The developers behind the controversial planned data center campus in Grayslake will not be moving ahead with an application to fill in nearly 16 acres of wetlands on a portion of the project’s site, a representative said earlier this week.
In a statement, Pete Marin, CEO of T5, said that given the “extent of community questions and concerns,” the company has “volunteered to indefinitely suspend our permit application for wetland remediation.”
According to Brian Frank, chief engineer at the Lake County Stormwater Management Commission, he had heard from the US Army Corps of Engineers that the applicant had not followed up on its application, and the permit was closed.
A USACE representative did not respond to a request for confirmation.
Opposition to the data center had begun to focus on the roughly 16 acres of wetlands on a portion of the construction site, which T5 had applied to the USACE to permanently fill in.
Barrington-area resident Michael Smith, co-founder of the Lake County Data Center Opposition Coalition, which is planning to file a lawsuit against the development, had previously criticized Grayslake for allegedly flipping on its “historical position” on wetlands and allowing the destruction of “an important waterway and watershed.”
In his statement, Marin said T5 appreciated “the importance of wetland areas and the bond that local communities share with them and the wildlife ecosystems they support,” and has “successfully managed wetland remediation projects in many regions”
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“We’ve partnered with local communities to build safe, sustainable, and responsibly operated data centers in Illinois and all across the country for over 20 years,” he said.
But while the plans have changed, the data center project appears to be moving forward. Marin reaffirmed T5’s commitment to the development, saying it will produce 1,600 jobs, use “less water than virtually any other industrial or commercial project” and have “virtually no effect on electric rates for residents or local businesses.”
The Cornerstone development could generate “over half a billion dollars” in revenue for local taxing bodies, he said.
“We look forward to more actively communicating these benefits to the community and building a lasting partnership with every resident, much as we have in other communities across Illinois,” Marin said.
A T5 representative said the company’s assessment of the wetlands and development has not changed. Relocating the wetlands to a site within the same drainage basin, they argued, would have enhanced the total wetlands area while allowing the campus to be built more efficiently with fewer buildings.
Now, T5 will preserve the existing wetland area, the representative said, and proceed with a different plan.
Water usage and cooling
Data center developments are often criticized for high water usage. Grayslake and company officials have touted the campus’ closed-loop, air-cooled chiller system, which uses less municipal water than other cooling systems. The T5 representative said it will be filled once during construction and not require ongoing purging or refilling.
Water treatment additives used to maintain chemistry after that initial fill will be the same used in office building cooling systems, according to the representative, and will not include PFAS or “forever chemicals.” The campus will also reportedly include a leak detection and containment system to prevent undetected leaks in the system.
According to William Soucie, executive director of the Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency, each building on the campus will require its own flush and fill. According to a CLCJAWA presentation, a 100-megawatt building would require about 1.6 million gallons of water, with the fill taking place over several days.
Extrapolating those numbers out, the 1.2 GW of capacity being proposed by T5 would require about 19.2 million gallons of water in total. But Soucie did not express concerns about the campus’ water usage, saying the full campus will use less than 50,000 gallons of water per day — a number he said included averaged-out usage from the full build-out, flush and fill, and domestic use.
In comparison, “a fitness center in our service area uses about 25,000 gallons per day,” Soucie said.
But the closed-loop method comes with other concerns, water advocates have warned, requiring higher electricity usage and simply moving water consumption issues to the power plants.
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At least two Lake County municipalities have voiced their official opposition to the development: Avon Township and Round Lake Park. The Lake County Board, expressing concerns about data center developments, imposed a temporary moratorium on such projects for unincorporated areas; however, that has no impact on the Grayslake development.
Mundelein also passed ordinances clarifying that its ordinances do not currently permit data centers or battery energy storage system facilities, and Mayor Robin Meier said online she is planning to speak with Grayslake Mayor Elizabeth Davies on the topic, due to the “high concerns” residents have expressed, Meier said in a statement online.