Aberdeen City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, it's 530 p.m. and time to begin this special meeting of the Aberdeen City Council. Mayor Shoneman is unable to attend and in his absence as deputy mayor, it's my privilege and duty to conduct tonight's meeting. I invite your continued prayers for the mayor and his fine family. Let's call this meeting to order. Jordan, please do a roll call for attendance.

Present.

Present. Present.

Present.

Present. Present. Present.

Present. Will all present please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. Our first agenda item is to approve as a council tonight's agenda. I'll entertain a motion from the council. Motion from Nostrip and second from Nielsen. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Thank you, unanimous. We extend a warm welcome to each of you here in this historic civic theater. We appreciate your attendance and your interest in tonight's topic. And whether you're here to speak or simply to listen, we are glad you're here. As we begin, I want to mention that replays of this meeting and all city council meetings are available on our YouTube channel, which is aberdeen.sd.us forward slash YouTube. Or you can click the link in our agenda center on the city website. And replays will also be available on Midco and NVC local access cable channels. And now we move on to our only new business item on our agenda tonight. So tonight is the third of three informational meetings conducted by this council to assist in drafting an ordinance that limits, prohibits, or regulates data centers within city limits. Two earlier council meetings on August 17th and 31st featured presentations by industry and business leaders. Those meetings were very informative and we're confident that this meeting will also be productive and useful. So the council and city staff are approaching the topic thoughtfully and we hope transparently. This meeting is dedicated to gathering public input and in tonight's meeting we want to receive your input, your wishes, your ideas, your advice, your concerns, your questions, and your recommendations. It is your opportunity to be heard. Because tonight's session will involve several speakers, we've established procedures to ensure a fair, orderly, and efficient meeting. And I think there was a QR code you could scan to show some of those. But let me just touch a few highlights so it's clear how tonight's session will work. Each person wishing to address the council should have signed in the lobby area. That registration began at 5 p.m. and will end at 6 p.m. promptly. And so no registrations will be accepted following 6 p.m. Speakers will be announced. You can see the line up there. And they will speak in the order that they registered. The order will be shown on the large screen. If someone's name is called and they aren't present, they'll move to the end of the list. Speakers will use the podium directly in front here. And in order to hear from as many people as possible, each speaker will have three minutes to make comments. And time used will be clearly visible on the timer. And so I will also let you know if your remarks exceed three minutes. So each person will have one opportunity to speak until all the registered speakers have an opportunity to be heard. There is, and thank you for lining up neatly and orderly there, there is a seat next to the podium that begins our on-deck area and will go that direction down and then onto the second row for speakers waiting their turn. If multiple speakers jointly register to address the same topic, they can each yield one minute to a spokesperson with a limit of 15 minutes total. So it is possible to speak longer than the original three minutes. And registered persons who yield their time to a spokesperson then forfeit their time to speak. I also want to make it clear that tonight's format is not a discussion or debate. It is an open forum and a listening forum. And so participants should not expect replies from council members, written comments. Excuse me, no action will be taken tonight. And council members may feel inclined to ask questions or request clarification from the speaker. We ask that you not use visual aids. If you have printed or electronic materials, you can submit them to city staff here on the front row. and written comments are also acceptable and those will be distributed to the council but not read aloud tonight last rule and then we've covered out all of them we expect everyone to behave themselves this evening be prepared to hear a variety of views please show courtesy to all speakers and disruptive behavior or personal attacks will not be tolerated. And so we're not interested in having yelling, whistling, excessive hand clapping, or things like that. And so thank you in advance for your cooperation. Finally, before we begin hearing speakers, let me clarify one point, finally, that the city council previously imposed a moratorium on approval of any permits related to data centers. And so this means that no building or zoning permits can be issued until that moratorium expires on November 18. So the moratorium is in effect for about two more months. After tonight's meeting, the council will discuss proposals and eventually recommend an ordinance to the Planning Commission. So you'll have more opportunities at future council meetings to attend public hearings and give input. Here's just a couple of key future dates to keep in mind. Two weeks from now on September 28th, drafts of a proposed data center ordinance will be presented in a city council meeting by staff. In about six weeks from now on October 26 will be a public hearing and first reading of an ordinance November 2 final approval of a data Center ordinance and November 25 is the likely date that a new ordinance can take effect. So digest that keep that in mind know that this is a long process and we're still ramping up towards that ordinance so with that background let's begin the forum and hear our first speaker. And the council recognizes Peggy Kudemarsch. Peggy, you may begin.

Do I need to turn this on or is it already on? Okay. I thank you for your time and I thank everybody for coming. And pay attention to what I say once. I want to know what the council members stand on this data center. Are you a yes or a no? Are you to the future of Aberdeen or are we going to regress and do something we're going to regret for our grandchildren's ages? It's up to you folks. I know there's not going to be a discussion, but your body language is going to tell everything.

Thank you. Thank you, Peggy. May I ask you a question? Certainly. Go ahead. Based on your short message here, what would you consider to be a regressive position by the council, and what would you consider to be one?

To vote for the data center when you don't know how far the tentacles reach on this monstrosity you want to put into our community.

Okay. Thank you. That's the clarification we need. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right, we'll call next, Clark Therese. Clark, please.

Ron, can I get a legal reading on, can I use some of her time? No, just kidding. Okay, thank you. I presume you have looked at the county data center ordinance that was adopted earlier this year. I had the opportunity to speak to the county commissioners about their data center ordinance, which for the most part is pretty good. but offer some recommendations which I feel will help protect the interests of the citizens. I believe it should state any data center shall not connect directly to the grid. In a recent council meeting, Tom Glanzer of Northwestern Energy and Chris Nelson of the PUC both spoke about protecting the homeowners. In my opinion, the PUC and the local utility companies can be swayed or enticed to allow direct access to the grid. If this were to happen, the homeowners would not be in the first position for protection. Other data centers have requested this. You are the line of defense. In the recent meeting, Mike Feinblatt of TRC discussed not only limiting the amount of DBAs, but he has also suggested limiting the low frequency to create pure tones. The city should require verification studies of noise, vibration, and frequencies. These studies would be paid for by the applicant, but the company performing such studies would be chosen independently by the city. Please note that in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, the tone is unbearable, even to those people who live even within a half mile away. Other recommendations, no tax breaks or TIF money. These are generally billion-dollar projects funded by extremely wealth investors. They can pay their fair share. A study on data center radiation levels and water contamination, which is a problem in other parts of the country that has affected livestock and humans from one to two miles away. Water usage. Data centers should not receive any priority of water or reduce pricing over the average homeowner. This summer, the Ellendale Data Center has been filling tankers of water here in Aberdeen. I believe it would be wise to require private wells on the property to supply this water to avoid households being affected by water pressure issues and cost for infrastructure upgrades. El Reno, Oklahoma, the data center recently flushed 3 million, and let me repeat that, 3 million gallons of water. The city and the citizens are upset. Four, limiting the campus to a one to a maximum five megawatt. Mike from TRC recommended this. Otherwise, you create mission creep, plus once you go over the five megawatt threshold, the amount of heat, noise, vibration, et cetera, increases exponentially. Please keep in mind that five megawatts is equal to the usage of 5,000 households. Just real quickly, I just have a couple more. No foreign ownership to eliminate potential sales or property tax avoidance. This issue is currently happening in Mandan, North Dakota. do the research you'll find out affordable housing is a major issue i sit on the housing board and we are seeing some section 8 landlords are choosing not to renew their contracts because the rents they can charge these temporary data center workers is far above what the average person especially those who are on low incomes can afford i would recommend

You're doing great. Can you try to wrap up?

This is the last paragraph. Thank you. You bet. I would recommend that the moratorium on data centers be extended by six months and actually a city and a citizen task force be created to understand what is truly happening in other communities across this country before we embrace these type of projects. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that input. All right, the council recognizes next Don Shepherd. Excuse me. Ryan Clay. Hello, and thank you for your time.

I'm Ryan Clay. I'm the owner and operator of a small business here in Aberdeen, the One Legged Pheasant Brewery. I just wanted to raise brief concerns about potential economic impact of a data center on small local businesses, particularly in regard to the increase in cost in utilities. The International Energy Agency estimates that average hyperscale data center uses about as many megawatt hours as up to 100,000 households. Most recent Census Bureau data shows that Aberdeen is only about 12,469 households, meaning that the average data center would consume eight times as much power as all residential households in Aberdeen combined. The U.S. Energy Information Administration published in June that residential electrical bills increased by more than double the rate of inflation already in 2025, and an independent analysis of wholesale utilities prices by Bloomberg News found that in locations with significant data center activity, monthly utilities costs increased by up to 267% compared to five years prior. My business has already seen a 34% increase in electrical bills over the course of this year. A 267% increase or even a 1 or 200% increase would be difficult to just absorb and move on with, especially when you consider that other costs to the business would also be impacted. I think that this particular thing is only one of a number of long-term burdens that a data center would place on small businesses in our community. For time's sake, I'm not going to try and expand on the scope of that. I'll leave that to fellow commenters. But I believe that a data center in or around Aberdeen would place an untenable amount of economic pressure on especially small businesses in Aberdeen over the long term. and i would urge you to prohibit the issuance of any ordinances or permits regarding building a data center in aberdeen or around it thank you thank you ryan all right now the council recognizes don shepherd

Hi. One of the things I want to talk about is that data centers are really noisy. And they create, as Clark alluded to, a lot of noise. And I would really urge this city council to work very hard on the noise part of your ordinance. It's not just the decibel readings. As the gentleman from TRC and Clark said, there's also frequencies you have to look into. But there are four things you really need to look at. One, just the ambient noise and what people would hear if they were out in their backyard, the decibels. Then there's the vibrations, and those vibrations kind of correlate with the loudness of the noise. If you lower the decibel noise, then the vibrations usually lower also. But then the two that are most detrimental to your health, and this is about your health. It's not just that it's annoying. I have a lot I'm going to send you afterwards from the World Health Organization and the CDC on health problems related to noise. Not just loud noise but continuous noise. And so the other two that are very important are the infrasound which is actually a sound you don't hear but you feel. It's a sound pressure and it's like when the machinery is beating and beating and beating and it creates a pressure between the two things. And you can feel it, it will travel up to 16 miles. that they have measured at least with wind towers and even further with data centers. And you will actually, your body feels it and your heart feels it and your blood pressure goes up and it affects your circulation. That needs to be regulated and there are studies that are done that if the data center infrasound is more than 90 hertz, it actually will cause heart attacks. There are studies out there and I'll be happy to share those with you. The final one is one that is called tonal noise, or he alluded to it as pure tone. It is a pure tone. It is a frequency one. It's a higher frequency, but it's the most annoying one because it never quits. It comes from the fans. It comes from the condensers. It comes from the transformers. And it is a constant whirring, humming, buzzing, just like a cricket that never quits in your house at night or a mosquito in your ear that never stops. And it doesn't matter how loud it is or how quiet it is. If you try to measure it with a decibel reader, it will not pick it up. It does not pick up that pure tone. So it doesn't get included with the decibel reading. Therefore, that has to have special measurements. But the tonal noise is the one that will make people the most sick because it never stops. Your body gets no rest from it. Your body gets no break from it. You can hear it for anywhere from 500 feet to several miles. And so you really need to put this in the ordinance and hold the data center companies accountable to use proper equipment. if they're going to use equipment from the 80s you're going to have noise problems if they will actually fork over the money and put in the proper quality equipment in their data centers and you require them to do it by putting these noise ordinances in you won't have the noise problem so it's all about how well you write this ordinance and that the noise is affected and controlled thank you thank you john you did a great job speaking clearly in the microphone and i've been asked just to

getting close and personal with the microphone so that everyone online can hear as well. Thank you. We recognize next Kirby Fessler.

Hi, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Kirby Fessler. Obviously, as you just heard, I'm a case manager at Northeastern Mental Health Center, which is actually just by the flame right over there. And you're going to hear a lot of people speak on things like housing and jobs. And I would like to touch on something a little bit different because whether or not you're pro data center, you need to consider what you are also supporting by allowing one to be built in Aberdeen. As a case manager, I meet dozens of different people in different states of being, looking for help, looking for resources, and to ground themselves in a changing tide of politics and economics. The people that I see are often paranoid, delusional, and struggling, and a phrase I keep coming upon in hospital notes I review is something called AI psychosis. Psychosis is defined as a mental state that causes a disconnection or loss of contact with reality, delusions, hallucinations, etc. It is a frightening mental state to live in and health providers across the country are witnessing this phenomenon of psychosis exasperated by AI. AI psychosis describes situations where interactions with artificial intelligence chat bots trigger, shape, or reinforce psychotic symptoms like delusions, grandiosity, or paranoia in vulnerable individuals. They often believe it is divine. For these individuals, they see unseen forces that can answer their every question, and it is proven to bolster and rephrase things that they say to spit out back at them. it is an echo chamber of exasperating models that do not and cannot take safety or mental status into account when generating models this is just one of the many negative effects of ai that you would be supporting by allowing a data center to be built in our city thank you thank you kirby all right we recognize next tasha wells

Hello. Just trying to adjust the microphone here. Yeah, I just want I'm against data centers in general. I think this should be like what Clark said. There should be a task force enforced or added to this program. including I'm a former public health professional and I feel like there should be a holistic approach to this for a relation in water consumption, water contamination, just because we are in a drought for the state and we're just now trying to get wet water here and that's really difficult to get fresh water or clean water here. And then I spoke to a retired army vet that lived in Chicago, and she left Chicago because of the high electricity rates, and she moved back here. And then I think that the sound, you should incorporate an industrial hygienist. That is really loud for me. um that does look for sound waves and does studies on that and how it affects the health rates or the health effects for the citizens of the aberdeen area and if you could work with the brown county's ordinance as well but i think there should be No permits are zoning for the, within the city limits, just because we're in a small rural area and it could affect, you know, a lot of people's daycares and children and elderly. Thank you.

Thank you, Tasha. All right, next we'll recognize Lindsay Marzanell.

Hi, Lindsay, born and raised Aberdonian and property owner. I think a lot of people already touched on the, you know, we've got the water. Our water is not good to begin with here and is already too expensive for the garbage we get. So it would be inexcusable to charge us anymore. So if you're going to allow a monstrosity, I'd say they would have to actually pay our entire water bills and pay for our web of water upgrade. They're going to make enough money to pay for it. We all know that. I think one thing that really bothers me about the idea of a data center, more the morality of what that data center is going to hold. Now, I really wish Mayor Travis was here because I would love to thank him for how not only has he listened to the people of our town, but he's also taken action. When he asked about how we would feel with flock cameras, we all said hell to the no. And it was impressive that I'm online a lot or rants and raves page. I'm a little not quite the same politically oriented as a lot of the town. But when it came to that question, All sides of the political spectrum did not want it. So why would we be okay to house the box that holds the information from these cameras for everybody else? That just doesn't seem right to me. Okay for thee, but not for me. Uhm, we've seen what that information is done in correct information gathered in for correct information given. We've seen it used now. We're OK and has been legally said OK to use child porn is a First Amendment right? Those data centers are going to be creating that and putting it out in the universe. Are we OK with helping do that? There's not much good and now just recently we've had. The creators and people that worked with these AI now saying we're kind of screwing up and we need to slow our role. I think we really need to pay attention to that. Do we really want to have a hand in what could the outcome could be? I don't know if I can put that on my conscience. I hope you guys can't. So. That's about all I had for now and I'll let the rest take it. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Lindsay. Let me just pause here before we hear from our next speaker and point out the time. We have five minutes remaining for a person to register. So if any of you have not yet registered and would like to have your time at the podium to speak, please head back to the lobby so you can get registered before our 6 o'clock deadline there. Thanks. All right. Marian Callas?

Good evening and thank you so much. I am very impressed that this is the first of three meetings to set up the ordinance to include the public. I am from Watonka and we are dealing with the Leola Data Center issue in McPherson County. I was so proud to hear Dawn talk about noise. The tonal noise is going to be a huge issue. I went to Wishick, North Dakota and listened to two ladies speak that were industrial hygienists. That can be seen on BeckTV.com on Women of Another View and they talk about tonal noise, things to do to set up ordinances for your city or county for data centers and what to make them do. I found it very disheartening that the people that are trying to bring the data center to Leola didn't know what tonal noise was. Ben Rees, who's been a computer person, in his own words, for the last 20 years couldn't find tonal noise on the internet. This is the guy that wants to bring it to our county but he can't find it because I don't think he's telling us the truth. So you have to be very careful that the people that are going to try to dangle a carrot of millions of dollars and we're going to do all this great stuff for your town or county are not board and they want to hoodwink you into letting you do whatever they want so they can make six hundred million dollars a year or whatever figure and then say here's a million enjoy it so be prepared for that because they wanted that badly they will say anything and And tonal noise is horrific. It raises the cortisol level in the body so that you have sleep disturbances. Heart attacks can be an issue. It also affects livestock. McPherson County is a large livestock area. Brown County has a few too, I see. So that causes cattle to go off feed and not thrive. They can have stillborn calves, chickens, turkeys. It affects all animals, deer, pheasants. People that hunt aren't going to be very happy when they show up and there's no cattle and pheasants around because they left. They can't take the noise because tonal noise was actually a form of torture in the military because the brain cannot take that sound away it can't ignore it so please be very careful who you're dealing with that ordinance and the noise and just be careful there's a lot of people's lives that are on the line and livelihoods thank you so much for being available to your citizens thank you for your comments

All right, the council recognizes Janelle Meyer.

Thank you. I am speaking tonight to urge the council to vote against the proposed data centers. While we all use technology, we must recognize that data centers come with massive local cost. Data centers are not a clean, quiet, harmless tech project, but a massive high impact industrial operations that threaten our community's resource, environment, and quality of life that will destroy our prime irreplaceable land. As our city council evaluates zoning laws, we must make it clear data centers do not belong in Aberdeen. What do we get in return? An influx of hundreds of out of state workers flooding our town that has no vacant hotels and extremely limited apartment availability. We will price out our local renters and students just to build a facility, and ultimately employs a mere handful of permanent workers. We are sacrificing our environment, our animals, our roads, housing, and power grid for an industry that leaves Aberdeen with empty promises. Hotel rooms are scarce, tournaments, hunters. Are we willing to risk our massive economic driver for South Dakota? Pheasant hunting, revenue up to 287 million. Deer hunting, 160 million. Data centers impact the population and destruction of local wildlife and livestock. This project will pave over fertile habitats, displacing the deer and pheasants that thrive in our fields. Furthermore, the relentless 24-7 noise and low frequency ground vibrations from industrial cooling fans will cause chronic stress to our cows and farm animals, disrupting their health and threatening our local agriculture livelihood. Average mid-sized data centers consume between 300,000 to 500,000 gallons of water per day. Massive strain on our Elm River, wastewater, and public roads. Chemical and wastewater pollution, emerging contaminants or heavy metals, thermal pollution, health impacts, light pollution, and noisy equipment. They will tell us it's just one project, a facility here in Aberdeen, another one up the road in Loyola. They want us to believe these are isolated incidents. But make no mistake, one here, one there will completely change our landscape, our entire way of life if we open the door to one industrial dumping ground for the entire tech sector. Our state is now in a drought. It's not a good time. Let's be the one to stand our ground and say no. Thank you.

Thank you, Janelle. All right, our 10th speaker, we recognize Tony Jones.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak here. I'm usually more comfortable in like a give and take a conversation. So I'll try to get my idea out and build it along the way. So we want good corporate citizens. We want people that do what we do. We pay property taxes. We pay sales taxes. We understand we're 70 miles away from the interstate. It's really difficult to get some people in here. So we sweeten the deal occasionally. I just want to say that if we do that, a little bit it's okay, but if we do that, state law might preclude some of what we are able to gain on property or sales taxes. My understanding, could be wrong, but the local government can't go further than what the state allows them to, and if the state says you can't tax that, which is still up in the air, whether property or sales tax and what rates, then we won't be able to gain some of that good corporate citizen back if we sweeten the deal too much. For instance, like a sales tax moratorium might just allow them to buy the equipment that will, that will pay for getting them off the grid for the electricity and so they don't help out with the electricity grid. Once it's good, they can be self-sustaining, but we don't get anything back off of this group that we're forcing or that we're encouraging to come help. And so I just want to make sure that our eyes are wide open for that. So what's valuable? You know, we have sales tax and property tax, but I think we're looking and we might see something that we don't recognize and it might be a bad idea whose time has come or a bad way to say this. What is valuable in data? It's data and speed, storage and information. And that's what they traffic in. If we can't tax them there and there, maybe we should say, hey, why don't we say that five ten fifteen percent of what you're capable of give back to the government that we're able to use that for education or for state or for gis or for whatever i haven't heard that topic i don't even know if that could be done it's just an idea so i just wanted to throw that out there just for discussion and i don't know how to go forward from that but thanks for hearing me out absolutely thank you for your comments all right we'll hear next from rich hilgeman rich

Come on down.

All right. Hi, everyone. Everyone up there knows who I am. My concern tonight is transparency. During the carbon pipeline fiasco, we learned that some of these corporations will like to use and abuse executive sessions, NDAs, and avoiding a quorum. They'll invite you out to dinner two at a time and try to win you over. So that's my big concern. I want to caution against that overuse and abuse of it. I understand that there is a need to use some of it in some instances, but any type of overuse and abuse certainly needs to be resisted. And anytime somebody invites two of you out to avoid a quorum, please resist that as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright, is it Lisa or Eliza.

So thank you for having us and hosting us. This is the third meeting I've attended where we've discussed the data center one just the basics of it, how it works. to the economic with mr hannigan and the advantages i understand the economic benefits of having a data center i see how that would be good for the community economically but that's all what's it going to be like 5 10 15 years down the road will it still be economically good for aberdeen I question the need for another data center and one in Aberdeen when there's one that is 38 miles away in Ellendale. And my biggest question is, why are we doing all this work on an ordinance? Can't we ask the people if they even want the data center in Aberdeen? I think that's a really important question. We're the ones that live here, not just those of you that are up on the stage. This is a community of slightly over 27,000 people. We should all have the right to say yes or no. We know that there is an environmental impact. The ecosystem is thrown off when data centers are built. Land reduction due to the size of the buildings. Is there just one building, multiple buildings? Is it going to be a big campus? When it's like that, flooding could occur as land cannot absorb the water. Wildlife, all wildlife, mammals, birds, fish, insects, amphibians. It disrupts them. The migration patterns change, reproduction, feeding habits, confusion, disorientation, their overall habitat. And that's not even talking about the vegetation. That's just the animals. Some data centers use 5 million gallons of water a day. That is equivalent to the daily use of a community of 50,000 people. We are just over 27,000. Continuous sounds, that's been addressed. And just talking about the decibels, At 70 dB, it doesn't hurt your hearing. Once you get over 80, it does. And this is not the tonal noise. 80 to 100 decibels is what some of the data centers run on or run between. Even more important or something that we do need to consider, I might go a little bit over. Is that OK? It'll just be a little bit. The human health risks of data centers. Clean air is threatened as more fossil fuels are being used to keep up with the need for electricity. A 2026 report covered by the New York Times warns that the data center emissions could contribute to roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths nationwide by 2028. The noise pollution is mentioned earlier with chronic noise. It has sleep disruption due to the noise and it's linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, anxiety, and depression. And forever chemicals are another thing that you need to address. Data centers have forever chemicals and that will be with us forever. we are not going to be here in some years our children our grandchildren our great-grandchildren and future generations are going to be affected by the decisions that we that are made here today and again full transparency i think we need to know if there have been ndas and we i mean i think we need to know that we are the citizens of this community thank you thank you

All right, we next recognize Anne Stein.

Thank you for letting us all speak tonight. I too am concerned about all of these things that we've talked about. And I just really, really hope that you take a real good look at what this is doing. I'm concerned about the health of the people. I am concerned about the amount of land that it takes to do these data centers. I'm concerned about the wildlife. I'm concerned about our crops. I'm concerned about food. And I think that if we really honestly look at it, we'll have a little bit more to chew on and that you really take a good look. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments. All right. We recognize Natalie Vernon.

Hello, my name is Natalie. I can adamantly say I oppose data centers anywhere near us or being built at all for reasons such as mentioned before, water, sound, and all that. But I'm here today to represent people who are usually not thought about, the renters. There are not enough places to rent or live in Aberdeen as temporary housing. I came here in the summer of 2024 for work. I am a transplant. And when I arrived here, this was before the data centers were even being built, I could only find two apartments to rent. They were so few. And now there's just so much demand. There are people who are basically living in hotels. Right now, because there are not enough apartments not enough affordable apartments for people and we cannot expect to try to build a new data Center to bring out more bigger population of people to build this without places to house them and it's just hard. Because I want to make sure everyone has a place to stay, and I know there are economic benefits to having these people come in and build them, even if it is short term but just. Not having somewhere to put these people as they are building it as well as people in our Community who don't have a place right now or somewhere affordable to live it's just hard to fathom that and. Even though I am mentally opposed to it, if a data center were to be built or a moratorium to be pursued for longer just to put a hold on things, to make sure we have spaces for people to live and to know the effects that data centers have in other communities across the United States that they have been put in, it might be good to just wait for a couple of years. even though I kind of hope we don't build one because it is very bad for a lot of things. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for yours. We appreciate it. All right, Janet O'Connell, please.

I really wish you would have said, come on down.

Come on down.

Thank you for listening to my comments tonight. I grew up on a dairy farm near Mina, went to school in Ipswich. I left, came back 23 years ago. I chose Aberdeen as my home and I've never regretted it. i love this community and i'm concerned about the impact a data center would have on on aberdeen if one were to be built here i want to talk about pollution first air pollution they operate 24 7 as you know consume an enormous amount of electricity fossil fuels are burned to generate that power and they'd emit a wide range of air pollutants including those that increase rates of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and neurological disorders. They also contribute to global warming. In 2023, it was estimated that data centers emitted enough global warming to account for 2.2% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Next up is water. Super excited about possibly getting web water in Aberdeen. But call me silly, I think that human beings receiving that high quality water should take precedence over a data center. um noise pollution i can't say it better than dawn did so i'm just not even going to mention that one light pollution is something that i don't think anyone has mentioned yet The all night lighting disrupts natural circadian rhythms of the body. Light pollution disturbs migration patterns of birds, butterflies, bats, countless other wildlife are impacted by this. I feel a data center in our area would decrease the quality of life in Aberdeen. um additionally the rules of supply and demand will tell you that utility costs for all of us are going to go up with the relentless demands of electricity and water that data centers require so thank you very much for your time thank you very much council recognizes aaron rudner come on down

Thank you so much for inviting the community to speak on this tonight. I think it's really wonderful that we all get to show up and tell you what we think before you make your decision. Decisions made in the open with real input and consideration are the best way to get the community to buy into what you're about to do. I think the scale and scope of any data center are the crucial details we have yet to uncover and discover. At 10 kilowatts, the scale illustrated two weeks ago, has no viable return on investment. So it probably won't be a 10 kilowatt center. Nobody would invest in something like that these days. So it's probably going to be exponentially bigger, but we don't know. At 50 kilowatts, there needs to be a liquid cooling measure of some sort. We don't know what's being discussed, and I have questions. Are we talking about 100 kilowatts, 250? Hyperscale is at about 100 megawatts, and I don't think we're discussing that, at least I hope not. I have so many questions, but we'll do those another time. Without some of that information, though, it's really hard to write an ordinance. I thought about a spectrum of how you make these decisions. On one hand, there's an extractive part to this where we're taking things out of our environment. We're taking land, labor, and capital, capital resources, human resources, natural resources. That's an extractive move versus something that's enriching like a hospital or a college or a university. And I think what we're trying to weigh here is to figure out is this really what's best for us in the payback for what kind of income we'll get from that data center. My working assumption is that outsourced tech jobs do not replace stable living wage employment in Aberdeen. That spectrum may not be how you want to look at this or your lens, but I think that's one thing to consider. And with respect to considering our natural human and capital resources, there are five things I'd like us to look at, or five things I'd like you as a council, excuse me, to consider when you're writing the ordinance. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to have some input on this. first of all jobs so how about at least 40% of the jobs be filled by local residents at prevailing wages funded with funded apprenticeships for permanent jobs Two, how about environmental protections? Annual disclosures of water and energy use. Cumulative environmental studies, maybe every five years or on some continual basis. Three, the fairness issue. Those directly impacted by pollution, displacement, job losses, they shouldn't be the ones to bear the brunt of subsidizing data centers. Regular impact statements, protections for renters, small businesses, and 13% of the city's population living beneath the poverty level must be baked into your ordinance. Four, accountability. Former North Dakota Governor Heitkamp just proposed a ban on all NDAs. Cool, cool, that's great. Let's see independent audits. public dashboards of impacts. Let's see subsidy clawbacks and escalating penalties for ordinance violations. Wealthy firms have no problem paying fines. Finally, as a number of folks have alluded to, let's establish a community benefit fund tied to project scale. If it's a small scale project, it could be a small benefit fund. If it's a large scale project, let's make a big benefit fund. In it, include environmental and public health monitoring. Oh my gosh, I'm so much over. I'm so sorry. Supporting housing, healthcare, childcare, and vocational education. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Let's turn next from Denzel Eisenbeiss. Denzel.

Well, I guess it's time for a bit of a contrarian voice here as I'm strongly in favor of building the data center. Now I know most of the people here have spoken either against it or for holding back on building it. But. We also have an opportunity to turn all those negatives into positives with data centers. For example, look at the basis of geothermal power. It's using heat as energy. And one of the biggest downsides to data centers is all the energy that it takes to get rid of the excess heat and all the water used. But if you use that waste heat as energy, You would take like two-thirds of the water use cut out. That's at least a quarter of their own energy needs met. And you certainly decrease things such as pollution. I even read in a book about OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, that one thing they would do to mitigate some of these environmental concerns is double up as wastewater treatment plants. So that way you get the water use for the data center you need, but then you recycle it back as clean water. And yes, things like water use are important, but unlike, say, the drinking water we use here, you don't need that to be drinking level for the data center to use. And I could go on and on a bit. But, you know, because I have like, okay, I'm a bit anal retentive, not going to lie up here, but I essentially came up with my own 45-point plan to address many of the issues that data centers have, including the ones we've heard tonight. What you heard like with, you know, the waste heat thing, that's, yeah, that's the one thing I keep babbling on and on about on Facebook. And I would go on further, but like you said, it's only a three minute ordeal. And there are other ways to address some of the other energy environmental needs too, such as in Sweden, one of the things they use to keep their environment cleaner is burning their own garbage as energy. Not to mention you avoid a lot of leaching contaminants into the land from just burning it out at the landfill. And again, they would be generating much of their own energy use. And even if they offered energy, sorry, if they offered garbage pickup for free, they would still be net gaining money by simply burning the garbage's energy. And again, this might sound even more contrarian, but other things like health issues are important to factor in too.

I am lifelong asthmatic, which is why I sound a little stuffy like this.

And as far as making any regulations, this sounds a bit like political horse trading, but maybe incorporate some of those ideas I mentioned, like mandate that they use their waste heat as energy instead of just cooling it off with a bunch of water.

and i'll sum it up because i think that's past my time thank you and i'd be more than happy to share my other ideas with you thank you and you know there's a way you can do that there's a if you visit our city website you can contact via email all of the members collectively or you can single out a specific member of the council feel free to share your 45 points or any other documentation or content that you'd like will do thank you thank you All right, Rhodie Mueller, number 18. Come on down. You're the next participant.

Hello, thank you Council for having this tonight. I think it's a super important issue and certain certainly super important to give our community members a chance to speak. I am a registered Republican here in District 3 father of three here and all of my kids go to public school. Recently, I've taken on the role of the operations director at Midwest Street Medicine, and I'm not wearing my Midwest Street Medicine hat tonight. I just want to make that clear, but I'm just speaking as a citizen. I've been there for about six months, and I want to talk about some of the things that I've seen as I've been out working with our unhoused population. Many of the people that we're working with have incomes, they just can't find housing. and they can't find housing because of the workers that are in Ellendale that many people have already spoken about tonight, that people are living in hotels. We have also been working very closely with Aberdeen Housing, and we have lost half, half of our Section 8 housing in town because, and don't hate the player, hate the game, right? I don't disparage the property owners for doing this. They can get triple the rent or double the rent from these workers, and that is a thing. However, the least of those in our community are being pushed out. We don't have a shelter here in town. We don't have a viable option for them in town, and so we're pushing them to Fargo, Sioux Falls, Pierre, and there are not many other great options there as well. I think the housing thing, the housing has to be has to be a contingent in this when when you go ahead and do this uh the housing issue has to be a contingency in in my opinion i i've spoken with some of you and the question was asked is affordable housing a an issue that the city should be taking on and my question back to you all then is what kind of city do you want to build and live in affordable housing and as we've seen tonight as the young woman spoke to it is an issue water is an issue we all know that i'm not going to speak to that electric is an issue i'm not going to speak to that what we are also facing though is a lack of tourism okay i had a call from a friend who's trying to come up to get a hotel room tomorrow on a tuesday and she goes i can't find anything for under 300 you go talk to casey wiseman all over here he'll tell you we've already lost three to four to five uh state Competitions and tournaments here in town. What happens when we lose state bees? What happens when we lose these big things? Because there's not enough hotel rooms. I'm not even talking about the environmental stuff. We just don't have the resources to put up with the Leola as a whole. That's going to come for us too. It's not by our hand, but in our lap. I've also heard that we need to be a community of yes, but our resources are already over leveraged for projects already happening that we didn't have a say in. We have all heard over the last few weeks how many professionals working in this area say that it's so great, but to bring a data center here. But besides tax dollars, there have been really no clear incentives that I can see outside of tax dollars. But then we also don't know what those tax dollars are going to be used for. So we have no idea bringing this thing in and everyone says it's going to be great. Tim gave a great presentation the other day. I just don't know what good it will do for us. On top of all of this, today, AI leaders came out and said we need to slow down. Elon Musk came out and said we need to slow down to our own detriment. right ai will increase to a point in a couple weeks or months that it will like we're in terminator world here i wish i was wrong or i was kidding but i'm not so surely there has to be something else we can say yes to and that is my time thank you thank you we have reached our last speaker register and that is brooke whitney look if you come down please

Forgive me, I've never spoken in public before, and I found out about this last minute, so I will try and do the best I can, and I'm winging it. I go by Brooke Whitney here, but my name is , which is Lakota for strong woman who stands with the eagles. I earned my name. As Native American people, we have been screaming for decades and years that water is life, yet nobody listens to us. And now we're really getting to a point to where there's no point of return. the water will be taken not only that as a community member here in aberdeen we're going to be the ones footing the bill and we don't know if you guys have already signed ndas i think we have a right to know if you have or not already because those big tech companies are going to hide how much they're actually using and then it falls on us as community members not just that but also for electricity that's going to fall on us as well We already don't have proper drinking water in Aberdeen. We should focus on that more than we should focus on getting a data center here. Honestly, and you know we do have a right to know if you guys have signed in these. and how much they're consuming with electricity and water. I'm nobody important. I'm a mom of four. I'm a full-time caregiver to my husband who has terminal brain cancer. One of the 12 medications that he takes a month, one cost me $300. What's going to happen when I can't pay my electric bill? I'm already struggling. I already have four children that I know I'm not going to be able to pay for them to go to college. I didn't even graduate high school. I left high school. I worked my butt off to get my GED, but I did it. But I don't have the money to send my children to college. The least we can do is give them water. The least we can have is electricity at a decent price because you're going to push some people past their breaking point. If I can't pay my rent because I obviously can't own a home. Our medical debt is in the three millions now. So what am I going to do when I can't pay my rent or I have to choose if my husband gets his medication or if he dies? That's a really uncomfortable thought for me, but this is where we're at. That is AI is already getting out of control. Once we hit that point of no return, what are we going to do? It's not going to create more jobs. These companies cannot guarantee us that after they get done building and AI starts taking everybody's jobs, they're not going to sit here and promise us, oh, yes, the community, we're going to make sure you guys have jobs for sure. They're not going to do that. They'll find a way to weasel out of it. So I also can't believe that this is an ordinance when we were not asked if we wanted data center or not. That is appalling to me. That as a community, we were not even given that option right out the gate. But thank you for your time. That's it.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your input. So that brings us to the conclusion of our registered speakers. And we want to, again, thank each of you for your attendance, participation, the respect that you've shown to speakers. This has been, I think, an excellent listening session. Know that we've taken notes. We're absorbing, digesting your feelings, and we appreciate that. Again, reminding that two weeks from today, city staff will be mulling over information from a variety of sources, what has occurred tonight, what has been shared previously at our learning sessions, and there will be a draft of a proposed data center ordinance presented at that time. So again, feel free to attend upcoming city council meetings. There will be open forum, as we always have. You're familiar with the three minute time limit, but we'll offer those opportunities again in future city council meetings. So we look forward to seeing you in the gallery at those Monday meetings. We've reached the end of our agenda, and so I will entertain a motion from the council to adjourn. We have a motion from Ward and a second from Novstrup. All in favor? Any opposed? We are adjourned.