Data centers continue to pop up across Virginia. And residents in search of information are finding these projects are shrouded in secrecy. Often, that's because of non-disclosure agreements.
Last year, Google paid $14 million to buy a 312-acre parcel in Botetourt County with apparent plans to build a data center. In September, the Western Virginia Water Authority approved two agreements to provide water to allow that project to move forward.
But when the Roanoke Rambler, a local news outlet, asked for the contracts, the water authority blocked out information about how much water the data center would use. So the Rambler took the authority to court. Rambler founder Henri Gendreau says the suit is about the right of citizens to know what their government is doing.
"It's around transparency in government," Gendreau says. "It's around being able to know what your government is doing."
Officials at the water authority say they blocked part of the contract because it's proprietary information, and they'd signed a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, not to release such information. NDAs are a fairly common tool in economic development.
"Those agreements help reinforce a sense of trust that the company's proprietary information will be protected, up until the point of public action," says John Hull is president and CEO of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, a public-private partnership representing eight local governments that pursues economic development projects. "This trust is a vital component of putting together successful economic development projects."
The Roanoke Regional Partnership was one of the entities that partnered to secure the Google data center. Hull says NDAs are important to protect a company's interests while it's exploring whether to pursue a project. But, it's important to protect the public interest, too.
"Practitioners have to balance the goal of transparency also with the goals surrounding capturing growth and opportunity," Hull says.
This idea of protecting proprietary information has been around for a while. But a few years ago, something changed.
"They've always been around in some way, shape or form in different contexts," says Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "What we seem to be seeing much more of is taking it to the contract level now."
Rhyne says that growing use of contracts likely was driven by private-sector companies. And, there was another development that brought the widespread use of NDAs into public awareness.
"It's data centers that got a lot more people looking at this," Rhyne says.
Data centers are used by tech companies to process large amounts of data, for things like social media and artificial intelligence. They started popping up in Northern Virginia, and eventually residents started to organize against them.
Opponents found that information was hard to come by, mostly because it was shielded by non-disclosure agreements. Like in Botetourt County, where the Western Virginia Water Authority wouldn't release how much water Google's data center would use.
Mike McEvoy, the water authority's executive director, says this particular NDA was a little different than those it's used in the past because those ended when the project was publicly announced.
"What I think is interesting about the Google one, this is the first time after an announcement that this confidentiality thing has kind of continued," McEvoy says. "Almost invariably what happens is either a company doesn't come here, they decide Roanoke's not a fit for them, and you just never hear from them again. or they decide to come here, and they make a public announcement, and at that point they don't really care about the confidentiality piece that much."
A circuit court judge repeatedly ruled in favor of the Rambler. This week, the authority released the information on how much water a Google data center would use – between 2 and 8 million gallons per day.
There's still other information yet to be disclosed, including how the data center will source its power. Appalachian Power officials confirmed the utility also is bound by an NDA.
