Hundreds of Howell Township, Michigan, residents packed a planning commission meeting Tuesday night to push back against a plan to build a massive data center.
The proposal is in its early stages, but if approved, the building will sit on 1,000 acres of land.
One young resident said, “I know I’m only 12, but I will be the one living with these decisions for the rest of my life.”
“Everything that happens tonight will be challenged in court,” said a woman during the meeting.
Data centers are often used to store the servers that hold large amounts of data and information.
The project would be a major investment in Livingston County. The land is currently owned by the Van Gilder family, who wrote in a letter to the township that considering the sale of part of their land was a significant decision.
Most of the area’s residents, however, are strongly opposed to the idea, citing the potential impacts on noise pollution, water supplies, and electricity costs.
“I think they’re very bad for the environment; they suck up a lot of the water. Michigan sits on most of the freshwater, and it is just a bad look,” Caitlin Harvey said.
Meanwhile, some residents, like Brent Earl, say the addition of a data center could be good for the area. He said the project would bring jobs to Livingston County, both as it’s being built and when the center is up and running too.
“Data centers can be a good thing for a community if you know it’s done the right way, gone through the right process, and doesn’t have any environmental effects, negative effects to the community,” Earl told CBS News Detroit before the meeting. “It sounds like the positives are financial, the data center first phase, I heard, is going to be like a billion dollars for its first phase, and you know that’s a significant amount of tax revenue for our little township.”