ALL-DAY HEARING ON DATA CENTER
More than 200 fill gym to speak on controversial development
Wearing a "No Data Centers in Franklin County" T-shirt, Dana Bowers, front center, and her son Daxtin Bowers, 13, front right, stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of a public meeting about proposed data centers being held by the Franklin County Commission at East Central College on Monday.
Hundreds of community members listen as attorney Kurt Voss, center, makes comments in favor of approving a data center as he addresses the Franklin County Commission during a public meeting at East Central College on Monday.
FRANKLIN COUNTY
UNION — A marathon public hearing on two proposed data centers in Franklin County — and regulations for such projects — kicked off Monday morning with more than 200 people filing into a chilly campus gym, most hoping to convince county commissioners to reject the massive projects.
By late afternoon, the public comments had gone for more than seven hours, with hours more expected into the night. The audience fluctuated as the day wore on, with some residents wearing red shirts or neon yellow shirts expressing their opposition to the data center.
The County Commission banned posters and signs from the meeting at held East Central College in Union, roughly 10 miles from the proposed data centers, one in Gray Summit and another in rural Pacific.
The crowd included families with young kids and others with homeschooled students. Some came prepared with containers of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips for their families to have for lunch. Others brought turkey and bologna sandwiches in plastic wrap.
The meeting was divided into public comment on three items; more than 90 people spoke on the proposed data center regulations, with similar numbers signed up to speak on the Pacific and the Gray Summit projects.
"Franklin County is known for its rolling hills, farmland, rivers, parks and small town communities. People choose to live here because of the peace, open land and rural character that have defined this county for generations," said Pacific resident Rachel Sandy.
"A data center is not rural development, and it is not agriculture. It is a high-intensity industrial facility that brings massive energy demand, increased infrastructure demands, heavy traffic, continuous mechanical noise and long-term pressure for additional industrial growth," she said. "It doesn't belong here."
Regulations are 'thoughtful,' developer says
Officials tied to the Pacific data center project began the hearing Monday morning touting a new draft of regulations that they described as being the most thorough regulations for any data center project in the country.
"This ordinance is thoughtful," said Beltline Energy partner Ryan Sanders. "It certainly protects the citizens."
A statement that brought hisses of displeasure from the public.
But David Burch, a developer from Florida, traveled to Franklin County to speak in support of Beltline Energy and said officials have "spent months listening to the community" to address their concerns.
"We feel like we have addressed all of those concerns," Burch said.
But critics, like Sean Casey, said the regulations the county has proposed are not robust enough. County officials and the data center developers want residents to believe that an 11-page draft regulation was "the most wonderful thing that we've ever seen in the whole world," he said.
"It is not, and we know that it is not," Casey said.
He believes the county needs to push for more regulations on ambient noise limits, specifically when officials will be testing for noise violations.
"It needs to be 7,500 pages," Casey said. "You need to get people in here that are not on their side and who are actually going to write rules that protect the community."
No decisions were made on either data center proposal or the draft regulations Monday; the Franklin County Commission will take them up at a future meeting. The county's planning and zoning board has recommended the Gray Summit project for approval, but the County Commission has the final say.
The crowd included nine men representing the Beltline Energy project near Pacific; the Atlanta-based company wants to build a 495-acre, $16 billion data center campus.
There were also a handful of representatives from the Eckelkamp family, who own the 613acre Gray Summit site near Shaw Nature Reserve that Texas company Provident wants to develop into a "multibillion-dollar" campus officials say would bring in more than $50 million in local tax revenue per year.
Mark McCloskey, a former U.S. Senate candidate who gained notoriety in June 2020 for appearing on the front steps of his Central West End neighborhood home armed with a gun as demonstrators passed his property on their way to protest, has become an outspoken critic of data centers and artificial intelligence.
He said he now lives in Robertsville, in Franklin County, and spoke at Monday's hearing. He claimed that the data centers — and AI — will eliminate 50% of white collar jobs.
"What's the real purpose of artificial intelligence," McCloskey said. "Universal surveillance, universal control and eventual slavery to the very machine that we're developing but have no idea how to control."
As the hours wore on, multiple grandmothers addressed the three-man County Commission, saying they worried that the data centers would destroy the local environment, deprive their grandchildren of clean drinking water, wreak havoc on the area's wildlife and upend the region's agriculture economy by contaminating the soil and air.
"I know my words won't mean much to you, but they come from my heart," said Geri Thwing, of Gray Summit. She moved to her family's rural Franklin County home 33 years ago, from Florissant.
"We beg you to reconsider and vote 'no' on these data centers," she said.
After her testimony, she told the Post-Dispatch that she felt like the grandmothers held little sway, but she felt that she owed it to her grandchildren to fight back against the data center that would be less than 2 miles from her home.
"I feel like their minds are already made up," Thwing said. "They are more concerned about the money aspect of new tax revenue, while we are thinking about the families impacted by this. We are thinking about our families."
Ethan Colbert ecolbert@post-dispatch.com
