Data center plans demand public scrutiny

Recent events in Mason County (Maysville) illus­trate why the issue of data cen­ters deserves prompt and ade­quate exam­i­na­tion by local governments. 

Citizens there were kept in the dark about a hyper­scale data cen­ter being planned in the coun­ty, one pro­posed by Meta.  The coun­ty had appar­ent­ly signed an NDA (non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment) with the com­pa­ny so those most impact­ed by any pro­posed devel­op­ment were unaware of much of the nego­ti­a­tions going on with the company. 

Numerous con­ces­sions were made by both sides.  Local tax­es were for­giv­en for 40 years, and Meta would agree to pro­vide $130 mil­lion in water and waste­water infra­struc­ture, road­way improve­ments and pub­lic safe­ty enhance­ments. Meanwhile, the coun­ty would receive only $5 mil­lion annu­al­ly in lieu of tax­es while the local school dis­trict would receive $2 mil­lion annually. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that “thou­sands” of con­struc­tion jobs would be cre­at­ed with 400 per­ma­nent jobs once the project is complete. 

The coun­ty would agree to issue indus­tri­al bonds for the project, and the com­plet­ed facil­i­ty would be owned by the coun­ty and leased by Meta, mean­ing that no local prop­er­ty tax­es would be gen­er­at­ed over the life of the bonds. 

All this sounds pret­ty entic­ing, but some­one will have to deter­mine if the pro­posed incen­tives out­weigh the loss of tax­es. There is also the ques­tion of what may hap­pen at the end of 40 years. Does the com­pa­ny sim­ply aban­don the site and leave what­ev­er cleanup is nec­es­sary to the coun­ty?  At what poten­tial cost?  Have there been any lim­i­ta­tions on water usage or noise gen­er­a­tion?  Where does the pow­er for the com­plex come from?  Are local cit­i­zens pro­tect­ed from esca­lat­ing ener­gy costs? 

These are all ques­tions which should be posed by any munic­i­pal­i­ty seek­ing a data center. 

The Mason County project is tru­ly a hyper­scale project.  It is pro­posed for 3,000 acres.  That may not sound like much; how about 130,680,000 square feet?  Maybe an even more telling per­spec­tive would be that this is approx­i­mate­ly half the area of the entire city lim­its of Winchester. 

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, the gov­ern­ment of Woodford County has issued a per­ma­nent mora­to­ri­um against data cen­ters.  All across Kentucky, com­mu­ni­ties are address­ing the issue in var­i­ous ways, most with some sort of mora­to­ri­um — from a few months to a year — as in the city of Winchester. 

What about Clark County?

Many peo­ple here have sug­gest­ed that a longer mora­to­ri­um is war­rant­ed, but so far, the Clark County gov­ern­ment has not addressed the issue.  It is alleged that at least one mem­ber run­ning for coun­ty gov­ern­ment is opposed to any mora­to­ri­um.  Obviously, the coun­ty is more like­ly to be sought as a site for a data cen­ter than the city sim­ply because of the amount of land need­ed for such a facil­i­ty, land which is not avail­able with­in the city limits. 

So, while the city gov­ern­ment and the Planning and Zoning com­mis­sion exam­ine ways of deal­ing with a poten­tial data cen­ter loca­tion here, the coun­ty can­not sim­ply avoid deal­ing with the issue.  With the elec­tion of mag­is­trates and the coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive only a short time away, it is impor­tant that Clark County vot­ers have a clear under­stand­ing of the posi­tion of each one seek­ing office or at the very least, demand that the present mem­bers of coun­ty gov­ern­ment make their opin­ions known. 

Trying to cope with the myr­i­ad issues relat­ed to data cen­ters with­out accu­rate infor­ma­tion­al back­ground is tan­ta­mount to going into bat­tle with one’s weapons loaded with blanks.