00:00Nobody wants to lose their history and lose their self because once this data center come up,
00:08it's going to be hard for me and my sisters and brothers to want to stay here.
00:12Wherever you live, there's a growing chance that a data center could be coming to your county,
00:17town, or neighborhood. Warehouses full of computers are looking to connect to the grid,
00:23but it's sparking backlash among existing residents, including some whose families
00:29have been there for generations. And we had promised my dad we would stay here.
00:35When he passed, he said, I'm turning it over to y'all,
00:38but I didn't think I would be fighting the data center.
00:46From chat GPT to AI-generated video, artificial intelligence is taking off. Training and running
00:54AI models requires an enormous amount of computing power. Researchers have raised concerns over how
01:00much electricity and water data centers will consume. And in Taylor, Texas, a facility from
01:06Blueprint data centers was approved on vacant land just a few hundred feet from a neighborhood.
01:12The plot is important to residents like Pamela Griffin, who grew up with it as a place to play.
01:18Now we hear that the land has been sold to a data center. And a data center doesn't benefit
01:28us at all in this community. Basically, it hurts us. We are poor community. We can't afford to just
01:35pack up and move because a big data center is coming in our neighborhood. So we have to get up and fight.
01:43Griffin and other neighbors went to city council to share their concerns before the data center was
01:49approved. We didn't get no help. When we went, they was like, well, we see your passion. We see your
01:58concern. Well, basically said there's nothing we can do. Some city governments have taken action. In August,
02:07St. Charles, Missouri became the nation's first city to pass a one-year moratorium
02:12on new data center construction. The ban came after residents raised concerns about a facility
02:18known as Project Cumulus. Virginia is the epicenter of data centers for a number of reasons, including
02:26proximity to the nation's capital, access to land and electricity, and the low likelihood of
02:32catastrophic weather events. But some residents there have long resisted data center development.
02:38If you are only in this fight to stop what's in your neighborhood, you're going to lose because
02:43another one's coming right behind it. In Prince William County, Virginia, Elena Schlossberg wants
02:49to prevent changes to the quiet rural lifestyle she enjoys. But her mission doesn't stop at data
02:55centers that affect her. She cites noise concerns, the amount of energy needed to power data centers,
03:01and potential changes to the local environment. And she's distrustful of the companies behind new
03:07facilities. When they say, oh, it's going to look beautiful, they're not including the transmission,
03:12the diesel generators as substations. They're not including how they have to denude everything of
03:18all vegetation. Some data centers use water to cool their computers, consuming 17 billion gallons in 2023.
03:27But that's only part of the picture. The massive footprint of water used by data centers is
03:37largely due to the water that is used by generating the electricity for the data centers. Melissa Scanlon
03:47is a water policy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. If we're talking about the
03:54total consumption in 2023, that 228 billion gallons per year, that's about the amount of water
04:05that would be needed for more than 7.6 million Americans in a year for all of their uses. And
04:17so that's a little more than the population of the entire state of Arizona.
04:23Nationwide, there are nearly 3,000 data centers, and they can use the same amount of electricity as
04:295 to 20 million households. Hundreds more data centers are currently under construction or in the
04:35planning phase. Real estate company Cushman and Wakefield tracked proposed data centers across the
04:42country and found they would require 79 gigawatts of power at any given moment. The U.S. would need
04:49as much power as is produced by about 40 Hoover dams to meet that electricity demand. Back in Taylor,
04:57the Blueprint Data Center's facility plans to use a closed-loop cooling system. That type of system
05:04recycles cooling liquid, so it can fill up with water once without the need to continuously use more.
05:11When Pamela Griffin was researching the property Blueprint Data Centers had purchased in Taylor,
05:16she discovered a deed from when it was sold to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation
05:22by the Bland Cromwell family, those friendly neighbors who allowed Griffin and other kids
05:27to use the property for fun and games.
05:29It is supposed to be a park, and it says restricted. Griffin and her brother sued Blueprint Data Centers,
05:37seeking a temporary injunction to stop the project. And they wanted the deed enforced so the land could
05:43be a park. A Williamson County judge denied the injunction and threw out the case.
05:48This is not good for Texas. If they can just bypass a deed of what somebody said, it hurts all of us.
05:56Not even hurting First and Second Avenue on Royal Street. It hurts the whole Texas.
06:03The property in question was sold multiple times, eventually landing in the portfolio of the Taylor
06:10Economic Development Corporation. Then it was sold to Blueprint Data Centers.
06:15Blueprint Data Centers did not respond to a request for an interview.
06:20Did you, were you ever aware of any restrictions saying that this is supposed to be parkland?
06:24Never. Never.
06:26Okay.
06:28Never was aware. Never even heard of it. It would, you know, that's why you have title
06:33insurance companies review everything. You have attorneys review everything. It never came up.
06:38Taylor Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Ben White says despite data centers not
06:45creating many full-time jobs, there are benefits to growing cities.
06:49We need funds for quality of life and for roads and for infrastructure. You know, a project like this
06:55could, you know, provide the city $25, $35 million over the next 10 years to help fund those things.
07:02So you want improved parks? We need more police officers. We need another fire station. We need
07:07more firefighters. We need improved roads. We need improved water.
07:11In addition to city services, White said the property tax revenue from the data center
07:17will also help local schools with up to $25 million over 10 years.
07:22And White hopes the community sees the benefit in hindsight.
07:26You know, I wish there was, you know, that group of citizens that are nearby, you know,
07:32had more of a buy-in on what it's going to do for that area and help it. We're very comfortable
07:39in everything we did and we feel like we did everything correct us.
07:42While advocates like White promote a promise of future prosperity, residents like Pamela Griffin
07:48are left with the memories of the construction site as a gathering place for neighborhood kids.
07:54We used to all play with everybody and everybody knew about First and if you talk to some people
07:59in Taylor, oh, I know what First and Second Avenue, I used to play over there. A lot of them used to tell
08:05they used to play over here. And it's just, it just, it breaks my heart.
08:12Since discovering the deed, she believes Frank Ray Cromwell, the previous owner, meant for the land to be
08:19a park. Even if the judge didn't agree that it could be enforced. Griffin and her lawyer are filing
08:26an appeal. I would cry every night. I see a big old, big old builder sitting there and I'd be crying
08:32because I know now that this man, this man gave it to us. He said, he did it. He told my dad and he did it.
08:44And that's the thing. We got a big old data center. Ain't nobody going to want to stay here.
08:49For Straight Arrow News, I'm Keaton Peters. For more on this story,
08:53download the Straight Arrow News mobile app today or go to san.com.
