being finished. The lesson isn’t that Loudoun got everything wrong. It’s that Loudoun captured the benefits on purpose and dealt with the harms after the fact.

For a closer look, my research brief, Lessons from Loudoun, includes a timeline of Loudoun’s data center history, showing the 25 years between its 2000 by-right decision and its first major guardrails, and a side-by-side comparison of Loudoun and Laramie County on population, approvals, water, power and budget. Read the full brief.

Where we’re already ahead, and where we’ve slipped

Credit where it’s due: Laramie County is not repeating Loudoun’s biggest mistake. Our largest county-approved projects have gone through public review. The Switchgrass Industrial Park rezoning in October 2025, the approval of what was then called Project Jade in January 2026, and the Vantage “Project Latigo” zone change this September all came before the Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners, with public hearings.

But a hearing is only as good as the information behind it. Project Jade was approved without the public knowing who owned it. Google was revealed as the owner only in June, through a county permit filing, and the project was renamed Project Tembo. Its power plans also shifted after approval, from a self-supplied “bring your own power” model to a blended model that also draws on the local utility grid. Residents and commissioners can’t weigh what they aren’t told.

And not every project comes to the county at all. When Cheyenne annexes land, as it did with Microsoft’s roughly 3,500-acre Highlands expansion in July, the county loses its say over zoning entirely.

Where we’re more exposed than Loudoun

In some ways our situation is riskier than Loudoun’s ever was.

Water. Loudoun is in a wet climate and started a reclaimed-water program for data centers back in 2010. We live in a semi-arid county where the State Engineer already restricts new wells because aquifer levels are falling. Part of Cheyenne’s water crosses the Continental Divide from the Colorado River Basin, and the states that share that river are heading into what everyone expects to be difficult negotiations, with continued drought in the forecast. Every large water user we approve now draws from a shrinking supply.

Taxes. Loudoun’s windfall comes largely from Virginia’s tax on business computer equipment. Wyoming takes a different approach: large data centers that meet state investment thresholds pay no sales or use tax on their servers and much of their equipment. A 2023 state report estimated that two Cheyenne data centers alone avoided about $22.6 million in sales and use taxes. Data centers do pay property taxes here; Microsoft reports contributing more than $11 million to the Laramie County tax base in 2025. But we should not expect Loudoun-sized budgets, and the Legislature is still debating how data centers should be taxed.

That’s not an argument against data centers. It’s an argument for getting the community’s share in writing, through Community Benefit Agreements and Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) agreements, because the tax code alone won’t deliver it.

Split jurisdiction. Loudoun controls land use for nearly all its data centers. Here, the city and the county can each approve projects on neighboring land, often without a shared picture of what the other has approved.

A Laramie County path

We don’t need to copy Loudoun. We need to take what worked there, add the protections it adopted too late, and size both for a county of about 100,000 people.

Who’s minding the store?

Loudoun is run day to day by a professional county administrator who answers to its elected board. That gave it the capacity to negotiate complicated, multi-year deals and track what they produced. Laramie County has no equivalent. Our five commissioners, separately elected officers and department heads each bring their own items forward, and no one person is responsible for seeing the whole picture.

Wyoming already has a model. Teton County’s commissioners hire a county administrator who reports to them, and state law gives commissioners broad power to “manage the business and concerns of the county” where no other law applies. A Wyoming administrator couldn’t direct the sheriff, clerk, treasurer or assessor, who answer to voters. But one could coordinate the departments that handle planning, roads and public works.

A sensible way to start:

  1. A major-projects coordinator reporting to the commissioners, who tracks every large project and publishes plain-language summaries.
  2. A joint city-county office, so annexed and county projects are tracked in one place.
  3. A full county administrator, if the workload proves it’s needed.

Whatever the structure, the big decisions stay with elected officials: zoning, incentives, pauses and the budget. Loudoun had an administrator the whole time, and it still needed its elected board to step in. Structure helps. Accountability protects.

Guardrails, written before the next wave

  • Full disclosure before approval: who owns the project, where its power and water will come from, and what changes if those plans change later.
  • Water first. Cumulative water review for large projects, coordinated with the State Engineer and the Board of Public Utilities, planned around continued drought and a smaller share of Colorado River water.
  • Noise and air standards now, including low-frequency hum and cleaner backup generators, rather than 25 years in.
  • Decommissioning bonds. Wyoming already requires reclamation bonds for mines and financial assurance for wind and solar farms. Data centers should set aside cleanup money too, so an obsolete building never becomes a public burden.
  • Community Benefit Agreements and PILOT agreements, negotiated in public and enforceable.
  • A revenue rule that puts part of any data center revenue into reserves and one-time projects, so we never depend on one industry for 40% of our budget.
  • A city-county agreement on annexation, so no project can sidestep county standards by changing jurisdictions.

There’s more to learn

I’m not a lawyer, and some of these questions don’t have settled answers. I’d rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

  • How far county authority reaches. State law doesn’t appear to prevent a county from hiring an administrator, and Teton County does. Whether the county can require bonds, benefit agreements or PILOT payments, rather than negotiate them, is a question for the County Attorney.
  • How data centers will be taxed. The Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee declined in September to move a bill that would have raised data centers’ property tax rate, but it plans to take the question up again in November.
  • How much water we’ll have. Colorado River negotiations and drought forecasts will shape Cheyenne’s supply for decades, and neither has been settled.
  • How Loudoun’s pause turns out. Its board has only begun drafting it.

None of this uncertainty is a reason to wait. It’s the reason to build the capacity and the guardrails now, while the choices are still ours to make.

Learning the easy way

“Build it, and if it breaks, we’ll fix it then” works for a fence line. It doesn’t work for an aquifer, a neighborhood’s air, or a county budget that comes to depend on one industry. Some things, once broken, can’t be fixed at any price.

Gillette, Pinedale and Loudoun all learned their lessons the hard way. We can learn them the easy way, from them.

That’s what I mean by guide rails for the data-centered age. Say yes to growth, but know what we’re saying yes to, and make sure someone is responsible for the whole picture.

I’m asking for your vote on November 3. Learn more at Davis4Wyoming.com.

Lynne Davis, candidate for Laramie County Commissioner

[Paid for by … — add your campaign disclaimer here]

Sources

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