Last weekend, Sandy Field, chair of the Susquehanna Valley Chapter of the Climate Reality Project, spoke about the realities surrounding data centers and provided key points for municipalities considering ordinances to protect themselves. Her presentation was part of the Second Saturday Speakers Series sponsored by the Union County Democratic Committee. The room was packed with people eager to learn more.
The first thing we learned: It took a million years to produce the rich soil where we plant our crops in this valley. The data centers being proposed for Pennsylvania would cover thousands of acres of that soil. Farmers are being offered huge amounts of money to sell their land for data center development.
Second: Hyperscale data centers are an environmental disaster. They’re enormous warehouses of computer servers that require huge amounts of water and electricity to run the operations needed for artificial intelligence. They run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their cooling systems consume millions of gallons of potable water from municipal water systems and cause noise, light, heat and air pollution. The constant, low-frequency noise from data centers makes people and animals sick. When residents ask how much water the centers will use and what chemicals will be discharged into wastewater, company representatives meeting with communities hide behind claims that their processes are proprietary.
Third: For us taxpayers, data centers are a financial disaster. The cost of adding new electricity infrastructure to the grid to accommodate their heavy usage will push our electric rates up. Our power grid is threatened with costly maintenance and rolling blackouts. Contracts demanded by data centers give them priority access to power. We will suffer blackouts so they have uninterrupted service. Meanwhile, billionaire investors get sales tax breaks to build data centers likely to lower our property values. Our aging, rural grid will not support all the projects needed to increase electricity generation. Renewable energy projects already in the queue for more than two years will be delayed. Ray Bilger, a Congressional candidate (15th District) who has 26 years of experience working in national security, told attendees that China is becoming the powerhouse for renewable energy technology. Furthermore, 90% of the microchips used in the servers housed in these data centers are made in Taiwan. To decrease our vulnerability, we should be producing solar panels and microchips instead of data centers, but the Trump administration and the fossil fuel industries support each other.
Fourth: Once built, a data center creates, on average, only about 10 jobs — and there’s no guarantee those people will be hired locally.
Fifth: Despite the hype, data centers may be close to obsolete by the time they get built. An AI professional at the talk explained that engineers are already finding smaller, more fuel-efficient ways to power data storage. Do we really think the companies building these centers will stick around to dismantle them, clean up the mess, and leave the land as they found it? Pennsylvanians have been through this before with coal and natural gas. We need to slow down and understand what we’re dealing with and see how this technology evolves. We need to consider all the components involved and evaluate the true cost of data centers.
State Sen. Katie Muth has proposed a bill “to protect local communities from corporate exploitation by establishing a statewide three-year moratorium on hyperscale data center development.” Sen. Dave McCormick is sponsoring a federal bill to fast-track data center construction applications. Since his wife is the president of Meta, a company proposing some of the largest data centers in Pennsylvania, that raises concerns about a conflict of interest. How can we position ourselves to make our own decisions for our community? We learned that Pennsylvania townships and boroughs must be proactive by writing ordinances that protect citizens and their communities from data center impacts. Citizen-led movements are growing across the state and nation. At the very least, Pennsylvania needs to slow down and plan for where we want/need data centers. How will we power them and is AI the technology we want to invest in so early in its development? Pennsylvanians need progress, not another boom/bust industry that leaves our communities behind.
Maggie Waggoner, Lewisburg