By: Diane Benjamin
I attended enough of the first discussion yesterday at the BCPA on data centers to know that those present want nothing to do with building one in Bloomington. I heard from an attendee that lots of different people showed up for the evening event with the same views.
The biggest reasons why are:
- massive water usage
- massive electricity usage leading to higher rates for citizens
- noise
- loss of farmland
All of these are completely legitimate reasons why a data center should never be built here. Mayor Brady and City Manager Jeff Jurgens sat onstage listening to one public comment after another. Most speakers were well-spoken and backed their points with solid research.
One attendee from Illinois People’s Action argued that organizing could stop all AI. That’s unrealistic—AI will advance with or without a local data center.
AI is simply a tool. I personally use Grok after ChatGPT lied to me and acted overly familiar. Parents should keep their kids away from it.
A real concern is AI’s potential to create a massive surveillance state. Several people mentioned Flock cameras and how police can now track vehicles across town via license plate readers. That’s convenient for law enforcement but devastating for privacy.
City Manager Jeff Jurgens mentioned that hyperscale data centers could be what companies want to build. These are the huge facilities used by companies like Google, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), IBM, and Microsoft.
Some attendees think local opposition will stop a data center from being built here. It won’t. Government consists of people with agendas — elect the wrong ones, and their agenda wins every time. They don’t care about consequences.
One speaker cited the Coliseum as a perfect example: despite overwhelming opposition, the government built it anyway. Progressives aren’t concerned with long-term results — only with taking the next step.
The day the government tells you a cell phone is required at all times outside your home is the day communism defeats the Constitution without firing a shot.
That’s a short path when you remember a few years ago the unvaccinated were close to being ostracized from society. Government lied for compliance, we must be smarter than that. Stay alert, involved, and vote.
Type: “Explain hyperscale data centers” into a couple different AI programs and just your browser. Compare the results.
We were sold numerous wind and solar farms all over the county on the fact that they would supply much needed revenue streams for taxing bodies and land owners. Same thing here. More and more farmland disappears. They touted “higher property values” in this forum. Quite likely but who wants that now? That just leads to even higher property tax bills for the homeowner just trying to survive. High utility rates go even higher. Same winners and same losers every time with this kind of development. Illinois is not a good place to live if you are the “little guy”!
Marion Co., IN has 9 townships. FIVE (5) of these townships have been ‘approached’ by out-of-state land buyers followed by ‘AI’ data center builders. FOUR (4) of these townships had some farm land that the younger generation ‘owners’ weren’t going to farm and therefore, went up for sale. These land buyers swooped in and are in the process of buying them. They’ve been followed by ‘AI’ builders. In all but one case, township citizens fought back….and WON!! The county that connects to Marion Co. northwest, is Boone Co. (Lebanon is the co. seat). A substantial number of GOOD Indiana farm acres were sold and immediately purchased by….out-of-state buyers (and Indiana’s LILLY Pharma.). Then ‘META’ comes in and already started building its “MEGA” huge ‘AI’ data center monstrosity!! Not enough Boone Co. citizens fought against it. Now…Boone Co. isn’t going to have enough water to supply these site, so ‘META’ started looking at the WABASH River in Tippecanoe Co. (Lafayette is Co. Seat) further northwest of Boone. That had been on a hold. Then ‘META’ started looking for water southeast…..at a large west side reservoir (Eagle Creek) back in Marion Co. Its (Pike) township citizens marched and screamed NO…and it worked! I could go on and on, but these articles give good overviews: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/leap-pipeline-project-boone-county-lafayette-lebanon-water-citizens-action-coalition-report-indiana/531-e4d0f899-2b72-4781-a773-4226ddfa5880 ….. https://www.jconline.com/story/news/local/lafayette/2023/08/14/transferring-water-could-affect-wabash-river-and-lebanon-watersheds/70506625007/ ….. and this: https://hctv1.com/2026/02/meta-breaks-ground-on-new-10b-data-center-campus-at-leap-in-lebanon/
You realize this isn’t over by a long shot. Any big time developer that has endless money streams will just keep coming back and coming back and use the court system and the local politicians to their advantage until they get what they want. The difference between people in Indiana and Illinois is that Indiana citizens for the most part are engaged and will fight back when they know they are getting crapped on. In Illinois and especially BN, there are not enough people to care and the payoffs to those that can make it happen to unethical people are more numerous. The siege of Indiana is because the water bodies in Indiana are numerous when it comes to the numbers of reservoirs, streams, lakes and rivers. Illinois is more limited because many wetlands were intentionally dried up by the agricultural community to make it more applicable for farming back in the day. Illinois basically destroyed its natural vegetation for farming and development through the years because the people of the time were brainless. Indiana does everything they can to preserve natural plantings and forests when they develop, especially residential and helps with natural water retention. Also many subdivisions have numerous ponds and not the stupid dry detention basins you see in most Illinois cities, including BN. Good recap of what’s going on here. It will fall on deaf ears in Illinois though.
Missouri citizens are showing up for the fight too. Packed meetings with lines out the door. Citizens now need to work hard on rezoning to make it impossible for data centers to keep “swooping in.” Not in our town, our county nor our entire country. Time to draw the line and hold “our” ground!