Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. Today in the studio…
Don Hanrahan:
Yes, sir.
Jeff Williams:
Don Hanrahan.
He’s with the Coalition for Springfield Utility Futures.
Don Hanrahan:
That’s right.
Jeff Williams:
I thought this would be important to get on. (We are) going to discuss the proposed data center and going to provide some information with us here. So, Thanks for coming in, Don.
Don Hanrahan:
Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Jeff Williams:
Absolutely.
Don Hanrahan:
I guess we should kind of start by letting people know what is a data center. Some people know a data center is exactly what it says, just something that stores data. It can be like my old office where we had six lawyers and a bunch of support staff It can be two servers sitting in a hall closet that small. If it’s Memorial Medical Center or Memorial Health System with 6,700 employees, it’s going to take up a giant room at the hospital or something where they have racks and racks of servers. This is different. This is what’s called a hyperscale data center, a mega data center, and it’s owned by CyrusOne, the proposed developer. CyrusOne is in turn owned by BlackRock, the biggest corporation in the history of the planet. So basically, CyrusOne is saying they want to build a 600 megawatt data center. This thing is so immense, it almost boggles the mind. It will be contained in four buildings. Each building is 250,000 square feet. That’s each building being the size of about 3 or 4 football fields. That’s how big this thing is. I want to emphasize that because there’s a point I want to make. The size of this thing is just astronomical. It takes up 280 acres. And 10 years ago, CyrusOne built a single data center in Virginia. That one was a building 220,000 square feet comparable. It handled 20 megawatts 10 years ago. Now, each 250,000 square foot building on this proposed project handles 150 megawatts. The point I’m trying to make is things keep getting smaller. So I’m looking to consolidate a bunch of my data from my old law office. I’m retired, so I need to get it all squared away. And I’m going to buy, I’ve got all these old, you know, hard disk drives. And I’m going to put them all on something the size of my thumb that holds 8 terabytes of data. That was unheard of. And in the year 2000, that would have taken a room 8 feet by 10 feet full of racks of servers. Today, I can fit it in my coin pocket with my jeans. So what happens when this thing is obsolete and the obsolescence, the IRS, lets them depreciate it very quickly because they become obsolete quickly. What’s going to happen to it? What are you going to use those buildings for? Are you just going to keep expanding data? Or are you going to consolidate data in fewer and fewer buildings because you don’t need them anymore? What happens to our big data center then? What this proposed data center is, we don’t know what they’re going to use it for. They won’t tell us. is this going to be used for AI, artificial intelligence? They won’t tell us who their customers are. We don’t know. Is it some Palantir spying device? I mean, we don’t know. One of the things that I did want to get into is the worries of the county board. The county board has to decide whether or not they’re going to give this what they call a conditional permitted use. to build this thing. And a lot of the county board members I know are looking at it saying, well, it technically meets the requirements of what we put in our zoning ordinance, so I guess we have to approve it. My rejoinder to that is what is the whole purpose of your zoning ordinances? It’s stated very clearly, the health and welfare and well-being of the residents of Sangamon County. And preserving our property, our way of life, our finances, that has to all be safeguarded. Health, safety, finances, those are the key things. If a otherwise dot all the I’s, cross all the T’s project meets those minimal zoning requirements, but it’s going to adversely affect the health and safety, of the people of Sangamon County, the county board not only has the option, but the obligation to deny the permit. There are so many unknowns.

Jeff Williams:
Well, that’s what I was going to say. Sorry to interject here. But if they’re not able to at least give you some sort of a blueprint or bullet points on what exactly it’s going to entail, (or) what it’s going to do, I mean, that’s hard to proceed. It really is.

Don Hanrahan:
And that’s an excellent point and brings something up that I have been talking about, which is if we don’t know, and if it is being used for AI, which is a job displacement program, let’s face it. I mean, Musk is laying off 10s of thousands of people because he doesn’t need them. He’s using AI to run his stuff for Meta. So he’s laying people off. And the kinds of jobs that AI affects the most are the kinds of jobs we have in Sangamon County. I’m talking about clerical jobs, administrative jobs, managerial jobs, professional jobs, the jobs at the state of Illinois, the jobs in our medical facilities, the administrative jobs there, are thousands and thousands of those jobs. In fact, it’s about 80% of all our jobs in Sangamon County, the very kinds of jobs that are adversely affected by AI. And so if we don’t know that that’s what it’s going to be used for, it seems to me that the whole selling point of this thing is, oh, we’re going to have all these jobs. Good. I’m happy that people who build the machine are going to have jobs. That’s a good thing. They’re saying that there will be 100 permanent jobs, which isn’t very many, given the size of the thing. But good, we need jobs. But what we don’t need is to build a machine that takes away our jobs over time. We’re already losing population in Springfield and Sangamon County. And to me, it’s a risk. If they’re not going to tell us, how do we know that this is good for the finances of Sangamon County?

Jeff Williams:
The thing is, if they can’t tell you (what it’s going to do), that seems like a red flag right there.

Don Hanrahan:
I think it is. And again, I want to bring this back to what our zoning ordinance says. The overall guiding principle is the health welfare well-being of our residents and our county. This thing don’t meet it. These things create health problems. So one of the first things I asked when I heard this thing was coming to Sangamon County is, oh my God, these things use millions of gallons of water every single day, 5 million gallons of water A day. Oh no, they said, we’re not using a once-through cooling system. You know how hot electronics get, everything’s hot. So Some of the data centers that they have use what’s called once through cooling. So they just use fresh water that comes in and cools everything down. It evaporates. So it uses up all that water. CyrusOne said, oh, no, We’re using a closed loop system. That’s like the radiator on your car. So you’re not taking in water all the time. It’s a closed system. Good. They’re not going to use, you know, all that water. But so how do they keep it cool? They have fans like the fan on your car. And these buildings house each one, hundreds of these industrial fans. And they’re attached to the top of the building. And the building, of course, sits on the ground. These things are loud. And they emit, not loud, offensive to your ears, but low frequency loud, a vibration kind of loud.

Jeff Williams:
It does not stop(?).

Don Hanrahan:
And it does not stop. Low frequencies can travel through things, through barriers, and That’s why you can hear a train, a freight train rumbling by miles and miles away. So that’s not just a nuisance. That’s a health issue. They don’t turn it on for 10 minutes and then it’s done. They don’t turn it on for a week or two and then it’s done. It’s running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Those people in the little village of Louder, they’re going to step out onto their deck They’re going to hear a noise about as loud as a dishwasher all the time, but it’s also a lower frequency, so it vibrates. The health issues, it can cause increased blood pressure. It can cause chronic anxiety. It also affects, obviously, other creatures, not just humans. And just to the, I believe it’s to the south of the proposed site is a family that’s been there for 150 years. It has a livestock operation. A little bit to the west is a kennel that’s been in business for 15 years. And they’re about a mile as the crow flies from the edge of the data center. Can you imagine what that’s going to do to the dogs? And the woman, I just saw a Facebook post from her, she thinks she’s going to have to probably close her business if they proceed with this thing. But that’s not all. Of course, there’s wildlife down there. Contrary to what the chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals said to me, there’s no wildlife down there. There’s foxes, there’s coyotes, there’s deer. And there’s migratory bird species. So these are all things that affect health. And they affect the environment in which our community lives. And they’re all reasons that our zoning ordinance would protect us by a vote of the county board that says we cannot tolerate these effects. So we’re going to deny your permit. I’m not saying, I’m not omniscient. I don’t know that that’s the effects, but somebody needs to study that. There have been no impact studies done whatsoever, just promises from CyrusOne. They promised that they learned their lesson in Aurora. You know, they built a big data center in Aurora. It had two or three phases to it. And they, you know, in the Illinois Times, the representative from CyrusOne says, well, you know, we built that to the We built that in 2017 to the industrial standards that we had then. We didn’t know as well as we do now. This one is going to be so much better and so much quieter and you can trust us. What I found out from people in Aurora is the third phase of that was not built until 2024, not 2017. And when they built it in 2024, did they know better then or did they not? And when They built it in 2024. That’s the one that everybody in Aurora is complaining about, the most recent one. I don’t know how far we can trust these tech bros from Texas when they tell us that they’re going to do us right. I’m not saying they won’t. I would love to have all the money that they’re talking about bringing to the county through taxes. We’d all love to have that. We need it. But I’m just saying we don’t know that and they’re not giving us the information we need to make that decision.

Jeff Williams:
Right. Now, let me ask you this. One thing I wondered… because I knew they were a group from Texas. Why do they, and this might be way simpler and it might be obvious, I don’t know, but… Why do they have to build them all over the place? If this group is from Texas, why are they not just building them all in the huge state of Texas?

Don Hanrahan:
Well, that’s a good question. And the answer is this. In the Midwest, particularly in Illinois, Illinois is a net exporter of power. We have huge amounts of power that are built here and produced here. And so there are huge infrastructure, transmission lines, transmission facilities here in Illinois, right smack in the middle of central Illinois at this site. The double black diamond solar array also tapped into this so that they could manufacture power and send it to the grid. Now, CyrusOne has found the same location to be ideal for sucking power off the grid. And it’s a lot of power, Jeff. It’s A lot.

Jeff Williams:
Texas’s own power grid, right? Is that correct?

Don Hanrahan:
Yeah, we’re on a grid that spans a number of states. You know, CyrusOne will say, well, we’re just one facility. We’re not really going to affect your rates. That’s what they keep telling us. But it’s not just CyrusOne. It’s all the other ones that are going to come online at the same time as CyrusOne. And just to give your listeners an idea, 600 megawatts of power. We built this, double black diamond solar array. We built Morgan County wind farms. We built Logan County wind farms. If you took all the renewable energy that’s been built in central, in this area of central Illinois in the last, you know, eight years, that thing is going to suck up all the power that just got built that was supposed to go to the grid to help us, yes, and to help us to retire the old dirty coal and gas plants that are destroying the planet.

Jeff Williams:
Exactly.

Don Hanrahan:
And so all of that’s going to be sucked right up by this data center.

Jeff Williams:
Right. We’ll once again in the studio, Don Hanrahan with the Coalition for Springfield Utility Futures. Wow, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming. coming in and discussing this and letting people know and get it out there for sure.

Don Hanrahan:
So I just hope that some of the county board members that doubt their power can find it because their power is there. The power is in the zoning ordinance that says to protect the health and welfare and the finances of Sangamon County. If we just need to pause this and get a short moratorium or a short pause until we can vet this, That’s fine with me, but we haven’t done that yet. We haven’t done our homework, haven’t done due diligence. They just came in and said, give us, gimme, gimme, gimme.

Jeff Williams:
Man, yeah. Wow, a lot to think about. And Don, thank you very, very much for coming in.

Don Hanrahan:
Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Williams:
Community Voices is a production of NPR, Illinois.