Residents voice concerns about data centers

CONNEAUT – Data centers have been a hot-button issue across the State of Ohio in recent months.
Upon hearing there was a possibility a data center could be built in Conneaut, some residents decided it was time to organize in order to voice their displeasure.
The No Data Centers in Conneaut group held its first meeting at Conneaut Public Library on Wednesday, April 8. The meeting was an organizational event.
“Our group is non-partisan, and we have a little bit of language on this,” event co-organizer Julia Barton said. “We’re working on various issues, one of them being the data center issue, because we have concerns about the environmental and social impacts that it could have on our communities where we live. We’re working countywide, and we’re working Conneaut rather quickly, because it came to our awareness at city council meetings that there were, we keep saying, rumblings. We don’t have a whole lot of concrete information.”
The group met in response to a presentation made by Greg Myers, executive director for Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County, during a work session on Monday, Jan. 4.
During his presentation, Myers said the City of Conneaut has received interest from a number of different industries, including data centers and power generation, because of currently existing infrastructure and proximity to Interstate 90, Conneaut Creek, Lake Erie and several railroad lines.
The No Data Centers in Conneaut meeting was a venue for residents to express concerns.
Myers made his presentation in January to notify city council of the development possibilities for the city, not to speak about a specific project. He was very clear to tell city council that there were no details to be shared on specific projects because there was nothing in development.
As part of his presentation, Myers noted that a number of properties in Conneaut were perfect for economic development and loosely linked those properties to potential develop opportunities. Those properties included the upper coal dock area east of the Canadian National docks and the Baltimore and Lake Erie site south of Interstate 90, both owned by Canadian National. Other sites discussed included a 100-acre site near the lake and the city-owned industrial park on the east side.
Myers never linked a specific property to a specific development opportunity and all properties were discussed as stand-alone sites that would be the home to separate industries and corporations.
He was adamant that no projects were currently in development.
During the No Data Centers event, a resident suggested the site being proposed for a data center is a 260-acre farm on Underridge Road.
“I don’t know whether they purchased it, have a purchase agreement,” the resident said. “I don’t know the details and the person I talked at the state wasn’t allowed to tell me. They have some kind of agreement on all those properties south of [Interstate] 90. I don’t know what’s going on with the recycling building over there. I was told by someone who works there and he said they’re done with it being there because they have some other use for it. I don’t know if that’s another use for this or not.”
Joel Specht, a co-organizer of the No Data Centers meeting, believes there was a plan for the industrial park.
“The industrial park on the east side, that’s where they’re looking at installing some kind of power plant to power this thing,” Specht said.
A man noted that the location was a good one for an industry looking to tap into electric and gas lines.
A woman asked for clarification on the property being discussed.
“Could you help me understand the location, please,” she said. “Is there one main data center and then an additional separate electrical center, and then what did you mention? Something about gas? Is this triangulating all around the east side of Conneaut?”
Specht had a ready response.
“With what little details we know, it’s going to incorporate the industrial park and 260-plus acres of farmland to power and build this structure,” Specht said.
A man said that the group is unaware of actual plans, but linked a data center to a property in the southern half of the city.
“Again, we don’t know, the man said. “We don’t know what the actual proposal is. We’ve been told there’s no formal proposals. From my understanding, going to the meetings and what little information we got, it wasn’t much, some council people spoke to me after the meeting. My understanding for whatever project whoever has in mind, is that it would be on the property along Route 90, on Underridge Road, which I believe used to be, or still is, owned by the Hogle family, which would be the siting of the data center.”
The citizens that gathered at the No Data Centers meeting expressed concerns that the city’s administration could sign non-disclosure agreements forcing it to remain quiet on details of any project being developed.
“I asked them if town council had signed NDAs,” Specht said. “They all said on public record that they have not. I asked them for the company that is trying to come in with the data center. They, actually (City Manager) Nick Sanford, I emailed him, and he responded back.”
“(Sanford) gave me a file of the paperwork. The company is called N2 Development Solutions. I looked them up online. It’s a shell company,” Specht said. “I am going to email this company. I’m also going to email a contact on the paperwork from Erie, Pa., and ask them if they will give us the name of the company behind this. They’re not going to. In fact, at the next town council meeting, I’m going to ask again if they’ve signed NDAs. I don’t know.”
One resident asked why there was secrecy.
“Liability,” Katie O’Neill, an environmental lawyer, said. “The Ohio EPA has determined that they can lower the water quality of the state, which means that the Ohio EPA and the General Assembly is not ready to regulate this industry, although they are scrambling right now.”
No information has been released to the public on the development of a data center because, as Myers pointed out a number of times during his presentation, there were no specifics projects in development and no agreements have been made.
O’Neill addressed the possibility that a power plant could be constructed to fuel a data center.
“We should be demanding that every data center uses renewable energy, that they don’t take from our grid, that they have their own micro grid from solar or wave or wind,” O’Neill said. “Right now, they’re looking at nuclear power plants and that’s what they want to use for generating energy for data centers. This is a nationwide plan.”
Specht pointed out that the water used to cool a data center, once it’s pulled from the lake, has to go somewhere once the data center is done with it.
O’Neill said it would be released into Conneaut Creek.
“Right now, we don’t know if they’re going to be cooling that water,” a man said. “From what I understand, sometimes they just dump it back into a creek or a lake.”
Specht said his research revealed that dumping the water into Conneaut Creek is not good for the city.
“Looking online at different companies that provide this, like this mix of chemicals they put into the coolant, there is nothing good about what’s going to go through those systems to cool those mega processors that will eventually have to be released with heavy metals, glycols,” Specht said. “The pollution would eventually be catastrophic to this area.”
A woman asked if the water released would be filtered somehow.
O’Neill told the woman that the EPA is saying the water doesn’t have to be filtered.
“We cannot trust the EPA right now,” Specht said.
Another woman stated that the EPA is changing the rules to meet the data centers’ needs rather than holding the data centers to the rules already in place.
A man asked where the heavy metals would be coming from.
Specht attempted an answer.
“It’s going to actually cool through different processors as they work through,” Specht said.
Another concern raised was the loss of hay-producing farmland.
“I’ll just share a thing that concerns me,” Barton said. “It concerns me that while we have a number of vacant industrial pieces of ground in Conneaut, we’re talking about putting this on farmland that grows the best hay in the county…I don’t begrudge any farmer a buyout, especially farmers that have worked as hard as this family, but I really don’t think it’s a good use of prime farmland that we will never get back. There’s no way to get that back, ever, if we should choose or if the powers that be should choose to put a data center there when we have the GE plant. You can walk to other places in town, we have other spaces that are already industrial. I don’t want a data center at all, but I especially do not want it on farm ground.”

For detailed coverage of the presentation made by Growth Partnership Executive Director Greg Myers during the Conneaut city council work session on Monday, Jan. 4, visit https://gazettenews.com/conneaut-prime-location-for-development/.