Major meeting in Sioux Falls Tuesday on proposed hyperscale data center

Editor’s note: You can observe the proceedings of the meeting — set to discuss a proposed data center between Brandon and Sioux Falls — October 27, 7pm, Carnegie Town Hall, 235 W. 10th St. in Sioux Falls.

The issue of data centers has become a hot button, with the right and the left finding common ground. Democrats, Republicans, independents and all others have coalesced around opposition to having them anywhere near our own communities.

And for good reasons: they suck the local energy sector dry, which will cause our electricity to fluctuate and cost us dearly in our pocketbooks … they do the same with the local water supply, and it’s unclear how much damage to water tables and our private supplies they will cause … they create noise at decibels well above the safety level for human well-being, and that also includes all the nearby wildlife and insects as well … and the profligate amount of diesel fuel they will house threatens our air and the environment with constant and unabated spills and leaks into the Earth.

On Tuesday, October 27, the Sioux Falls Council and the Lincoln County Commissioners will meet jointly to address the issue of data centers, particularly the Gemini Data Center, which is a proposed hyperscale data center on 164 acres between Brandon and Sioux Falls.

There were hours of opposition remarks and testimony given to the SF Council this past January, yet the immediate vote in favor of the 500 megawatt Gemini project was 7-0.

Yet now the politicians have realized this has turned into a real issue with huge public opposition, so they’ve established an Oversight Committee to study potential future regulations on data centers and to gather more public input. This is what the October 27 meeting is all about and I suggest you, dear reader, make every effort to be there.

At least one of the public needs to suggest to the politicians that mitigation is the answer for all of us.

1) On the power issue, any data center should have its own wind turbine (or more) and a solar roof and solar farm. These will not suffice on their own but will help mitigate the huge power needs of each data center.

2) On the water issue, a closed loop system should always be employed and all the water used is to be recycled, so as little as possible is taken from the local supply.

3) On the sound pollution issue, a 30-foot fence should be built around the entire data center itself. Such fences have proven to substantially mitigate the sound from interstate highways, so this fence (to include a closed gate) would help mitigate the noise.

4) Hundreds of diesel generators are expected for power augmentation purposes. Emission control devices can mitigate the air pollution of these generators, and fuel containment should be treated as part of critical infrastructure planning (for any and all future leaks).

There are many more issues concerning data centers, but these four stand out as the biggest and most critical. These politicians live here, too, and if they do not require these things, do you really think any company would voluntarily pay these expenses?

Besides insisting that our local politicians pass regulations such as mentioned here, they should also eschew any thoughts of tax breaks. The companies behind these centers represent billions of dollars and they fully intend to make a financial killing on these centers.

We cannot stop them, but we can regulate them and force them to mitigate the coming harm to our communities.

Van Carter of Sioux Falls is a retired broadcast journalist and environmentalist who published a green website for 15 years.

Photo: U.S. Dept. of Energy computing center in California, ca. 2010. Public domain, wikimedia commons

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