The Denison City Council recently took an important proactive action for their citizens by taking a close look at their zoning rules. The result of that examination was approved changes to the city’s zoning rules that limit future data centers to light industrial and heavy industrial districts only. Hopefully, that action will eliminate the need for the citizen protests and difficult decisions made in other communities.
In case you aren’t aware of this concept or controversy, here is the Google explanation of a data center: “Data centers are massive facilities that store, process, and distribute massive amounts of data. They act as the physical backbone of the internet, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Whenever you send an email, stream a show, or ask a chatbot a question, you are interacting with a data center. These buildings serve several core functions for the digital world: 1. Data Storage: They hold servers and hard drives that store everything from personal family photos to massive corporate databases and medical records. 2. Information Processing: They provide the heavy-duty computing power needed to run websites, process online transactions, and train complex artificial intelligence models 3. Network Routing: They act as central hubs where internet traffic is sorted and directed to ensure you get the web pages or videos you are looking for quickly and securely”.
These “massive facilities” also require massive amounts of electricity and water. They pollute the air, generate constant noise and disturb the night with their need for 24/7 lighting. However, we’re all connected in some way to the digital world and there is no going back. So, even as we object to the terrible consequences of the centers, we must admit that we are a part of the problem. And we must find suitable locations for these monstrous creations of technology.
We want progress, but we don’t want to deal with the problems created by that progress. We want to drive a car, but not live near the factory that builds it. We love our cell phones, but we don’t want to see the towers that connect them to the world. And we’ve already seen protests against wind farms, power plants, cement batch plants, and even sports arenas.
There is a price to be paid for every step of progress ahead of us. And I think more communities should follow the lead of the Denison City Councilprepare, plan, and decide now- not at the last minute and under duress.