issue:
Data Centers & the Environment

We only have one planet—we must protect it.  NC has specific and unique natural habitats that are threatened.  We also have limited resources like clean water that impact nearly all aspects of our daily lives.  We need to control irresponsible and backroom deals that allow profit-only considerations for development for things such as building expansions that destroy clean air or precious wetland ecosystems, or the immediate and likely permanent threat from data centers. 

​

Data centers are not innocuous warehouses that bring jobs and sit quietly in our landscapes.  These are enormous multi-acre facilities with special building needs and so are not likely to be built by local labor (i.e. no jobs for North Carolinians): tech companies bring in their own workforce for a matter of months only. 

 

The extreme water needs of data centers create pollution that cannot be cleaned up and the contaminated water is dumped back into our water supply—this creates pollution destroying water supplies in wide areas, making it unusable.  We already experience real strain when we have natural drought periods—why would we risk the clean water we have?

​

Data centers also have extreme electricity demands, so power companies pass that cost to us, far beyond the immediate area of a data center.  Tech companies offering “carbon offsets” are paying for superficial changes on the other side of the globe, and those claiming to use solar cannot prevent using electricity from the grid along with it.  Their enormous power use also creates thermal changes, measured at up to 10 degrees excess heat surrounding a facility.  Our temperatures are hot enough, thank you, and plant and animal life will certainly be affected by such a change. Just from the enormous burden of using so much power, my one nephew in Virginia has watched his electricity rates nearly triple in the last couple years because of a data center in another county.

 

And, sorry, but it takes only a small handful of people to run a “ginormous” facility, so there are no jobs coming with data centers. 

 

Understand that all of this is so tech companies can compete with each other for a bigger piece of the AI pie, whether we want that or not and without any known benefit to us.  They are not producing, making, or shipping any goods or services beyond their efforts to expand AI.

​

Claims that data centers will bring huge sums of tax money into the state are unfounded—our state provides tax breaks to bring in business.  Furthermore, if this is such a boon to a community, why has there been so much hidden from the public (one example:  falsely claiming that a land purchase was for “light manufacturing”, and hiding the approval process and the true impact) in efforts to build one in Lee County?  That data center is “in our backyard”—the environmental impacts and expected increases in utility rates will affect our district.

​

In short:  dwindling water supplies due to permanently polluted water, noise and heat pollution surrounding a data center, steadily rising electricity rates for the rest of us, no jobs for the local economy, and no investment in our communities—who benefits from this?