Monticello Data Center – Part 1

Imagine that some politicians decide to build a magic road through the middle of Wright County. This magic road begins in Monticello, goes through Buffalo, Rockford and ends in Delano. The road is magic, because cars and trucks from anywhere in the world can magically transport from wherever they are – London, Hong Kong, Beijing, Paris, or Nairobi – drive on the road for a while and then leave. These cars and trucks materialize out of thin air, drive for a while on our road, and then disappear into thin air. It’s magic.

We folks in Wright County get the noise, the exhaust fumes, the disruption of our cities and towns. Our property values decrease. Our communities are torn apart. We don’t derive a lot of benefits from this magic road. The rest of the world does.

This is what the proposed Monticello data center is. It will be used by British pharmaceutical companies to do their billing. It will be used by Chinese railways to coordinate their schedules. It will be used by architects in Paris to design buildings. It will be used by students in Nairobi to write term papers. It will be used by newspapers in Russia to print propaganda for Putin.

For the rest of the world, the drive through Wright County will be a pleasant experience.

What price do we, the people who live in Monticello, Buffalo, Rockford, and Delano, and all of Wright County, pay?

Since the Monticello data center would be the largest in the country – the size of 50 football fields – we look at massive industrial blight daily. Think industrial zones in Communist eastern Europe in the 1970s. Wright County becomes industrialized, and as home values drop and people move away, much of Monticello turns into a slum.

We lose ground water and our streams and lakes will dry up. A current proposal says that the data center will use 3 million to 6 million gallons of water per day. Of course, the people trying to make millions off us now say that they will use a “dry cooling” method. I will write about this in a different post, but for now, dry cooling doesn’t work for a massive data center, especially in the summer. This is because of physics. Air is an inefficient way of getting rid of heat. Water cooling is much more efficient and much cheaper.

We hear the constant, unrelenting hum of many, many generators and fans. Even more with “dry cooling.” We hear this hum while we are in our houses, with all the windows shut, trying to sleep at night.

We get new high tension power lines (345 MVA) and new transformers throughout Wright County, placed by the government using eminent domain. A massive data center needs lots of electricity, and the Monticello power plant does not have the capacity to provide an extra 300 Megawatts of electricity every hour.

We get so much light pollution that we will not be able to see the stars in the sky at night.

Our children play in parks and streets immediately across from nine-foot cyclone fences with barbed wire on top.

We pay significantly higher electric bills and water bills.

We live with constant stress and we will change. We will begin blaming each other. We will begin hating each other. We will stop being nice to each other. We will avoid going for walks with our dogs. We will retreat into ourselves, and those people who can afford to move away will do so. Those of us who stay will lose our sanity. We will change. This has already happened. I hear this when I talk to folks in Monticello and around the county. And I can see it online. The folks in Monticello were mostly united until about March of this year. Then they lost hope, became depressed, and now they bicker and squabble with each other (their friends and neighbors) when they should be united and speaking with one voice.

How will we benefit? We are told two things: that this will create jobs, and that it will increase property tax revenue.

I will write about those issues separately. For now, keep in mind that the construction jobs will be short term, maybe lasting a year or so. They will be filled by transient workers from around the Midwest who arrive in campers, not workers from Monticello or Wright County (there are not enough local workers). The employment benefit is short term, and it does not benefit folks in Wright County.

It will bring in some additional property tax revenue. We do not know yet how much. But it also acts as a tax on us, are our property values go down and quality of life goes down.

The magic road that I describe above is imaginary. The massive Monticello data center is not imaginary.