At the risk of leading with a mixed metaphor, when it comes to our fight to block the Prince William Digital Gateway up against the Manassas Battlefield, the American Battlefield Trust and its allies need to channel the spirit of Nathanael Greene in the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaigns:
“We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”
I won’t pretend that yesterday’s decision by Judge Tracy C. Hudson in Prince William County Circuit Court, upholding the county’s demurrer motion and preventing our case from going to trial, wasn’t a major blow to our cause. But I’m here to assure you that we remain undaunted and will continue to fight.
As I told members of the media immediately after the ruling: We’ve experienced setbacks before, and still prevailed. The Manassas Battlefield is too important to allow it to be overwhelmed by the world’s largest data center campus. Mark my words – this fight has only just begun.
So where DO we go from here? While we certainly hoped for a better outcome than this, we always knew that a ruling against moving ahead to trial was a real possibility. Now it’s time to rise and fight again.
And that’s where you come in. Complicated legal cases surrounding nuanced land use issues don’t come cheap, but I believe this case is simply too important for us to stand down. More and more Virginia historic sites are facing the destruction of data center development directly, and the second order impacts on battlefields are even more far-reaching. The route for a new powerline corridor to power the data centers will just skirt Monocacy National Battlefield in Maryland – and this is an improvement over one of the original possibilities, which crossed land we’d protected with easements! We simply must fight this scourge with every weapon in our arsenal.
I don’t to want to divert any money that members like you have donated for land preservation for legal fees, here or at the Wilderness, where we’re also engaged in a lawsuit. Instead, we have established a separate donation channel to support the Trust’s advocacy work, allowing us to speak out against this and other ill-considered development proposals that threaten and destroy hallowed ground.
Make a gift to support our advocacy fund
If you believe, like I do, that this lawsuit is critical and that we should keep fighting , bringing our case to the Court of Appeals, I ask you to make a gift today.
‘Til the battle is won,
David N. Duncan
President
American Battlefield Trust
