Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

We will call the July 15th meeting of the plan Commission to order we have a roll call please Jason Carnahan here Ellen Dooley Bill van why Sandy Harrison Jerry odor

Frank Palmer. Here. Suzanne Davis. Here. Angie Holt. Here. Tyler Lanning. Here. Alicia Rogers. Mike McCarrewich.

Here.

Andrew Cruz. Chris Gallmer. Here. And Meredith Wright. Here.

I will stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance. We'll have a moment if someone would like to lead us in a word of prayer. If none, we can move on. Heavenly Father, we... We're glad that you blessed us with this heat, even though it's not necessarily what we would need or want, but we're happy to be serving you and able to come together this evening to learn some things about data centers and hopefully make decisions to better the county. In Jesus' name, amen. We've got two... We've got two... He's Jerry's alternate yeah We need to make that and then in the record that Jared's in attendance for Jerry We have two two sets of minutes they were passed out with your packets You said we're tabling both of them So they were incorrect so those will be tabled until the next meeting if we could have a motion for that a motion a Motion in a second table of minutes from the previous meetings until next meeting all those in favor signify by saying aye Opposed same minister held till the next meeting will also have consideration of claims Those are in your packet. There was no additions or corrections. It would entertain a motion to approve those I

I'll make a motion to approve the claims. I'll second.

Motion and second to approve claims. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, same. Motion passes. Chris, no old business?

No old business.

Okay, Chris, new business.

Yeah, so Dr. Roberto Gallardo, probably butchered that name, I'm so sorry, from Purdue is here, all the way from West Lafayette, got stuck in a little bit of traffic there at 69 and 7th Street, but here for a presentation for the playing Commission and anyone in the audience On data centers as you guys know we are currently in a moratorium leading into I believe month number three now for the moratorium to Learn more information about data centers and citing them here in DeKalb County So he's here with the presentation on what what? kind of the local leaders, which obviously is the Planning Commission, is the first stop of that, on what you should know about data centers. So, Roberto, if you want to go forward, I'd appreciate it.

Sure. Good evening. Thank you for having me over. I just have a couple of disclaimers before we get started. First is I'm here as a faculty member of Purdue, not as an administrator, so I'm not speaking anything on behalf of the university, but rather as a faculty doing regional and rural development. The second disclaimer is don't shoot the messenger. These slides, I update them every other day, just that's how quickly data is changing. And so please keep that in mind, that whatever I'm presenting today is mostly U.S. averages. It does not apply to a specific data center example in Indiana or anywhere in the Midwest. And it's really the data, the landscape is changing quickly. My objective is to, I'm not here to say for or against, I'm just gonna lay out the facts for you guys to continue the discussion and we do wrap up, or the final slide will be some questions that you can ask. Keep in mind that these are not meant to be comprehensive. but rather there is a Penn State Extension resource that is cited throughout at the end, almost at the end, that has over 100 questions that have been compiled across the country for you guys, for leaders like you to ask yourselves in case you are approached or are in the process of developing some planning or ordinance. Okay. Let me just start by saying that this is massive, folks. Many people ask me why Indiana. There's a couple of theories around that, but I'm going to stick to the facts, and that is that it's just huge. The amount of capital expenditures on data centers over the past three years and projected this year are more than the Apollo program, the Interstate Highway System, and the Manhattan Project combined. And so that tells you the amount of money that's being pumped into this, which is called the backbone of AI. So anyhow, you can see all other data in the slides, but I just want to make it clear that it's really all across the board, and the amount of money being invested is insane. Why does it matter? Why the amount of money being pumped? Well, in regional development and innovation, there is something, a concept called general purpose technology, GPT. What that means is this technology ends up being everywhere. And you really don't realize it. You don't have it anywhere. or that it's not there until you don't have it. And so obviously the perfect example of that is electricity. It took manufacturing facilities 40 years to repurpose their manufacturing facilities to accommodate or adopt electricity. 40 years from the time the first light bulb went on to when manufacturers were like, you know what, this is better than what we had before. That's oversimplifying, but that's really what a GPT is. And so with that, you also have computing railroads and the steam engine, particularly our GPT technologies. The big assumption, big assumption is that AI will become a GPT. And with that, it's just going to transform the economy. What it's moving slightly faster than the other ones in the sense of the disruption it's causing. The other ones took decades, you know, 30, 40, 50 years. AI is moving a lot faster than that. We just don't know when and if it'll be a GPT. But if it does become a GPT, I will tell you that as community leaders, whatever decision you make, yay or nay, it's going to have a repercussion for generations to come. So what is a data center? The key point I'd like to convey on this slide is basically they're not new. They've been around for a while. Just there's one type, which is gonna be next slide, that is really causing all the conversations and disagreements and agreements and planning and so forth. But it really is just a bunch of servers that play a different role. And again, they've been here around for a while. I will say that it is not a traditional office. It is not a factory. This is important to keep in mind because many times across communities in Indiana and the U.S., the only point of reference to economic development close to data centers is the manufacturing boom of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And it's not apples to apples. They're different beasts. And that's important to keep in mind because that in and of itself has very important implications of what uh... it is that you how you treat this process so anyhow there is an environmental impact that data centers have had uh... since they were they've been around since the late nineties early two thousands uh... but there's one type that's really again causing all the conversations and all the discussions but they do consume energy and water above average of other facilities that you've seen uh... but again i think personal opinion the shouting match the negatives it's is beating and shouting on the potential positives that data centers have and that's i think my job is to kind of share both both angles here so the one that's causing all that conversation is a hyperscale one those are massive in the sense of water and energy use we're not gonna sugarcoat that it's the truth uh... there's but you also have had enterprise colocation edge particularly If you guys like Netflix, I can assure you there are edge data centers close to here that really store the movies so you don't have to buffer too much. So it's not only your internet connection but also other types of applications since we moved to the cloud. The point here is the hyperscale one. Those are typically the ones that come knocking at your door. particularly those are the ones that are generating that massive investment that I shared earlier. But you may have a data center, a co-location, or an enterprise that comes knocking at your door, so you've got to distinguish, right? And if you decide to shut all of them down, that's your decision, but I would just ask, well, just ask, right? What type of data center are you? And so forth. But these are the type of data centers that exist today. The number one issue is energy. Again, there's no way to sugarcoat that. It's just massive energy hogs. The chips consume a lot of electricity, but they also require a lot of electricity, well, some electricity to cool them. will lead us to the next issue the water situation but anyhow so one thing that is often overlooked in this conversation folks is that electricity was already going up right from 2020 to 2025 electricity did increase for other reasons right outdated grids not enough investment obviously you add these data hogs these energy hogs and of course they're going to stress The grid but the situation has been where you know four point four percent in 2023 of all us electricity That's significant and it's projected to go to 20 up to 12 percent by 2028 if they're built because right now this is assuming they're built but there's a lot of states that are saying okay everybody let's take a deep breath let's pause whatever it is we're doing about data centers let's think this twice data centers and it's something i'm gonna get out shortly desperate there's many reasons for that if you are using AI right now but the data centers that you have are barely keeping up with demand that's not even you know including those that will start using AI and then there's a national security perspective that office is often overlooked and that's the race with China right are we gonna let them win or not that's above my way way above my pay grade but the point is that That in and of itself changes the conversations around economic development and your communities and when you negotiate with these data center developers and I'll explain why shortly. There are ways to manage this. They're becoming more efficient. They know there's a lot, there's research going on around how to make them more efficient electricity wise. There's this demand situation where they can kind of minimize the use of the data center during peak times and then maximize it during non-peak times at the community level. These are things that again are just emerging as we speak, but they are acting on it right now. They're thinking that they understand and they know that this is a big issue and it makes people nervous, right? And understandably so. Here in Indiana we have the law that passed last year, I think, or earlier this year, where 80% of the costs of upgrading the grid to satisfy the data center demand needs to be paid for by the data center themselves. I think Indiana is one of the few states that has that law, and it is on the books I think earlier this year it passed. I can't remember. It's HEA 1007, if you want to take a look at it. There's a little bit of nuance there. I'm not an expert in that policy specifically, but there are efforts because they, you know, it's loud and clear that it is an issue. Electricity is an issue, and they can cause issues to the community because they just consume a lot of electricity. Beyond electricity, we're starting to see these other issues. Water consumption is another one that makes people nervous, understandably so. They are getting better. Those closed loop cooling systems are becoming very efficient. They were not like this two, five years ago. They are decreasing water use by 50, 70% when you recycle the water. There's ongoing research of using non-water ways to cool the chips. through gases primarily so again we may not be having the conversation about water a year from now because some research came out that says you know what you can cool them a lot better with this material that's not necessarily water and if that's the case the water consumption will decrease significantly but today it is an issue they do consume a lot of water and I'll get at the end of what you need to ask the developers when they come asking about these situations Noise and air quality is huge because the grid rarely can accommodate these huge facilities. They bring their generators with them and when they need to turn them on, right, they are noisy and they do pollute, right? There's also anecdotal reports of some low frequency humming that's happening close to the data centers. This is not yet bubbled at the level of research per se, but there are news reports that residents are reporting this kind of low humming, low frequency humming noise that these facilities create. The other one I want to add to this one, I don't think it's in there, but it's e-waste. You've got to make sure these, I've been asked this question multiple times, right? What happens if AI is a bubble? What happens if it pops and then we end up with this super equipped facility over here? You're going to have the facility in place. In theory, you're going to have the water and the electricity. Once AI pop, you know, bounces back, if it is the GPT that I argued earlier, you're going to have that asset in your community already. Now keep in mind though that the electronics inside of that facility more than likely will change every two years and so what happens to what was there before you have got to ask those questions to the developers to say who's going to take care of the e-waste. It's expensive and it is hard to recycle. These guys know better than the community. My point is it should not fall on the community to figure that out and it's better yet if you ask beforehand and not wait and until you have that issue on your hands if it is that your community decides to pursue this. So e-waste is another one that's very important to keep in mind in addition to noise and air quality. The one that I hear the most from the communities I've been around the state and what I read online is really the land use and character. Is it going to change my community? And that is highly subjective and very respectable at the local level. There may be communities that just do not want any sort of facility coming in because they feel it's going to threaten in their rural way of life. That is very subjective, but it's valid, right, from a particular group of citizens or whatever the case may be. But this is the one that really, really causes a lot of discussion, right? They usually start with electricity, then they pivot to water, whatever the case may be, and then suddenly it comes out that they really don't want to lose their rural character, whatever that means to that particular group. It is a valid concern but it is very subjective and as leaders you have to listen and you have to honor and respect whatever perspective they bring to the table regarding losing their rural character and land use. There's a couple of communities that I've seen that are exploring the possibility. I don't know if you recall back in the 90s the famous industry parks that were developed right and assigned to that. There are now conversations about having a data center park of sorts where you put it far away from residential areas just because of this noise and air quality, whatever the case may be, and you really just apply the same concept that you had back in the 80s and 90s with industrial parks. Again, that's just what I'm learning from communities as I give this presentation. Do know that there are some benefits. These are kind of the negatives, right? Again, electricity, water, noise and land, and particularly that perception of I don't want my rural community or my community to change because of this. It's important to also remember that these do not generate anywhere near the same number of jobs that manufacturing facilities did. And many times, people, again, because their beacon, their point of reference is manufacturing, they're disappointed, right, when they realize, oh, that's very few jobs. But there's a little bit of a nuance to that, and I'm gonna get to that shortly. The trade-offs again, I want to emphasize if done correctly, meaning if you negotiate beforehand with the developers, The community, this time around, has a little bit of the upper hand that I did not see with manufacturing and site location back in the 90s. They are desperate to build. And that opens the door for the community to say, you want to come here? This is what we ask. And this is what we need you to do. And then walk your way back from that request. Negotiate backwards from that. Shoot for the moon and land in Minnesota or wherever you want to land. But the point is, you do... it may play out may not play out i don't know back in the day in in manufacturing it was a typically what's known as race to the bottom right communities would give so many financial incentives for them to locate in their communities that it really eroded the potential for revenue in other situations with data centers it's a little bit different because the community does have a little bit of an upper hand when it comes to negotiating or asking for things when in the past you were chosen now Theoretically you can choose right and you can say you know what you want to come here great X Y & Z is what we're asking for so keep that in mind I cannot emphasize that enough. It's not your 90s manufacturing project. It's totally different We have seen there is research emerging again. It may change next week and may change next month where when negotiated correctly the tax revenue potential of these things is is I mean, it's very, very large. For example, in Louisiana, because of their local tax code, they managed to get some sort of the revenue from those tax paid by Fort Worth. paid for by the data center, and teachers in their school districts ended up getting a significant bonus just because that's the way their tax code is set up with any industry, not just data centers. But here's again, if they do become a GPT-AI, these facilities have the potential to be just significant, generate significant revenue. And as I tell other communities, I don't think it applies to yours necessarily, but you know there are communities that are shrinking, their tax revenue is shrinking, and so this could be, if done correctly, could help. I know there's the state kind of incentives that kind of dilute some effort, but you can negotiate what's called a community benefits agreement, CBA, which I'm going to get to shortly. You could also get workforce money pumped back into your schools, health care, quality of place, parks, you name it, right? You can create a community fund. I mean, you can do or you can ask for one, and then the community manages that, and it just gets refilled every year or whatever by these people. uh... companies uh... community grants is another example and we do now have home prices typically increase that's good for homeowners not really good for renters but at the end of the day it does bring and the other thing that's the huge question mark is what economic development opportunities will this bring? And I'm going to get to that shortly. Are you going to see a bunch of AI startups that we cannot imagine today follow this? And the reason is, even though it's a digital thing In theory, you can be anywhere and using the internet, it's fine, but the type of data center of those hyperscales is changing, which I'm gonna get into shortly. So if where proximity is important, so if you are close, if you have that asset in your community, Theoretically, you may end up having an ecosystem of AI startups that, again, your high schoolers may benefit from, right? We don't know what businesses are going to come up from that GPT. Just like people at the beginning of the 20th century did not know what electricity would bring, we're in the exact same situation. So that's important to keep in mind. Again, do not think of this as a traditional economic development project. It's night and day. So again, e-waste, I know from a public perception, trust, try to keep things transparent as possible. That helps all the time. Just keep your residents informed. Tell them what's going on. There are some communities that have this dashboard where they're putting, you know, the number of jobs, whatever metrics they want to convey to the community, and they are being transparent about it. Nothing of, oh, well, you know, let's keep it here behind wraps or whatever. It doesn't, it should not be that way. But anyhow, so that's the potential benefits of this situation is house prices, revenue, just money coming into your community you can negotiate. Lowdown County, which is the data center capital of the world, they've been doing this for 20 years and they've been decreasing property taxes since then because they set it up correctly, right? Their property taxes are going down. It's now 60% of the county's budget tax revenue. It's generated by the Dana Center. But they have a ton. I mean, that's not going to happen here, to be honest with you. But you can see they did it well, and now it's having other implications. Now, of course, they have noise. They have pollution. They've managed their grid pretty well. You don't hear of blackouts. That's the other thing. These things need to be uptime. They cannot go down for more than whatever amount of time because they lose, right? It's money for them. So I would believe that the developer and whomever the utility, they are going to be, make sure that whatever the grid needs to be upgraded to, they will work on that. And because of the Indiana law, they will have to pay 80% of that. Now it's hard to give you a case-by-case study because it's going to vary by data center, it's going to vary by community. I get asked that question all the time. I really don't have an answer because it's going to vary, again, big time. This is the type of data center for what it's used that's shifting. Back two, three years ago, you needed a data center for training, right? Those were energy hogs, right? They would train the models. And so those could be located practically anywhere, right? Rural communities, primarily because in theory, water was more accessible. electricity was cheaper, whatever the case may be. But they are shifting to inference, or inference, right? Where every time you ask chat GPT something, it has to think, which they're actually not thinking, but think. And running that algorithm, that's what's happening in this inference data centers. Those, though, need to be closer to where the end user is because of latency. You don't want any delays on that, particularly if you have any application that's real-time sensitive, you do not want any delays. Southeast Wisconsin is emerging organically as an example of how to use data centers across a region for regional development and one of the things they asked is they had a couple community colleges there and they had these inference data centers being located and they managed to negotiate access, free access to the latest models for their high school students, for their businesses, whatever the case may be, AI is becoming expensive, right? If you go to clot and you pay your 20 bucks per month, you're going to be timed out and you're going to be put in prison for a little bit until you can use it again. That's because of the demand. But imagine if you don't have to pay and imagine if you have access to the latest, greatest models just down the street. Imagine what that would generate for businesses that we don't know are coming to begin with, right? So anyhow, so that's why I like to talk about the training with inference difference. It is moving towards the latter. The former you're gonna have, now the ones that you, the existing data centers are gonna be training, right, the latest models and so forth. That's why People think that the AI is learning more every time you use it, and that's not true. Once it's been trained, it's trained. That's why they come up with model 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, is because they keep adding more data and training the newer model on it. And so you're going to need these training facilities as well. So again, back to the economic development, do not treat it as your smokestack chasing of the 80s, 90s, 2000, whatever the case may be. I mentioned there a couple of the southeast, Wisconsin is a very good example, Lodon County in Virginia is also a very good case study. I think one of the county commissioners has been talking to communities across the country of how they set it up to where now their property tax has been going down every year for the past 10 years over there just because they don't need that revenue, right? And so that's a benefit to the communities. And again, as I mentioned earlier, data centers, you do have a little bit of the upper hand this time around. And take advantage of that. Do ask, right? They are the ones that are desperate, not you. And so that really changes the conversation, and it really changes the possibility to negotiate and ask, right? Shoot for the moon and see what you get back. I'm not saying you're going to get everything you ask for, but at least this time around, they will listen. In the past, they usually did not listen, right? The community would come in with incentives, please, please, please, choose me, choose me. And then they would leave, you know, for Mexico, China, whatever. And so we've seen that movie play before. In another community, somebody asked me, what happens if we don't invest or allow data centers? And that really is a really hard question to answer. But I will tell you that research shows that you can see it, right? Those communities that were left out of the railroad, it took them many, many years to catch up. The same thing happened with the interstate, right? In these situations where you may be left out. Maybe that was not your intent, but it could be a possibility that you are not going to take benefit immediately in midterm. Maybe at the long term you will of these data centers, which is really the backbone of what has the potential to be in a GPT, a general purpose technology. So these are examples of what a strong community benefits agreement looks like. Workforce, you can add some anything about how many, they're not gonna create a lot of jobs, but when it's in operation, you will require electricians, 24-7 people. Remember, they cannot afford downtime, lengthy downtime. So you're gonna require electricians, plumbers, the maintenance folks, those tend to be local, right? And they're paid really well. So that's one of the things you can say, you know what, okay, fine, but you're going to hire local for the maintenance of this and maybe a couple here to run the actual thing of the, you know, on average it varies by data center, but I'm going to say of the 30 jobs, high-paying jobs you're going to create, I want you to hire five or ten and let me know what you need so we can start preparing that workforce for you guys, right? Again, just ask. Fiscal transparency, BS transparency is possible of the incentives you're giving them, if any, to bring them in. Again, they're coming to you. You don't need to go get them. They're coming to you. And again, that changes the entire equation. The environmental piece, particularly the e-waste, just ask them, are you going to manage the demand peaks with your electricity? Yes or no. What about the water? How much water do you need? Do you have closed loop circuit or whatever the case may be? E-waste, what are you going to do about the e-waste every two years or so? Are you going to take care of that? Community investment, you know, you could create a community fund and then invest that in whatever you want it, you know, to be used for. And then obviously accountability and ongoing engagement back to that dashboard. Just be transparent with the public and just say, you know what, if your community decided to go down this road and it's happening, it's created, it created X number of jobs during the construction phase, it'll create or there are I don't know, 20 people employed right now while it's being run, right? But we do have three, four, five electricians on call or whatever just to maintain the facility. Just be transparent, right? This is the amount of tax revenue generated. This is how the community is using it. I'm not saying that we'll take care of those in your community that may not be thrilled about this, but at least you're being transparent of what is going on if you decide to go down that road. And also keep the public in the loop when you're starting to negotiate through those CBAs, through those community benefit agreements. It doesn't hurt to keep people in the loop. to the extent possible. So here are just six questions that I would totally ask if they were to come to my community and I was a community leader. Now again, Penn State, you'll see my sources at the end. Or you can Google Penn State Extension, Google data centers, whatever. They have over 100 questions that they have been compiling. So that's your homework. Go read that. This is just to get you started. But how much electricity will this facility consume? And who pays for the grid upgrades? We do not want to pass this on to the residents. How long is it going to take? Are you going to be able to manage the demand, particularly the inference? inference data centers are the ones that can do that the training models they can train them at night for example whatever the case may be right what is a projected water demand what is the source will it compete with the residents just ask right do we need to plan for this what can we do about it or you as a community okay we've got to think about this it's gonna have this impact right what specific tax revenue will the community receive you know net of any incentives or abatements given particularly by the states typically at the state level that are like hey come look at Indiana local communities many times they need to factor that in to really see okay you're giving X amount to the state right or the state is giving you X amount we want to see a net for our community right a net positive How many permanent local jobs will be created and what qualifications are needed? What happens to the infrastructure costs if the operator downsizes or leaves? Again, there is the possibility, possibility that the AI will deflate the bubble, right, like it has happened before. We have seen that movie before, the railroad, right? It took 30 years of building, building, building, then demand did not happen like they were expecting. The investors, they pulled their money and guess what happened? everything came crashing down but now later on the railroads bounced back right and they were used even better the infrastructure was in place right the same thing happened with fiber in the late 90s early 2000s right everybody was building fiber and then the the economic crisis of the early 2000s because the dot-com bubble that burst I'm not saying it'll happen with AI. It may happen not at the same magnitude. It may not happen at all. It may be worse. I don't know. But the movie we've seen before does not change the fact that more than likely, if it is a GPT, whatever deflates, then the use will be more efficient just because of the market, and you will already have the asset to provide that backbone to that use down the road. And again, not to mention the AI startups that we're starting to hear about that we can only imagine right now. People ask me, like, give me an example. I don't know. Entrepreneurs are gonna come utilize this just like they did with the railroad and the internet and stuff like that Right, and if they're close to top models free models, that's gonna be an advantage That's gonna be a competitive advantage. But then of course you have the rural character issue. You've got the water issue You've got the energy issue, right? I'm not saying they're gonna go away. They will remain and The water situation of those three, I think, is the one that will improve the most, I'm guessing, over the next three to five years. Electricity depends, right? Keep in mind, electricity was already struggling to begin with. Maybe now it's a national priority to really invest in the grid. That may ease things down the road, particularly because of the race with China. The feds may get involved. You never know, right? But anyhow... And will you be binded by a community benefit agreement, right? Which in that CBA, you're gonna be able to outline that's where you shoot for the moon, right? You wanna come here? Great, this is what we're asking. At the end of the day, folks, it's your decision if you wanna pursue it or not. If you do pursue it, how you're gonna pursue it. I'm just, again, trying to focus. Many times these positives, potential positives are not discussed at all. The entire conversation is around energy and water, justifiably so, but there are some very good potential things that you do not need to overlook When the time if the time comes so those are my sources as a good academic I have to list them. It's 47 of them and they I keep adding Literally every week as new studies come out. I go and guess what I use AI and I ask it Okay, I look at my slides. This is a new article that came out What am I missing and then I just fact check and validate make sure it's not hallucinating and then Here I am presenting to you folks today. So that's what I wanted to talk about. So I'm gonna turn it over back to Chris or to whomever.

Thank you. I think there's two counties in Indiana that have banned, or not banned, but zoned out data centers. Banned them completely. Cass County and I think it was White or Fulton maybe.

Okay.

Just one, didn't know if you knew why they banned them completely. Was it fear? Or was it just non-education of their political leaders?

I don't know those specific cases, but what I'm seeing nationally, what I'm reading, I've never been close to the process, the decision-making process. If I would have to bet, I would bet fears, overblown fears around water, and the rural character piece, right? That we don't wanna miss that. What's gonna follow, right? Are we gonna change the nature of our community? I want my peace and tranquility in my community, which is valid concerns, right? Development does bring growing pains. As planners, you know that, right? But this may not be that growing pain just because it's not the bulky of the manufacturing facilities in the past. That would be my guess, but I'm not familiar with that. Why? Yeah.

Touch on why some data centers are so massive, like thousands of acres versus ones that are like 300 acres.

That's the use and the company, right, that are building them. I don't know. They obviously have a reason for that. Those massive ones, what I'm told is you need a lot of servers, a lot of chips. run the training but also the the interaction with the users and then they also have a backup of a backup of a back of a backup right and so in case that server goes down we can we have two others right because the downtime for them is not really really good back in the early 2000s when I was in Mississippi talking about the internet and the potential for economic development the need for faster internet. Multiple communities would tell me in the mid-2010s, we don't need faster internet. Netflix never buffers. And I'm like, fair enough. But what they didn't know is that Netflix, it pings your connection. And if you don't have a fast connection or stable connection, it will downgrade the quality. Many times your eyes won't even notice that, but their business is not to buffer. So the business of the data centers is not to be down. And so that's why I'm guessing they will have backup of a backup of those masses.

You have the two different ones. You have the training ones, and you have the using the brain one, right? Right. Is the using the brain one a smaller one usually? I don't know. Oh, no? Okay. It's going to vary. I don't know. You said a lot of the training ones have already been built, which are these massive ones, it sounds like. And now there's, when I'm reading and researching, they're getting smaller, and I'm wondering if that's using brain ones to be a smaller facility instead of 1,000 acres worth of land taken up. Okay. Thank you.

Is the demand and the desperation that you talk about, is that the same for all different scales of data centers, or is that one size? The hyperscale ones. The hyperscale ones are the ones.

The Amazon's, the Google's, the Meta's, those.

Yeah, because not only are we competing with China, if it is a, that's the big assumption. If it is the GPT everybody thinks it will be, not everybody, most people, researchers, economists, whatever, they will be built here or in China, just because it will be a human worldwide technology. So the question becomes, where do you want them to be? Here or elsewhere? So that's one situation. The other one is they're competing between them, right? The Microsoft, the OpenAI, Claude. I mean, they are, because of the amount of money that's at stake, I mean, I shared those stats at the beginning, right? Whomever wins will win big time, right? So that's leading to this race where that was not the case with manufacturing, and so that's why they're wouldn't say desperate maybe I could say desperate but they they will come to you you don't have to go scream and raise your hand and be like choose me choose me they're coming to you right and so that changes the equation entirely any other no any other questions

Are you aware of the data center that's going underway in New Haven, Indiana, over by Fort Wayne? The Google data center.

I know the one Amazon, like northwest of here, close to South Bend in that area, northwest. So there's another one going. In New Haven? I think I've heard about, but I don't know any details. Okay. I don't know. I mean, like.

That's like 1,800 acres, I believe. It's the Google data center.

Yeah, it's quite large. Yeah. On the noise, you said there's no research out there on that noise. It's just anecdotal.

The low humming that's been reported, research as in beyond news articles that you hear people that live close by, they're like, yeah, this noise is just every 24-7. It's driving me insane. Some data centers in Mississippi are reporting that in elsewhere. I haven't seen anything beyond news articles about do they really create this hum? What are the implications for that? Like I said, this is just happening real time, and it's changing weekly if not daily. Maybe down the road there will be like, yeah, you know what? You need to put them right way outside of town at a certain distance surrounded by trees, right, to absorb or whatever the case may be.

The humming's new to the newer ones? Because you said the Virginia one's been there for...

long time Virginia has not reported that I know of any sort of situation like that it may be the type of data center neighbors reported on yeah again like I said it's gonna vary data center by data center right it's gonna be specific to that Lodon though, there was a time, something happened with the grid and they had to turn on 24 or 30 generators at the same time. And that got noisy and a lot of pollution and stuff. I don't know when it happened. I heard the story, I haven't validated, but they did say that that could happen. But Lodon is really just, you're not gonna be that county. I mean, they've been at it for 20, 25 years. And just the density of data centers that they have there is insane. Most of them started because they're close to DC and the Pentagon, right? Those edge computing data centers, that's how rumor has it that that county started.

So what are you seeing as far as siting of these things? Like what are they near or what do they not want to be near?

So it depends on the type, and they typically won't disclose it, right? So that's where you need to ask and be like, okay, dude, if we're going to talk, you need to be honest and transparent with me. It varies by data center, but I will tell you that the Midwest is prime. The West at one point was until the water issue happened. There's been some maps that are going around where they show where there's a drought. and a bunch of data centers were going there, and they're like, you know what, never mind, we're going to go elsewhere. So the Midwest is emerging as prime real estate, right, because of the water that we have here, electricity, you know, it's not as bad as other areas. They will have to upgrade, right, increase the capacity, obviously the generation. But that's what we've heard. But the general story, though, is they're going anywhere they can go, right, just because of the need they have to build these things. And, again, folks, AI, I don't know. I can't remember off the top of my head the exact statistics, but it's not being adopted by businesses not even close to, like, 30%. and they cannot keep up with demand. So imagine if your business competitor adopts AI and they're like beating you, then you're going to go and adopt. And then it's going to like trickle out and demand is going to go through the roof. It's one of the arguments. But the supply is not going to be there, right? It may hold them back, the AI people. My point is there's a lot of potential for this to go up rather than down when it comes to demand. That's why they're coming to you. They're like, can we build, please? So. Yes, sir.

Oh It didn't happen I didn't know so let me up I'm gonna make myself up good old note here old-fashioned note to research on that I don't know

Got it, got it. Mental note, too, but I thought... Budget cuts, budget cuts. I thought it was a done deal, so it did not happen then. It might have fell through at the last minute.

Amazon? No, no. Interesting.

Yeah.

I have no idea, my guess would be it was a company decision. Maybe they realized they don't have the money, I don't know. I mean, I'll try, definitely, yes. So June 30th was when the official, it was official, okay. Interesting. Well, there you go. But thank God I did not know that. I thought that was a done deal. And they did it to the T like they should of the community.

So that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Because there are other communities that have benefited because they did it right. But this one specifically, I mean, the size of it was huge. I don't know. There might have been some finances on the company side. I'm guessing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You mentioned some more efficient systems that are in place, closed-loop systems. You suggested some non-water cooling methods. If you had a data center in your community and you wanted them to use the latest technology, what is currently available? What would we want to require of that to minimize efficiency of electricity use and water use? What's currently available and what might be on the horizon for those types of things?

updated version of the closed loop circuit that a lot of those that now are put on hold because of the community pushback, they were gonna be built with that technology. I don't know the specifics to it, but the system itself is becoming more efficient and better. And so the newer data centers will be built with that technology just because they know that they are gonna get pushed back because of the water. On the electricity side, these things will produce heat. They just consume a lot of electricity. You have a ton, a ton of chips running under that roof. And so what they've innovated with is this demand peak management thing. I have it there in the slide somewhere. I just can't read. My glasses, I'm getting old. But anyhow, it's called demand peak management or something. It's a technical term that the utilities will know. And they can, the data center can, you know, lower the demand when it's peak time and then kind of play with that situation. And that helps with the grid and the efficiency of the facility. Those are the two technologies around cooling and electricity that I'm aware of as of today or now. Yeah.

And obviously small modular reactors are. Down the road a few years.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Purdue is really working on that big time. I will say that it'll take a couple. It won't happen tomorrow. But I mean, the process has started. Right. And that's always, I guess, good news.

Have you seen... That was me. Go ahead. Have you seen language or community requirements that address... So if Elon Musk does begin building data centers in space and we have a giant shell of a building that's thousands of acres, what happens to that facility if it's no longer in use or how communities address that type of thing? It would have a defunct facility that has no other purpose but data centers.

I don't think I agree entirely that the demand will be sufficient even with Musk's satellites. Look at electricity. It's been around for 150 years, and we still cannot satisfy demand, right? So if you apply the same rationale to AI, we're just getting started. We're going to need everything we can to throw at that if it becomes the GPT, right? And people don't realize now, but a lot of things are being now, you know, they include some sort of AI situation. They really cannot roll it out faster because there's not the supply for that. So I would be honestly a little bit more concerned of the financial bubble that could follow. that it can deflate and it will, then temporarily demand will just plummet, supply will plummet, and there's gonna be people, communities that are gonna hurt just because they never came back. That could be a situation, but in the long run, when demand picks up again, I think that that is more, for me, that would be more an issue than, oh yeah, Musk solved the issue, we don't need it anymore. So now all the terrestrial ones are outdated or or out of use I don't think that's gonna you also said that they're coming Location and being close to them gonna be important.

They can't get close to space, right? Like someone want to be close to it. So that's always something that would and Then also too because you mentioned that that nowadays before they build them anywhere now They're really wanting people to be closer to him for latency problems and other things else So yeah inference are becoming there.

They're starting to gravitate back to where the populate the users are and So the less distance you put between the AI, the data center, and the users, the better.

On the Hammond thing, NIPS, I did some research, actually, I got it from somebody. It was 200 megawatts that NIPSCO couldn't provide to them. NIPSCO couldn't get the power to them, so that's why it fell through. They couldn't provide it.

And they didn't want to pay for it, I'm guessing.

Yeah, because it was like an 1,800% increase over what the capacity was for that area. So it was going to be a massive upgrade that they just couldn't do. That's why it fell through.

Whoever on the company side looked at the water and said, yay, and overlooked the electricity. But, you know, it happens. Yeah, those massive ones, I think they're going to become rarer just because... They may be more distributed among like southeast, Wisconsin that you're gonna have them not close like the massive one But multiple smaller ones within a certain distance I'm guessing that could be part of the situation because these massive ones are gonna suck the electricity in the water for sure at least initially You have some issue Lake Michigan in general, but you've got a deal with Several states

It isn't like you can just throw a gigantic pump in Lake Michigan and start pumping water. I mean, wait a minute. Wildlife, fish, food, pollution. I don't know how you could. That seems almost impossible.

Well, it's not happening.

Especially if it was as big as you said it was going to be. Yeah, massive.

That's massive. 200 megawatts of corn.

That's that's It's like the one that's been going into New Haven is the city of Fort Wayne is supposedly going to supply the water for that Have you have you read that or Now I don't know maybe they supply water to New Haven anyway. I don't know But what I've read is that the city of Fort Wayne be the water source.

I

Yeah, and somebody was, I don't know if this is true, this is what I hear from community meetings, like this one is, you know, the initial intake of water is massive, like when you fill up your pool, but after that, it kind of flattens out, and it's, right, the closed loop kicks in and everything, so it's not like it's continuously sucking water and, like, draining it, right? It's that first fill in the pool situation, and then after that, the pool... and you just manage what you have is what I understand other communities have mentioned. But then again, it's gonna vary by the type of project, the community, what they're willing to give or not. This is a really high level Right? But you can ask, right? You can ask the data center, okay, what's your water, like, truly, how often are you going to have to, you know, re-change the water in the pool, or whatever the case may be, and if you're going to fill it, how much do you need, and then you know you're, roughly, you can plan, right? It's not like, they're the ones that are itching to build, not you, to being built on, and so... guess that's it The electronics, the chips keep improving. So my guess would be that they have had multiple upgrades over time. That's where the e-waste component conversation is super important. But when you do that, you need to bring in local electricians and plumber, whatever the case may be, right? That keeps a steady source of jobs for your trades in the local community. You may need an engineer to come down or several to check it out. So there may be an influx of people while they upgrade. And that really happens roughly every two years that they need to make sure that they have the latest chips there to be competitive. I'm sure it has yeah I'm sure that has happened just because they've grown all over the place in the county right in the county has allowed that yeah yeah maybe they make them that large or they ask for so much they start small and then they build out because they know they're gonna have to do that that's why they ask for a ton of land I don't know but those are questions you definitely need to ask the developer

I have a question. Along with electricity, aren't most data centers run off of fossil fuel?

When they have to kick on their generators, they're usually natural gas, yes.

Okay, and don't they use them every day?

It depends on the data center, but typically what I understand is the generators are for backup in case You know They don't want to overwhelm the grid or there's something with the there's an issue with the grid that cannot afford to be down And so they turn those things on but they are that's why caterpillar there was an article in The Wall Street Journal about They're doing really well because they're selling these massive generators to data centers of all people, right? They used to be in ships and cruises, et cetera. Now they're being run and they run on natural gas. So they can also, they're gonna look for natural gas availability and access and pipelines, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, it ends up being fossil fuels. How often they're turned on, I don't know. Again, it's gonna vary, but they will be on site if the grid cannot manage the peak load that they're asking for.

Probably during peak time.

Yeah, and if it's an inference one, they may slow down everything, not overwhelm the grid, and not turn their generators on, and then when the peak subsides, then they can pick up on there, just to keep the grid stable. But again, you need to have your utility on board to discuss all these types of technical stuff with the developer, for sure.

Thanks.

Yeah. It sounds like as a county, say DeKalb County, you need to have a group of people as a commission that have a reasonable amount of understanding as to what the end game is.

Yeah, so yes, you can have, so there's, to me, there's two layers. One is the general community benefit piece of treating it, trying to focus on the positives while addressing the negatives, right, and making sure your committee does benefit. That's like a high-level layer up here. Then you have the technical piece. of it, you do need people that are going to be negotiating with them or meeting with them. They will be the ones that will know the capacity of the grid, the water, whatever the case may be. You do need people that can speak their language because many times they'll come in here with their engineers and their jargon and their lawyers. And many communities don't have the capacity, right? They have part-time mayors, whatever the case may be. So they are overwhelmed by this big fancy group showing up. But if the community can muster a counter to that and have your own lawyers and people that know the technical questions to ask beyond this community benefit piece, which is really what folks like you can really focus on. And then you can bring in the experts to really just get into the nitty gritty when it comes time to that. Would you be available? I'm not a technical expert, sorry. I can give you on the economic development side of things, yes, I mean we can ask and shoot for the moon and what I've seen communities talk about is really they're seeing their schools lose funding, right? They want to alleviate or reduce property taxes. You have to consider, I think there's a couple of issues that I'm told at the state level that need to be worked on, but in the technical piece, I mean, you've gotta bring in your utility and your engineers and just people that do know the capacity of what's going on and will ask the correct and good technical questions, but I can only help on the community development side. There's a professor at Purdue. I'll connect you. He's from the Polytechnic. Apparently, he's become the guru of everything electricity, like down to the T. I can connect you to him. I mean, he may be able to come here whenever the conversation happens, or he may train somebody or join your utility. I don't know. But I do know that he's, many people have mentioned him to me, and I saw a LinkedIn post of Purdue recently of the Polytechnic team just bragging about the expertise of this faculty.

We did we have what a moratorium and I Probably at the end of the day as a county you have to decide okay, we can go to Level one two and three, but we're not going above that. All right, we don't want something the size of Auburn.

Yes.

Okay, we want the four-car garage Yes Yes, so then the the demand and the level of negotiation would certainly be different.

Yeah, and you can send the message. I mean, I wouldn't see an issue if you decide to pursue this to say, hey, we're open for business, but these are the requirements. No larger than this, no more consumption than this, that, whatever, a buy local, use local requirement type of clause, you know, the e-weight, whatever. I mean, You can say, we're open for business, but if you're going to come do business and you don't fit these requirements, don't even come, right? We're not going to even. And you're still going to be part of a game, but you control the initial discussion, right? The terms of that, which is night and day to what happened with manufacturing.

I can't imagine on some of these big ones, the dog and pony show has got to be horrendous. Yeah.

And maybe even, and I'm brainstorming at this point, you know, just talk to the residents here and say, look, we're going to be open for business, but this is what we can handle, right? This is what we will be happy to discuss. Anything outside these parameters, we're not going to even touch.

We're kind of doing that now. That's why we had the committee put together to do exactly that, is to come up together what we're comfortable with, and they come and fit our criteria. Perfect.

When you have those requirements, send them my way, please, because I like to learn from communities as well.

Dr. Tyler, he's in charge of them.

Again, I don't know. I would guess that because of the significant pushback, the bigger, the easier the target, right? So my guess would be they will come up with some way of having decentralized smaller data centers that collectively as a hive would behave like a big, massive one in one location. I think that that's doable. I don't know exactly about the technology, like those details, but To me, if I were a Google and an Amazon, that's what I would be looking at, right, to avoid coming with a $7 billion. You know, people would be like, yeah, we're past the dollars. What's the impact on my community with something so massive? But then again, even if you haven't distributed among a certain area, across a certain area, that could achieve them keeping the competitive edge over China or over Facebook or their rival or competitor. But that's speculating. You would have to ask them.

I want to thank you for coming out. I really appreciate the information. There's a lot of things that I didn't really think about either. The e-waste was one of them. It wasn't even on my radar. You don't ever hear about that. My pleasure.

Whatever I can do. Like I said, there are issues, but there are some really cool potential benefits that in my Experience being a regional developer of 20 years, mostly working in rural communities, they don't come very often, those opportunities. Or the ability of the community to say, let's dance tango, but I will decide how we dance, right? When in the past, let's dance, that's it.

And for transparency, the RDC did, not the RDC, the DeKalb Economic Board said that he has had people asking about when we're going to have this ordinance ready to go. There are data centers that are paying attention to us as a planning commission to see when this ordinance is going to be done, when the moratorium is going to fall off. The partnership, yeah, I'm sorry, what did I say? Oh, no, no, no, the partnership has had, and they just want to know when we're going to have this proposal. So there's people looking at our county for data centers just to give you guys a heads up that once we put it out there, we will most likely be approached by somebody.

They are. And so if you have your parameters, you want to play ball, these are the rules. Otherwise, don't even knock. That's pretty cool. Am I excused, sir? Yes, thank you.

Have a good evening.

Yes, no worries. Thank you.

Okay. Do we have any reports from our town meetings and such, even though we just had a meeting a week ago? Nothing new? There shouldn't be. I know, that's what I'm saying.

Oh, see? You stand corrected.

Is that on the record?

There was one, thank you, one zoning change requested and it was a little weird because the plan she brought in was a AI-generated plan that her parking spaces were like as long as this. Well, as long as this. So it looks like it'll work, but... Council is gonna have to decide on that one They did as they said city staff will request the plan Commission to schedule a public hearing for August 11th and To review the UDO and any zoning regulations and land development rules with the goal of increasing housing development as required by Indiana Code 36743. So I think that's, they said they had to do it. So that's what you were talking about with what we have to do for the county.

It's Indiana law that's requiring every municipality. Yeah, so. We're doing yours in August.

August 11th. That was it.

Anyone in the audience wish to speak on anything?

We want to appreciate Tyler and Chris for finding this gentleman and having him come in.

Yeah.

Anything else for the good of the cause? We'll be adjourned.