The Botetourt Data Center: Vampire Pimps

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The purpose of propaganda is not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponds to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.

—Anthony Daniels

If the Water Authority is a species of public-private partnership, i.e. “inverted fascism,” it’s important to note that it’s not the only one. The 1950 code revision created a number of these quasi-governmental entities, and subsequent acts created more. There are currently too many to capture in a screen shot:

These things are troubling enough on their own, but it must be remembered that they interact and cooperate. So for example, among the Va. Code Title 15.2 authorities advocating for the Botetourt data center are the Botetourt Board of Supervisors, The Western Virginia Water Authority, The Botetourt Economic Development Authority, Appalachian Power, and The Roanoke Regional Partnership.

The code imposes duties of care on few of these entities, and to the extent it does, it circumscribes them in interesting ways. Consider the Economic Development Authorities. These are authorized by the Industrial Development and Revenue Bond Act (again Title 15.2, Chapter 49). § 15.2-4901 of that act requires that development authorities’ powers “shall be exercised for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth,” but that “benefit” is to be derived by “inducing manufacturing, industrial, governmental, nonprofit, and commercial enterprises…to locate in…the Commonwealth and further the use of its agricultural products and natural resources.” This is exploitative, and the language of a pimp. Our local authorities, in keeping with the statute, sound rather pimp-like.

The Roanoke Regional Partnership:

Botetourt County:

The water monopoly:

Yes, I’m sure Google prefers clean water, just as vampires prefer virgin blood.

Just as with the water monopoly and Botetourt Board of Supervisors, while these organizations are sometimes required to have public hearings, they provide minimal notice, and make liberal use of non-disclosure agreements, and the secrecy exceptions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Moreover, their ability to make bond issues can obligate them to bondholders in ways that cut against their duty of care to locals (again, to the extent they have one).

Of possible relevance to this last point, in reviewing the Minutes of the May 20, 2026 meeting of the Roanoke Economic Development Authority, I was not much enlightened about its business–since the secrecy exception of Va. Code § 2.2-3711(A)(5) was invoked–but I did learn that its largest assets are tied up with the Rockefeller Foundation:

We cannot continue to entrust policy to these public-private partnerships and corporations. Nor can we trust their statements. Consider Google’s in the FAQ section of botetourtdatacenter.com:

The “reservation of 2 million gallons per day” refers, I believe, to the amount purportedly required by the “Day 1” installation. The Water Authority’s contract, however, also specifies a “Day N” requirement far in excess of Day 1:

The numbers bandied about–but never confirmed–have been 2 to 8 million gallons per day. Well, we now know, from emails obtained by FOIA (thanks Environmental Accountability and Strategy Team), that Google now prefers to skip Day 1 and hasten towards Day N, and that a required capacity of 3.5 to 11 million gallons per day has been discussed. See for yourselves: