More than four dozen Fox Valley residents, including nearly 20 from Aurora, gathered at the Santori Public Library in downtown Aurora on Monday night to discuss the impact of data centers in the area.
Residents expressed frustration with rising utility costs they believe are tied to data centers and an alleged lack of transparency in the development of the facilities, among other concerns raised at the event hosted by the Sierra Club Valley of the Fox Group.
Kane County Board member Mavis Bates, chair of the Sierra Club Valley of the Fox Group, said attendance at the event – one of the highest Bates has seen at a meeting of the group – reflects the spike in resident concerns about data centers this year.
“You can tell by the folks who showed up today that data centers and the impact on our communities are on their minds,” said state Rep. Maura Hirschauer, a Democrat from Batavia, who attended the meeting. “Everyone’s energy costs are going through the roof right now.”
Proponents of data centers have spoken in favor of the potential jobs and property tax revenue data centers can bring. Officials in Robbins, Illinois, for example, recently said they are open to data center development in their area due to tax revenue they said it could bring in.
The Fox Valley has OK’d several major data center facilities, including the CyrusOne data center at the corner of Eola and Diehl roads on Aurora’s far East Side near Interstate 88, which has been at the center of complaints around noise, and the planned Batavia DC Corp. development in Batavia.
In response to resident complaints, the city of Aurora adopted strict new regulations on data centers in March, which set standards around energy and water use plus noise and other emissions.
The Monday event included speakers from the Sierra Club, Citizens Utility Board, Prairie Rivers Network and the Illinois Environmental Council, who asked residents to support state legislation called the POWER Act aiming to regulate data centers, which Aurora Mayor John Laesch said would be similar to Aurora’s own regulations but at the state level.
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Residents, both in-person and on Zoom, asked questions at the meeting about the impact of data centers, why utility costs are rising, how to protect their land from data center development and more.
Aurora resident Mary Goetsch said she is concerned about what she said is the increased power usage data centers have brought to the region and wondered if she could make a difference by changing her own energy use.
Batavia resident Silvia Pelech said she was “shocked” by how quickly she said Batavia city officials approved the new data center development at 1780 Hubbard Ave.
Speakers at the event discussed the ways they believe that data centers impact air, water, land, climate, public health, utility bills and communities in general.
Jizelle Torres, from the Prairie Rivers Network, said the growing use of artificial intelligence has drawn water-intensive data centers to regions where the resource is abundant, such as the Great Lakes, but said that communities do not have the capacity to support the industry sustainably.
Zoe Huspen, the Carbon Free Coordinator with the Citizens Utility Board, and Aaron Wang, with the Illinois Environmental Council, said that data center facilities use massive amounts of energy that are driving electricity rates up for neighbors and nearby residents.
Bates and Laesch, who attended the event, both said utility rate costs have been the number one complaint they hear from residents in regard to data centers.
“It’s about affordability because people can’t afford to pay those rates as they’re going up,” said Bates.
Laesch said rising energy costs are the number one concern he hears from Aurora residents about data centers, along with noise complaints.
He said, in response to rapidly increasing energy demands in the region, the city has been considering measures to protect residential energy.
In addition to his public support for the POWER Act, Laesch said he is working, outside of his role as mayor, to put a referendum question on a future election ballot that would ask residents if the city should build and maintain a city-owned electrical grid powered by renewable energy.
Laesch also advocated for additional artificial intelligence regulations.
“We are … probably a decade behind in where we should have started regulating AI and limiting its use,” he said to residents at the meeting. “It is driving all of these data centers coming into everybody’s back yards, consuming our power.”
Advocates also said they would like to bring residents to a Nov. 18 lobby day in Springfield, where proponents of the POWER Act aim to move the legislation forward during a short legislative session in November after it was delayed during the spring legislative session.
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“We got a world full of chaos and crazy,” said Bill Koehl, a Geneva resident who attended the meeting in Aurora as part of the Sierra Club. “It’s quite helpful to know that when people come together, this is how you actually get something to work and to happen.”
“It’s good to see a large group of us here,” he said.