Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Let's call the March 5 Special Plan Commission to order. Call the roll, please.

Mister Cox? Here. Mister Crompton?

Here.

Mister Eulets?

Here.

Mr. Martin? Mr. Perez? Here. Ms. Rodakovich? Here. Ms. Rohr?

I'd like to make a statement. I would like the record to show that I've been offered and accepted a position here at the City of Joliet. And in order to avoid any concerns regarding impartiality and an abundance of caution, I'm recusing myself from any participation, discussion,

or vote pertaining to this matter. Mister Turk?

Here.

Chairman Pella?

Here.

Okay. Thank you. We have a quorum. At this time, we're gonna have Todd Lindsey, our interim corporation counsel provide a statement with an overview of this evening's proceedings. After which, we will get the public hearing started.

Thank you. As Ray said, my name is Todd Lindsey. I'm the interim corporation counsel. Before we begin today, I'd like to explain how this meeting this hearing will work. After the applicant's presentation and questioned by the commissioners, there will be a public comment period in which everyone who has signed the sheet requesting to speak will have a chance to be heard when called.

To keep the meeting fair and orderly, each person will be allowed four minutes to speak. Please direct your comments and questions to the commission as a whole whole and not to the staff, the applicant, or the audience. After public comment is concluded, the applicant will have the opportunity to respond to questions that have been asked. If you are a property owner within the zoning notice boundary, you may be allowed a reasonable amount of extra time to ask questions upon your request. We may set reasonable limits on how long comments and questions may last and may limit repetitive discussion.

We understand that there is a lot of interest in this project. We ask you to avoid duplicating comments and questions that have already been stated. If someone has effectively stated a comment, you can simply say that you concur with that comment without repeating it, and that will be part of the record. Throughout the hearing, we ask everyone to maintain decorum. Please keep your remarks respectful, avoid interrupting others, and refrain from applause or other reactions so that all participants can be heard in a calm and organized setting. Thank you.

Thank you, Todd. I'd like to note for the record, commissioner Wendell Martin isn't now in attendance. And with that, we will proceed with opening the public hearing for today's meeting, which is zoning upon annexation of approximately 795 acres to I one light industrial zoning and preliminary plan unit development, PUD for property at South Rowell Road and Bernard Road. Case a dash four dash 25, annexation of approximately 795 acres surrounding South Rowell Road and Bernard Road. Zoning upon annexation of approximately 70 795 acres to I one light industrial zoning.

And case PUD dash eight dash 25 preliminary plan unit development and preliminary plat of Joliet Technology Center subdivision. The applicant for this evening's meeting is Powerhouse Hillwood Holding LLC. Status of the applicant is contract purchaser. The owner is Bernhard Farms Inc, Bernhard Family Land Trust, Leo e and Lois I Bernhard, Leonard e Bernhard, Jean r Smith, Joan e Long, Joyce c and Ray m Garza and James e Bernhard. Requested action is approval of zoning classification to I one light industrial zoning upon annexation and approval of a preliminary plan unit development.

Purpose is to allow for development of a future data center campus. Existing zoning is county a one agricultural. Location is approximately 795 acres surrounding South Rowell Road and Bernhard Road. Existing land use is farmland, undeveloped. Surrounding land use and zoning to the North, rural residences and farmland county a one and a two agricultural rural residents.

To the South, Farmland County a one agricultural. To the East, farmland and paving contractor, I one light industrial and county a one agricultural. And to the West, Route 66 Raceway Farmland And warehouse and I one light industrial. Under site history, the subject properties have been farmland throughout their history. The city's 2,007 South Side comprehensive plan prescribed industrial land use for the majority of the land within the subject property, with the exception of two commercial hubs at the Northwest and northeast corners of both the Rowell Road and Millsdale Road and Ridge Road and Millsdale Road intersections.

The proposed I one light industrial zoning designation generally aligns with the land use direction from the South Side comprehensive plan. Under general site and proposal information, data center facilities are buildings that are used for the storage, management, processing and transmission of digital data which house computer network equipment, systems, servers, appliances and other associated components related to digital data operations. These facilities often include air handlers, power generators, closed loop cooling, storage facilities, utility substations, and other associated utility infrastructure to support sustained operations at the data center. The buildings that house data center infrastructure often resemble the size, design and massing of other light industrial warehouse, commercial or or office facilities. The petitioner, Powerhouse Hillwood Holding LLC intends to annex the 795 acre assemblage and develop a data center campus in four future phases.

Subject preliminary plan unit development covers the entire 795 acre assemblage. Future final plan unit development petitions and final plats would be required for each phase of development. The petitioner intends to include one six building cluster in each future phase of development resulting in a total of 24 principal data center buildings with an approximate total building square footage of 6,936,000 gross square feet. Storm water management would be sized with each future phase of development as generally shown on the preliminary PUD plan set. Electrical substations of approximately six acres in size would accompany each future phase of development.

A larger 25 acre switching station would be situated on the development's west side, west of South Rowell Road. Depicted on Lot 3 of the preliminary plat, this lot lot would eventually be conveyed to ownership by Commonwealth Edison, also known as ComEd. The switching station would be buffered by the existing Route 66 Raceway Complex to the north and future planned phases of the data center campus to the east and south. The developer does not have plans to utilize the excess land located in the Northeast portion of the annexation assemblage. Any future changes to the PUD that would result in development of this portion of the property assemblage would require an amended preliminary plan unit development approval.

Future right of way dedications to South Rowell Road and South Ridge Road would be required to meet the city's roadway standards. The applicant is proposing a vacation of the existing Bernhard Road right of way between South Rowell Road and South Ridge Road. This would become a private road for internal circulation if the vacation is approved. Vacation of Bernhard Road will require a future right of way vacation approval process. Future extension of West Millsdale between the Western property line and South Ridge Road would also be required as the lower three campus clusters are developed.

Landscaping easements with grass burning at a three to one slope would be provided along all arterial roads that are improved. Additional landscape and additional landscaping buffer would be required between the northern most campus cluster and the existing residential properties that front West Schweitzer Road. Landscaping plans would be verified when the final plan unit development plats are submitted for their respective phases. Individual sites would be required to meet the city's lighting and glare regulations. Developer would also be responsible for the cost of extending water and sewer infrastructure to the future campus sites.

Under community benefits, data centers are rapidly growing throughout the country due in large part to a surge in meeting today's digital demand as artificial intelligence, also known as AI technologies require an enormous amount of computing power and associated infrastructure. Several economic benefits have been associated with the development of data center campuses. The facilities result in the creation of high paying permanent jobs in addition to a large volume of temporary construction jobs associated with the build out of data Center campus. The developer is committed to a project labor agreement and has strong labor union support. Approximately 7,000 to 10,000 union jobs would be created for the construction of this development.

At full build out, the project would create approximately 700 jobs operating within the site's 24 buildings with staff on-site twenty four hours per day. The developers committed to partnerships with local educational institutions to expand technical training programs aligned with the construction and technology careers and will work closely with these educational institutions, community groups, and others to target local residents to fill these roles. Property tax revenues generated at the local level can also be substantial. Subject development is expected to generate approximately $310,000,000 in property taxes over thirty years plus about $40,000,000 in utility taxes in addition to standard industrial water and sewer rate revenues. Developments of this scale provide stable recurring revenue that support essential services such as police, fire protection, and infrastructure while strengthening city's financial stability and expanding the commercial tax base, helping fund services without increasing the burden on homeowners.

City of Joliet will not be providing economic incentives or tax abatements for this project. Under community impacts, city is aware that larger data center campuses have the potential for several negative quality of life impacts if not properly mitigated. Following sections outline the how the applicant's proposal and the city's zoning ordinance addresses these impacts. Under noise and lighting, noise pollution that originates from cooling equipment and backup generators has been cited as a chief negative quality of life impact for adjacent property owners. Noise from data centers is often cited as most audible within 3,000 feet of the point source, with the potential to be audible for up to two miles from the point source.

Surrounding land that is located within one mile of the subject property is largely vacant or under development for light industrial uses. Though there are several pre existing farmstead residences scattered throughout the area in addition to a lower density single family residential neighborhood south of Spangler Road outside of the city limits. The Illinois pollution control board's rules and regulations for noise pollution would cap a proposed class c use between forty and seventy five decibels at property lines of adjoining residences depending on the octave band center frequency. Model data center ordinances typically call for a maximum decibel level between sixty and seventy at the property line. The opt in has stated that it believes that it can stay under a maximum decibel level of 65 decibels at the property line.

Volume at this level is comparable to a loud conversation or running dishwasher. The noise generated by data centers of the kind proposed in Joliet is produced largely by the exercising of the generators. These generators are proposed to be built within the interior of the sites that any noise produced would be mitigated by the structure themselves, as well as by landscape berms that must be installed. Preliminary plot shows the approximate projected distances between the future data center campus buildings and the closest property line. Buildings that would be situated within the northern most cluster cluster would have the shortest distance to a property line and to existing residences along Lariway Road at approximately 179 feet of separation distance.

Other data center buildings would be at least 200 feet away from the nearest property line with several buildings in excess of 300 feet from the property line. Modern data centers have implemented several techniques to buffer sound more effectively, such as putting acoustic walls around mechanical yards, providing enhanced sound protection equipment on building exteriors and paraffin walls, and adding increased vegetation and landscaping with the natural buffers to adjacent properties. Should the subject use be declared a public nuisance due to complaints regarding excessive noise, the city would require the operator to implement noise reduction methods to meet the Illinois pollution control board regulations. Each future building that would be built would be required to meet the criteria listed in the zoning ordinance section 47 dash 14.11 pertaining to glare and lighting restrictions for buildings in an industrial zone. The quantity of luminance of lighting visible from neighboring properties shall not be of such magnitude as to cause hazards, annoyance, or interference to the users and the uses of neighboring properties.

Maximum illumination on adjacent or nearby residential and RV restricted business districts without the property owner's consent would not be allowed to exceed 0.5 horizontal foot foot candles as measured at the property line. The proposed data center development would use minimal light nighttime lighting. All fixtures would be focused downward and softly, minimally lit for safety purposes. Unlike a warehouse that may be busy with loading activities in the overnight hours, the data center has very little need for outdoor nighttime activity on the site. Under water usage, data center campuses have been known for consuming vast amounts of water to cool its equipment.

Advances in recent technology have led to a decreased dependence on water as certain facilities have provided alternative means of cooling such as using recycled gray water or using air cooling techniques in lieu of formerly utilized evaporative cooling techniques. The proposed data center campus would utilize a closed loop system that recycles water and significantly reduces overall water usage. Cities comfortable that the planned water use will not strain the local system. Staff recommends capping average daily consumption to 150,000 gallons per day. Staff recommends capping the average amount of daily discharge into the city's sanitary sewer system 50,000 gallons per day.

City will require approval of a pre industrial permit prior to discharge of any non domestic waste into the city's sanitary system. Staff recommends allowing potable water to be used for common uses such fire suppression, domestic use, humidification, irrigation of landscape areas, and initial flushing and filling of the closed use system at a date, time, and flow rate approved by the director of public utilities. Potable water will not be allowed to be used for evaporative cooling or other manufactured processing. Average daily potable water consumption calculated on an annual basis will not be allowed to exceed 150,000 gallons per day. This water use is less than that planned for in the city's planning studies, which plan for this area to develop as light industrial with an average demand of 264,000 gallons per day and a maximum daily demand of 330,000 gallons.

For comparison, the proposed water use the data center is significantly less than the water demands for single family residential subdivision, which would use approximately 1,250,000 gallons per day for the same acreage. If the project exceeds the peak daily use or average daily use limits, property owner would be required to pay three times the applicable rate for water service charges with respect to such excess. Under power usage. Strain on the local power grid is another primary concern from data center development. The developer estimates that at full build out the project, the proposed project would require an annual electricity consumption of 1,800 megawatts.

ComEd has identified and planned a series of transmission and system upgrades that will allow the data center to operate without reducing reliability for existing residential or business customers. All required transmission and infrastructure improvements associated with project will be funded by the developer. This includes construction of dedicated infrastructure that would separate electric service from the local service network that serves existing ComEd customers. The isolation from the broader ComEd network would simplify service delivery to the development site while preventing complications associated with integrating the projected large energy load with the loads of existing ComEd customers. The Regional Transmission Organization or RTO that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity throughout the local grid is PJM Interconnection LLC.

PJM must approve all proposed generation assets and large loads before they're allowed to connect to the regional grid to deliver or withdraw power. As part of the interconnection process, PGM and ComEd have evaluated the impact of the development at full build out on the reliability and of the regional grid and local network and have determined that extending service to the proposed data center campus will not cause blackouts to cost ComEd customers. The development will have backup power generation, but will rely on the local regional electrical grid for its electricity supply. The data center will secure and pay for its own electricity independent of residential or small business service. Electric rates in Illinois are regulated by the Illinois Commerce Commission, which sets prices based on overall system cost and formal review processes, not the energy use of any single project.

The proposed data center campus must secure its own electricity supply through either the ComEd basic electric service hourly rate or through a bilateral agreement with a retail electricity supplier. Neither of these options can cause existing ComEd customers to subsidize the energy supply cost of the proposed data center campus. Under traffic, the developer obtained a traffic impact study from Kimberly Horn and Associates to assess the impact of the full site build out to traffic in the surrounding area. Study found that site generated traffic is not expected to materially impact nearby intersections. Most intersections in the immediate area would experience a level of service or LOS rating of c or higher, meaning traffic streams would be generally stable with some restricted movement.

At the intersection of Route 53 and Schweitzer Road, the eastbound and westbound approaches would operate at a level of service f during peak AM and PM hours. However, this is a similar service level to a no build scenario at this intersection. Truck base shown in the site plan would only be used for equipment changes and would not be a daily a source of daily trucking operations. The applicant is requesting a deviation from the standard loading dock requirement for building in the I 1 zone from six docks to just two docks per building. Under exceptions, variations and departures, developers requested the following exception exceptions, variations and or departures from the strict regulations of the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations.

Lots one and two pertaining to the data center campus. A deviation from I one reflects a reduction in the number of required loading dock parking per building from six to two. A deviation from I one parking requirements exist as data center uses are currently undefined. A deviation from I one reflects an allowance for 40 foot driveway aprons. 5,180 linear feet of West Bernhard Road is intended to be made private.

5,430 linear feet of South Railroad to be improved. And multiple buildings are to be permitted on a single lot as shown in the preliminary PUD plan. For the Lot 3 substation, no minimum accessory off street parking or loading is required for an electrical substation use. Transmission structures and electrical equipment depicted conceptually are provided for reference only. Conceptual depiction of a substation area enclosure subject to engineering refinement.

Taller fence posts supporting new fence and other security functions may be required up to 18 feet tall. Location subject for future confirmation. Substation static mass up to 86 feet tall may be installed for safety. A tree preservation plan is not required for Lot 3, notwithstanding section 47 dash 15 e two f. Trees greater than six inches in diameter may be removed notwithstanding anything to the contrary in section forty seven fifteen a two a.

The prohibition on chain link fencing in section 47 dash 15 e 10 does not apply to the does not apply within Lot 3 due to public utility security requirements. Substation fencing is exempt from fence height limits and front yard prohibitions as described in section forty seven seventeen six. An expanded metal fence of 11 feet high in height, plus 12 inches of y shaped barbed wire may be installed on the exterior of any electrical substation situated within Lot 3, including that portion of electrical substation facing east. Substation areas within Lot 3 may be comprised of gravel and are not required to be paved. Driveway aprons on Ra Road must be paved, but driveways within the boundaries of Lot 3 may be gravel consistent with safety and reliability standards.

Section 5.4 b dash two of the subdivision ordinance requires all driveways to be paved with concrete. A public utility owner of Lot 3 must pave driveway aprons, but not the portion of the substation driveways themselves lying outside the public right away due to potential need to quickly access underground electrical ducts, which are often buried beneath the various driveways. Section 5.9 dash a, which requires all utility facilities within a substation to be placed underground. Section 5.9 dash b, which requires a 10 foot public utility easement all along all rear lot lines. That kind of public utility easement is incompatible with a secure substation property.

And lastly, section 5.6 dash c which requires fire hydrants to be placed within 350 feet of any structure. The distance from the proposed principal equipment enclosure to the nearest fire hydrant along Ravel Road will be determined in the final engineering design. Under summary, staff finds that the petitions meet all required standards for approval and recommends approval of annexation, zoning upon annexation to I one light industrial district, preliminary plan unit development and preliminary plat with the described exceptions variations departures subject to the conditions of approval below. Subject petitions are to be reviewed and voted on for final action at a future city council meeting. The developer will be required to obtain city council approval and final PUD plans and final and recording plats for each future phase of development.

Under conditions of approval, staff recommends the following conditions of approval. One, project should implement noise reduction methods to meet the Illinois pollution control board regulations. Developers should use industrial scale berms and other natural buffers, setbacks, and modern building techniques to reduce noise levels. Two, that a photometric plan be submitted with each future phase of development and that all proposed lighting meets the requirements of section 47 dash 14.11 of the city zoning ordinance pertaining to the quantity of luminance of lighting visible to and from neighboring properties. Three, average daily discharge of the city sanitary sewer system calculated on an annual calendar basis should not exceed 50,000 gallons per day.

Peak daily flow should not exceed 300,000 gallons per day, not including operation and testing of fire suppression systems or lot three restroom facilities for the substation. Four, potable water supplied to the city may be utilized for the following uses. Fire suppression in accordance with city building codes and any applicable fire protection insurance requirements, domestic use, humidification for climate control purposes, initial flushing and filling of a closed loop cooling system at a date, time, and flow rate approved by the director of public utilities, limited maintenance of the closed loop cooling system as approved by the city, and irrigation of landscaped areas. Potable water supplied by the city shall not be utilized for the following uses, evaporative cooling or other manufacturing processing. Average daily potable water consumption calculated on an annual basis should not exceed 150,000 gallons per day.

Peak daily use should not exceed 300,000 gallons per day, not including operation and testing of the fire suppression system or to any lot three restroom facilities for substation. And condition number five, unless there is a power interruption, generators should only be exercised one hour per month and no longer than twelve hours per year. Generator exercise should be during daytime business hours of 9AM until 5PM. And that concludes staff's report.

Thank you. May I have the petitioner stand up here, please? Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. State your name, please.

My name is David Silverman. I'm an attorney with the law firm of Mahoney, Silverman, and Cross at 129 Infantry Drive in Joliet. Mister chairman, members of the commission, we're happy to be here tonight. I represent the developers who hope to build the Joliet Technology Center here in Joliet. That's an overall picture of the of the future Joliet Technology Center.

We're here tonight for four reasons, as mister Heitner mentioned. And and first, I'd like to thank the city staff for their very comprehensive review of all the issues that have been presented in this project. They've spent months digging into the questions that are presented by the public, I'm sure by other member city officials. And they've done an outstanding job, I think, of bringing to you a great product that we hope that you can approve. As mentioned by mister Heitner, we're asking this commission to recommend four things.

The annexation of the property to the city of Joliet, the preliminary plan unit development, the rezoning of the property to the I1 Light Industrial District, and the preliminary subdivision of the property. We've heard the questions that have been raised before this commission, the questions that have been raised at the public hearing or excuse me, the public meeting that was conducted by the developers. And we've put together what I think is a very good team to answer those questions. We will give you a comprehensive response to each of the major questions that have been raised by the public. And we hope that at the end of our presentation and the end of all the public comment, you'll be able to agree with your city city staff and make a positive recommendation to the city council and the mayor on this project.

We wanna make sure that all the commission's questions are answered. If you ever have any, please interrupt us. Or I know you'll like to wait till the end. We welcome any and all questions. I think that one thing that's really important as a first item in our presentation is for you to meet the developers of this property.

If this project gets approved by the city, they will be your partners for a number of years in this project. Partners in bringing jobs to the community on a construction basis, partners in bringing jobs to the community on a full time basis in this development. So at this time, I'd like to introduce the representatives of the developers. And as Mr. Heitner mentioned, this project is being developed by the Powerhouse Hillwood LLC, which is a joint venture between Powerhouse and Hillwood. Here for Hillwood is Mr. Don Schoenheiter and Ms. Liz Nicholson from Powerhouse. And I'd like for them to introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their companies to start off the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Dave. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, member of the Planning Commission and city staff. I am Don Schoenheiter, and I am with Hillwood. Hillwood is a private real estate investment and development firm. We're based in Dallas. We've been around since 1988. We were started by Ross Pro Senior, who started the firm in Dallas, Texas. And since then, we've grown to over 800 associates. We're one of the largest developers in The US.

We're very proud, as David said, of the projects we've done, the partnerships we've had with the communities we've done them in. We like to think we're good partners, good collaborative partners with the communities we've worked with and hopefully the city has seen that already. Give you a sense of Hillwood scope, we're in 30 states. We actually develop in five foreign countries. We've developed over 300,000,000 square feet of primarily logistics, industrial manufacturing real estate.

We have 17,000,000 feet under construction and the ability to build well over a 100,000,000 square feet more. As you can see and as you probably are aware, our background and our history and our experience is really developing warehouse manufacturing logistics facilities. So therefore, we believed it was prudent to find and bring in as a partner the one of the best data center developers in the country and perhaps around the world. So we've engaged as our partner, Powerhouse Data Centers. And I'll let Liz Nicholson talk a little bit about Powerhouse.

Introduction. Liz Nicholson with Powerhouse Data Centers. Good to meet you and good evening, Plan Commission members. I'll just give a brief overview and then pass on for some more detailed information. But Powerhouse Data Centers is a fully owned and operated platform of American real estate partners.

We're based in McLean, Virginia. Principals of the company bring decades of experience successfully delivering complex projects and facilities for groups like AOL, Verizon, and CyrusOne to name a few. To describe how we operate, we're a fully vertically integrated data center developer with a team that's grown grown in recent years to about a 180 professionals. Within our group, we have deep in house expertise across investment, entitlement, power procurement, design and construction, leasing and asset management. And I realize that's a long list of things, but we stay with it through the full life cycle of the project, and we feel that this continuity is very important.

If a question comes up at a later time, it's the same people you can call back, talk to, get an answer to the question, and resolve anything. Let me switch to the next slide showing our work around the country. Since launching POWERHOUSE data centers with a focus initially in Northern Virginia, we've grown to 10 markets in The US, currently have about a 140 data centers in various stages of planning and construction and have reached a total of just under 40,000,000 square feet of development. Our approach as a developer is that we're a long term development partner. We have a disciplined and transparent process the way we work internally.

We coordinate each phase of development directly with local utility as well as having a tenant in place so we are not a speculative builder of buildings. We do not build a building unless, you know, we have everything aligned to to utilize that building. And I guess in closing, you know, I just wanna impress upon the fact that we have a long term and holistic view of these projects. We focus on how the project is gonna operate during construction and after construction in the community. We truly do want to be a good neighbor.

I think our local work in the Northern Virginia area has established that reputation and we hope to bring that here as well. I'll turn over to Pat Klein on our team and he can speak briefly to what data centers are as well as our process when we select a site for a data center project.

Good evening, commission. My name is with Powerhouse Data Centers and American Real Estate Partners.

I figured I'd spend just a

couple of minutes telling you about what a data center really is. I think we all know that it's a fairly complex building full of computer equipment. There are several different varieties of data centers. We expect this campus to be a combination of cloud, which is everything we do online with our phones and everyday activities, and possibly some AI usage as also which is more computing. It's basically computers doing functions and a thought process within the data center.

Most data centers are a combination of both of those functions. We are not a Bitcoin miner. We are not into that industry whatsoever. It's a much different facility. And data centers generally are and and our plan is for about a 300,000 square foot data center building each two story. Inside of that is about 20,000 square feet of office space. That's primarily the user of the water that we're asking the city to provide. It's your bathrooms. It's your landscaping. It's it's not related to the cooling systems.

After you have the office function, which is on the cap of the building, within the data halls, each building is usually divided up into several, two to six different data halls. Each data hall is likely either dedicated to a cloud function or an AI function. They the building's HVAC system and generators are segregated into data halls. So while you see a larger building with several generators, they're built in blocks per data hall. So each building really is pieces that make up the total sum of the building.

It has two loading docks typically for when they swap out equipment every five years or so. Most of the equipment is on the roof or in a mechanical courtyard adjacent to the building on the nonvisible sides of the building. That helps for sound and visibility. Let see if I can move this machine.

So what what what's a

good data center site? Data center sites obviously have to have access to power. The better data center sites have power that actually crosses the property so you're not extending transmission lines across other areas of the city. We also need great access to fiber networks because data centers have to communicate with the outside world. They have to be in the right neighborhood for a light industrial facility, and the property has to be large enough to be visually pleasing to the surrounding community.

As you can see, this data center is a perfect data center site. It's a large property. It affords us a lot of land to segregate the campuses to break down the bulk. We have a lot of screening opportunities around the property. The data center actually transmission lines across the property.

We do not have to extend transmission lines to get to the property. And this is in an area of the city, city. It's an overview where, as previously said by staff, the we have the NASCAR facility in the North. We have industrial in the West, and we have a light farm and agriculture on the South and East side. Mixed with a large property, this mixed with the fact that we have transmission on the property makes us a wonderful site for data centers.

Being a partner, our parent company, started off in a class a office building market twenty some years ago. The ownership of our company and and Hillwood also takes great pride in our centers. We do not do just fake block concrete buildings. This is very typical for the type of buildings we design and construct.

That is the office side

of the building. We like to break up the long side walls with decorative features. But that is something that's part and part to both POWERHOUSE and Hillwoods make up for our corporations. And once again, as you can see from the canvas, we were building a large property. I'd like to also introduce Tim O'Neill with Langan. He's our civil designer. He can go into better detail on the property. Thank you.

Alright. Thank

you for the introduction, Pat. My name is Tim O'Neill. I work with Langen Engineering for the applicant. We are responsible for site design and planning within the property lines here. And I'd like to discuss some of the existing and proposed characteristics of the site that we're seeing.

So on this slide, you'll see the entire seven ninety five acre site outlined by our exterior property line borders in the magenta and pink area. So the existing use, as mentioned previously, is an agricultural use. And generally speaking, agricultural uses do generate a high level of stormwater runoff and highly erodible soils on-site. Due to the fertilizers and the limited species of crop plantings, They exhibit low biodiversity and poor wildlife habitats on the site itself. Under the proposed condition, you'll see the entire data center campus build out here.

And up in the northwestern corner, you'll see that Lot 3 combat electrical delivery point. And moving over into the western side of the site and down into the south, you'll see the main data center campus build out. So as mentioned previously, the site does propose a total of 24 different data center buildings separated into four separate groups of six buildings each. Now each one of these building groupings is intended to operate independently. So you'll see it has a designated substation area, an enclosed secure perimeter, and its own storm water management features independently sited for each one of those groups.

Now our main focus of this site layout was to really help protect those site line distances from both our right of way public budding properties that we are offering right of way improvements along South Rowell Road, South Ridge Road, and the newly proposed roadway extension of Mealsdale Road to the south. We're also providing screening from the abutters to the north, highlighted green above the northern building cluster, and then along the southern border, in the westernmost building grouping there. So each of these data centers do access the right of way improvements and are focused being on screening. Landscaping will have a will have street trees proposed along both sides of the right of way within the actual right of way limits. And then as you enter into the property along

the frontages of each of

the developed areas, you'll have that 30 foot landscape buffer. And that buffer does include an urban berm, as mentioned before, the three to one slope that helps provide some elevation for those plantings to help obstruct new sheds from the right of way areas. And then as discussed, we'll also have those planted perimeters to the North and to the South where we do have those developed regions. The mixes for the landscape planting will be a mix of native plantings at different heights and growth. And the trees will be designed to have foliage year round so that you're not looking at barren trees during the winter months or

in fall months. There will

be some sort of screening through the winter and fall seasons as well. The stormwater management on-site, again, these are designed to operate fully independently. The existing site today has essentially no storm water management features at all. And with the agricultural use, generating such high levels of runoff will be a significant improvement to the regional area for both storm water quality and floodplain relief downstream regionally. The site does have soils that are very good at accepting water into the ground and infiltrating, and this will help improve groundwater recharge and improve groundwater elevations throughout the entire site.

Retaining these waters on-site will give them residents time and improve water quality, suspended solids, keep those held on-site. And again, hold that water back until floodways can clear their way downstream. Lighting on the side site, as discussed earlier, will meet local and state ordinances, and we will certainly provide shielded downcasted lighting, dark sky compliant. And lighting is really focused on the internal security perimeter of each one of these clustered regions. And we'll move into the discussion of each one of these layouts briefly here.

But the regions that are located outside of the secure perimeters, the intent is to plant a meadow mix, has a variety of different species and flowering species that will promote pollinators and wildlife habitat, more closely mimicking what was here originally before development and agricultural uses, which would be the prairie type landscapes there. And I would like to quickly note before we move on that the site has gone through the Illinois State Preservation Association and received a clearance for all area within the property line with no significant features. And after having performed on-site natural resource investigations, no on-site wetlands have been identified. And on this screen, you'll see an enlargement of just one of those four six building cluster groups. And you'll notice that it does have its own dedicated substation location.

It's in storm water management, featured to the south, and it's fully enclosed in the secure perimeter. There will be a singular main site access with a secure guardhouse entry, a secondary emergency access and maintenance, and a dedicated access directly to substation. And you'll also notice the fence line that goes around the exterior of these six buildings here. And again, lighting will be more focused on the interior of that area and at the entryways. This will help us avoid light shed towards property lines.

Course, we'll be meeting the city of Joliet. A lighting ordinance with the 0.5 or less foot candles along our property lines, and lighting will be intentionally directed away from anywhere that may be a future sensitive area for wildlife habitats and environments. And for a quick discussion of the overall utilities, here you'll see proposed utility main extensions for both water and sanitary lines throughout the proposed right of ways that will be granted over to the city of Joliet. And again, to review those, we are proposing a 100 foot right of way along South Rowell Road connecting Schweitzer down to the newly proposed Millsdale Road right of way extension, which will also have the 100 foot right of way granted to City of Julia, connecting all the way over to South

Ridge Road, which,

again, will also have that 100 foot right of way dedication. This connection of extended mains for the city utilities will improve the overall regional network. And we are also proposing a new stormwater conveyance system within these right of ways. Currently, sheet flows off of the existing agricultural site and is collected in roadside ditches along the road. The proposed system will be a traditional catch basin enclosed pike network below ground. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mark to discuss some of the power.

Hello. My name is Mark Crewitt. I'm the principal of the power bureau. I was retained to review the the electric and power arrangements that have been proposed for the development. I based my analysis on my experience as a regulator in the state of Illinois.

I, at one point, was the director of the Illinois Power Agency and was responsible for negotiating wholesale power agreements for Commonwealth Edison in Ameren, Illinois. Based on that background, I evaluated two primary categories of concern. One was the effect on, or the potential effect on reliability electric service in the surrounding area before and after the deployment of the asset. And then any potential cost allocations for building out the power system to serve this this asset. We'll start with the reliability first.

The structure and and design as has been presented is to deliver electricity from high voltage transmission lines that are adjacent to the property, utilizing a dedicated switchyard and then dedicated substations. Based on this, the electric system, the distribution system that stands between the transmission lines and the data center electric use is effectively isolated from the ComEd system. Meaning that the electrons will flow from transmission directly into the data center and would not be commingled with the electric service that provides support for the remainder of the residents in Joliet. This engineering design was presented and approved by Commonwealth Edison, which is required to maintain reliability of their system. It is their study and their design that certifies that this is a reliable arrangement that will not jeopardize service in the Greater Joliet region.

Another set of, or another layer as it relates to reliability is for power supply. Northern Illinois, the region served by Commonwealth Edison, is part of a regional grid called PJM. The regional grid connects over 1,400 separate generating stations across 13 states and the District Of Columbia. That network is managed so that power can be delivered across the network from the least cost generating resources or the most viable generating resources at any given time. PJM, along with ComEd, have evaluated this proposed deployment in this area at this location and have identified that its inclusion in their network as a large energy user would not deteriorate service provision throughout the network or in Northern Illinois.

Lastly, in terms of availability of capacity, as I mentioned, the PJM system connects 1,400 power plants throughout the 13 state region. Additionally, every new power generator that wants to connect to the PJM system must be studied and approved by PJM, just as every other large data center must go through the same process. Currently, there are over 300,000 megawatts of capacity that's proposed for connection to the PJM system. That is above and beyond what is in the system today. As a reminder, this is an 1,800 megawatt facility.

So sufficient capacity today in the evaluation of PJM. And then moving forward, there is the expectation that the majority of that capacity that is proposed for interconnection will interconnect and provide electric service to this and all other existing and future consumers in the PJM regions. Lastly, in terms of customer costs, we identified three areas of primary cost and then evaluated could those costs in any way be transferred or subsidized by other Comet customers. The first is the capital cost for the interconnection. The second is the ongoing electricity delivery cost.

And then thirdly is the energy supply for the facility. Speaking to the capital cost for interconnection, the capital cost for interconnection is governed by an agreement between the developer and Commonwealth Edison called a transmission security agreement, or a TSA. TSA is actually a federal document under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And it certifies that all costs associated with connecting this asset to the transmission system will be borne exclusively by this developer. There are substantial financial commitments that are made over the first ten years of the asset to ensure that all those costs are covered.

So there really is no way for that transmission cost to be hoisted or moved over to other ComEd consumers. Secondly, in terms of the ongoing electricity delivery cost, Delivery costs are governed by rates that are approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission under the authority of the Public Utility Act. Under the Public Utility Act, costs must be recovered from the cost causers. Based on that and because of that, the ComEd rate structure allocates specific costs to large energy users such as data centers. And those costs are separate and apart from the costs that are associated with providing service to residential, small commercial, and medium sized customers.

So by public act and then intervention and judgment by the Illinois Commerce Commission, the costs associated with continuing to deliver electricity to this facility will be borne by this facility, and this facility alone. Under electricity supply, also under the Public Utility Act and ICC regulation, every consumer in Illinois, a large consumer in Illinois, responsible for sourcing their own electricity under a bilateral contract with a retail energy supplier or by seeking pass through electricity supply from the wholesale market through ComEd. Again, those rates are separate and apart from whatever rates your residential and small commercial customers are paying. There is no pool purchase. There is no cross collateralization.

There is no mechanism for energy supply arrangements for this facility to in any way bleed over to residential and small commercial medium sized businesses in the ComEd service territory. So in terms of the findings, we identified that both Commonwealth Edison and PJM, the entities responsible for reliability in this state and in this region, have determined that the addition of this asset will not diminish reliability in the region. Secondly, in terms of cost, all the costs are gonna be formed directly by the developer and that is certified through the TSA, state tariff, and then also the Public Utility Act which requires this entity to secure its own electricity supply and post its own credit. And then lastly, and this is just an observation in terms of other data center development that we see not only in in Upstate Illinois, Downstate Illinois, and other states, is that if this asset is not built here, there will be another similar asset or series of assets that will be built elsewhere. The data center industry, as was noted, is interested in locating where there is available capacity.

Anywhere within PJM where capacity can be delivered will likely attract development. I think that the the question that you may wanna just consider is if this asset is developed here, do you gain and garner any advantages as opposed to having this development occur elsewhere? So appreciate your time. And we're gonna turn this over to the experts on Warner.

Good evening. My name is Todd Sworniak. I'm a mechanical technical manager with Cisco Hennessy Group. We're a consulting engineering firm that has helped Hillwood Powerhouse select likely mechanical systems to cool these buildings and also estimate water usage for those systems and the site overall. Couple people have already mentioned what we are proposing is a closed loop cooling system.

Cannot emphasize this enough. There is a lot of rightful concern of water consumption of data centers that is not made up. There are a lot of different ways to cool these buildings. It's a tremendous amount of cooling, and many of those methods can involve evaporating water to accomplish that cooling. As recently as two years ago when this project was first sort of concepted, many of those methods were still more popular than they have become already today, driven by a lot of things, not the least of which of which is just environmental awareness and concern of water use.

But, additionally, you know, as as server technology has evolved, liquid cooled servers are here. It's inevitable that many of those technologies that have been very predominant in the industry simply just don't work anymore. So put together a very simple diagram kind of showing the movement of heat and water within the system. We'll utilize chillers to cool the water. Those chillers will reject heat, essentially a simple radiator, rejecting heat to the air outside without any evaporation or requiring any water consumption. That chilled water will move in pipes, stay in the pipes through the building, and either go to air handling equipment to cool air for

air cooled

servers or through cooling distribution units, which will then distribute cooling fluid to liquid cooled servers. Again, once that water is in the pipe, it stays in the pipe. It is literally the blood of the system. If there is a leak, the system bleeds out. So great care and expenses taken to design the system so that it'd be maintained with minimal disruption.

There is no substantial periodic drain and replenish of the system. Generally speaking, once the fluid is in, it's good for, you know, twenty plus years, you know, the life expectancy of the facility and the equipment. You know, we will utilize high efficiency compressors in the cooling equipment, sort of best in kind as far as energy efficiency goes for heat rejection equipment outdoors. We will also, as a matter of practice, target high efficiency, low noise fans that are variable speed for that heat rejection to minimize noise outside from any of the cooling equipment as well. So our water usage really is not governed at all by the mechanical systems.

Questions were raised at you know, for all these projects, right, where does the water come from to fill the system? The systems will be filled off the city supply. That is the intent. As was stated in the staff letter, the rate and quantity of that flush and fill activity will be coordinated with the water utility so that it's not done during peak hours and not done at such a rate that it will be disruptive. For context, we expect each building based on experience of buildings this size not to contain more than a 100,000 gallons of water in the system in total.

That will likely be filled in phases. But for context, one Olympic swimming pool is about 660,000 gallons. So, you know, over the course of a year, we will use less water than that to fill six buildings on one of these four plots compared to, you know, topping off a pool once a spring, right, for for a public use. Also stated, you know, just comparing us to single family homes, we be using substantially less water than a residential use case. Most of our water is domestic, you know, toilets, hopefully, sinks for handwashing associated with using those toilets, irrigation just for the well manicured plots in the site plan around the buildings within a fence line.

As stated, everything outside of that is intended to be more natural vegetation that does not require irrigation. There will be some humidification in the winter and some maintenance activities, cleaning, etcetera. But, generally, you know, we we try to show some some numbers here at, you know, our initial pass of this in 2024. We the systems we were contemplating at the time would have used roughly 5,000,000 gallons per day at peak. You know, whittle that down.

Right? The site was planned for roughly one and a quarter million gallons per day for residential. Backed off to light industrial. It was still planned for roughly 264,000 gallons per day, and what we're proposing is significantly less than that at a 150,000 gallons per day, you know, averaged over the year. So between, you know, managing the flush and fill activities with the city water utility and the equipment types being, you know, selected for the site, we we really don't see this as being impactful to the water supply, which we know is sensitive in the city of Joliet.

We're doing everything we can to, you know, limit that to something less than a residential use. So with that, I think it's sound up next.

Good evening. I am Joe Veresco from Ascendec. I've been hired to help look at the sound concerns with the site. To start off, there are limits that are required to be met. They're outlined in the Illinois Pollution Control Board. And, basically, they're based on classification of of property, class a being generally residential, class b being generally commercial, class c being generally industrial or agricultural. This site would be a site c. Most of the sites around the property would also be class c. So here we have generally identified areas that we think would be class a versus the class c property. So you can see it's mostly class c.

The pollution control board provides limits for class c to class a limits, and they are for daytime and nighttime. So for a little bit of context, this slide shows a little bit of the overall sound levels, sort of common sound levels, and where those sight limits would would end up. For nighttime, we're about 50 decibels d b a, a weighted specifically, and daytime is in the 60 range. So we're we're limited by those numbers regardless of what happens. Happens.

And speaking to, you know, the the the staff report, site sound level generation starts with the equipment, and so we we start selecting equipment to be, you know, on the quieter side. We, you know, just talked about the the types of noise control that goes into equipment selections. Specifically, if we're talking about chillers, we would select quieter chillers. So that when as we move forward, those selections would be balanced with what those requirements are. If you don't meet those requirements in the design phase, then there are processes for reducing those sounds.

That would be barriers, burns, things like that. So the cooling equipment, you know, that could run daytime or nighttime. So those are automatically limited to nighttime levels. So during the daytime, these things are still gonna be running at the quieter nighttime limits. For generator operations, they're only tested periodically. They limit those testing during the day, so those have a little bit of a higher limit that could be to the daytime limits. And, again, if if there are any issues with them not meeting those limits, there are there are noise control options that can be implemented at the site. And I think, honestly, that's about the extent of it. I think we have traffic up close.

Good afternoon. My name is Rory Fansler Split with Kimley Horn. Kimley Horn and Associates was retained by the development team to conduct a traffic impact study. That study was prepared pursuant to city, Will County and IDOT standards. The purpose of the traffic impact study is to evaluate existing traffic conditions at key intersections in the site vicinity and then project future conditions both with and without the development.

The delta of that is a measure of impact and where impacts are identified, the developer is responsible to mitigate any impacts. For purposes of evaluating existing conditions, traffic counts were conducted at key intersections facilitating access to the site on a typical weekday, again consistent with industry standards. Per Will County standards, accounts were conducted from six to 9AM and three to 6PM to capture the peak periods on the area roadway network. And then for purposes of reviewing future traffic conditions, we did project what would happen on the roadway network if this development did not occur. And that includes background kind of ambient traffic growth of changes over time as well as other developments in the area.

So using available data both for several developments happening to the west of this, that traffic was captured in the future projections. And then for purposes of evaluating the trips estimated for this site, again consistent with industry standards, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, ITE Trip Generation Manual was referenced. That is a dataset that collects trip data from existing data centers. It was recently updated so it is a more robust data set and that again was used to estimate site generated traffic. This slide provides a summary generated traffic and then compares that to alternative development concepts.

In this case, warehouse or single family was referenced. The warehouse is assuming a similar square footage as what's proposed today And then single family is just based on a low density calculation. The graph shows the difference. This type of use is a relatively low trip generator. It is more similar to a small office use than a warehouse like you see on the 53 Corridor today.

Also important to note, this is not a truck trip generator. When it's operational, this is employee traffic. So this is employees going to and from work. Now will there be deliveries, so UPS, FedEx, yes. It's just like an office.

These types as was noted earlier, there's an office component in these buildings. So there are trucks, but they're very limited to what you see at any office, UPS, FedEx, that type of there is no transfer of goods to and from this property. Again, it is very different than what you currently see for the warehouses up and down 53 Corridor. The other important distinction that this graph highlights is the uses that were identified for comparison are peaking, meaning generating the highest volume of traffic at the same time as the roadway network. Therefore, they're more impactful.

The data center has a lower peak during the period of time when the roadway network is highest and therefore it's not as impactful. And I think as was mentioned by staff, you know, this is not expected to materially impact the area roadway network. A number of transportation improvements were identified including vacation of Bernard Road, extension of Millsdale Road all the way to the east to connect to Ridge Road. And then that extension would be constructed to city standards as well as Rowell Road would be improved to city standards. The traffic impact study also takes into consideration two improvements labeled here as four and five that are planned by others in the immediate site vicinity.

That includes I dot improvements at the intersection of 53 and Schweitzer, namely turn lane improvements on the south leg of that intersection. And then the traffic study also does contemplate the proposed cul de sac of Millsdale Road that is associated with the development activity that's happening to the west. That would terminate Millsdale Road immediately east of 3rd Coast Parkway and limit that traffic to residential only. So that would drastically change traffic operations at the intersection of 53 and Millsdale in the future. That would be again the west segment would be limited to residential traffic only.

The east segment would facilitate traffic to the existing or facilitate access to the existing industrial development on the Southeast Corner as well as the proposed data center development. Construction traffic analysis, so the traffic impact study that has been submitted to the city for review evaluates operational conditions. Again, not expected to materially impact the roadway network under operational conditions for build out. Construction traffic is different and will be evaluated. At such time that the construction phasing plan is further refined and identified, a construction traffic analysis will be completed and submitted to the city.

We'll work with city staff on the scope of that analysis. It will evaluate site access at different phases of construction. It will evaluate truck haul routes. It will evaluate different workforce levels at various phases of construction activity and where impacts are identified to the roadway network. The developer will be required to mitigate those impacts whether it's through turn lanes, temporary signals. There's a number of different improvements that we see with these types of developments and all of that would be subject to city review. And with that, I will turn it over to economic impact.

Hello. My name is David Loomis, and I was I am professor of economics at Illinois State University, retired three years ago, and am president of strategic economic research, my consulting firm that was retained to do the study of the economic impacts of this project. We've done over 800 such projects in the majority of those being right here in Illinois. There's really two economic impacts that I wanna focus on. The first being the property tax revenue, and the second being the the jobs and the jobs impacts.

So in terms of methodology, we look at Illinois property tax law assessment ratio. We assumed a 3% straight line depreciation. In all of these things, we took a very conservative approach to those assumptions and what would happen over a thirty year period. We assumed, for example, that the tax rates would remain constant over the life of of the project and similar type assumptions. This

is

just a pie chart of the total property tax revenue. We use this assuming that the annexation agreement is signed. So you see those numbers there for the city, city park, city fire, library and so forth. But obviously the biggest tax beneficiary in the state of Illinois is the schools. And so you see the big pie chart there.

This is the total in the report. We go through year by year estimates of what that's going to be. So as you have phased development, there's a ramp up of the property taxes on those early years as buildings get constructed. And then there's the three percent depreciation. So there's a slight decline on a year by year basis.

The other economic impact is jobs, and it was mentioned in the staff report that these are going to be union jobs and high paying jobs. In addition, we look at three impacts as economists. Do you have the direct jobs, which is those jobs that are working on construction on-site? Those are the obvious jobs. Those are the ones that everybody looks to and can count.

You can count the noses of people on a construction site. But the full economic impact is much broader than that. In addition to those direct jobs, you have indirect jobs, meaning those supply chain jobs, the money that is spent in with vendors in the local area. And so we take care to look at what industries and what type of purchases could be done in the local area that would improve. So you see that second impact there on the right hand side, the equipment production and supply things that every household does, buys groceries, goes to restaurants, entertainment, and the like.

So really, the impact is the combination combination of of all all three three of those impacts. And on the bottom chart, you see we we start with the capital expenditures, initial CapEx of capital expenditures, and those ongoing operations expenditures. And really, we separate those out into local expenditures. So we say how much of those expenditures will be spent right here in Will County. Secondly,

how much

of those expenditures are going to be purchased elsewhere in the state of Illinois. And then the third is nonregion expenditures, which means they're purchased, it's equipment, and such that's purchased state of Illinois. When you look at these, you see the the stacked bar chart. The the bottom one is the direct jobs. The indirect jobs is those supply chain jobs, and the induced jobs are those ordinary household purchases.

And that's how we get to the very large numbers that you see there in terms of jobs impact. I will say as well, when we talk about a job during construction, that is one job lasting for one year. And this is going to be a phased approach over time. The jobs during operations are what people refer to as permanent jobs. These are jobs that last the life of the data center.

And those are smaller, but still quite considerable and impactful. The other thing that was mentioned was that these are good paying jobs. So we're looking not just at people having a job, but these are well paying jobs in large numbers there. But the average wage per job is sizable, especially for the direct and indirect ones. And you can see the induced bars are smaller.

Those tend to be, as oftentimes, our retail jobs. And retail jobs are not as high paying as the construction jobs and those supply chain jobs. So keep that in mind. And then finally, we have economic output. Economic output is a measure like a gross domestic product that's looking at the value of goods and services in the economy.

And that gives you the full economic impact, property taxes and those monies that are spent in the local community. So really, in conclusion, this project will generate a large number of construction jobs right here in Will County, a sizable number then from the surrounding community and for the state. Significant tax revenue to the school district as well as tax revenue for the city of Joliet.

Thank you.

Mister chairman, first, I'd note that I I'd ask you to swear our witnesses in. I know you swore me in. I don't take offense that you only swear the lawyer in, but I would like I would like to have our other witnesses sworn in and have them each affirm that the testimony they gave was truthful and under oath. If if everyone who testified would please take that oath from the chairman.

They saw me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Alright. Thank you.

Do each of you affirm that the testimony that you gave was you considered it to be under oath and truthful?

Alright. Thank you. Well, thank you.

You betcha. Thank

you. I don't know if Don has any more

closing words, but we hope this presentation has been helpful. We think this is a tremendous project for the city of Joliet. It meets your comprehensive plan. It seems to be a great location with proper landscaping, lighting, and sound controls. It can be compatible with the neighbors that are around there. It brings you a great deal of revenue to both the city and other taxing districts. And it does that without the truck traffic that I know the city has had enough of. So we we hope that you'll be able to to recommend this matter to the city council in conformance with your staff report. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Just one more comment. I we also wanna thank city staff. As many of you are aware, this project was planned to come to you as early as September. And in concert with discussion with the entire staff, the staff felt like we needed to step back and really gather much more detailed information about the project, the construction, the impact it was gonna have. And and so I would commend city staff for the comments that at that they've made as well as the demands on us as a developer to make sure that we provided information that was correct and worthwhile and, as Dave said, hopefully allowed you to reach a positive conclusion. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any questions or comments from the commission?

Yep. I do. A question about wells. Do you plan to dig any wells on your property?

Is your microphone on? It's kinda high.

Do you plan to dig any more well or any wells on your property, including dewatering wells?

No. The intention is to use city your name before. Sorry. Todd Swornyak, Siska Hennessy Group. No. The intention is to use the municipal water utility for for all water needs. Okay.

Currently, you're gonna annex under I one zoning as Joliet doesn't have any type of specific zoning classification for data centers. Will Joliet be creating a zoning classification for data centers?

Right now, it's proposed under Todd Lindsey, inter incorporation. Right now, it's gonna be under the I one, which is definitional. Mhmm. I can't speak to what's going to happen, but right now, the the PUD is under I one, as currently written in the zoning code.

Any other questions? Go ahead.

Mister chairman, couple of questions. I had a chance to meet with the staff yesterday and they verified lot of what the developers mentioned today. Is there a a data center up and running that you've completed that is up and running now currently in the Midwest or or relatively close to this area? And where where would that be?

Have been completed within this region.

Okay. But

you from

our company.

There are several that

are operating from other companies.

Okay. And they well, my question would be then that once they're up and running, I noticed we addressed the water issue. We addressed the electricity. Should be no spike in electricity. You're gonna be getting water from the city of Joliet.

So no wells will be driven be drilled. And we have enough capacity, I think, from the when we go on Lake Michigan water to to handle the the amount of water that would be discharged out out to your place. Yeah. Typically, in your other other areas where you do have a plant, is there like, it's compatible with the neighbors out there? And if so, what concerns do they have in other areas?

It's usually the same concerns that have been addressed here. It's usually sound, visibility, light, appearance from the railway systems. That that pretty much characterizes and usage of power. Usage of power is always a concern. And

we have we have

I don't like, because we have 40 buildings underway, another 100 next year. We have probably two dozen projects underway right now. All very similar to the way this process is done.

And then one of one of the questions we had with staff yesterday was twenty, twenty five, thirty years from now, you know, there's something could come something along with technology that we don't even conceive or I can comprehend right now. And that's the case, the existing buildings that you're proposing could be converted into other uses. Is that correct?

Yeah. Typically, if it it went to a different use, you could get rid of the generator yards to increase the parking for other uses. You could buy the buildings up for other functions. They would probably still all be the large warehouse type facilities. But since the leases on these buildings are fifteen to twenty years, and each building is probably valued at well over a billion dollars, once you build these things, they're almost impossible to get rid of.

Right. Right. Right. Alright.

Right. Yeah. That's not why I

was getting that, but they're good.

They've been it could be repurposed.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying that the well, some concerns are that in five years, there's won't be data center. That is not true. I mean, like, there's so much investment in

this property and

these buildings.

Thank you. Thank you.

Can you share with us right now who's going to be the end user to these buildings?

Again, Pat Plon, Power Data Centers. We've had several conversations with the top five hyperscaler companies, you know, the Googles, the Amazons, the Metas, the Oracles. They will engage in serious conversations until Sony is in place. So that's the way this energy works.

I have a question for you. The timeline on building this out? You know, to start, because we're talking about water getting from Lake Michigan, but we're not going to get that till, you know, 2030. So Yeah. What will be the water usage, you know, before then?

Yeah. The first building, if everything goes to plan, should be late twenty eight before the first building is up.

So then you'll be using water from the aqua fire?

Wherever the city gets their potable water. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Mister

Chairman, I have one question.

How often do they update if it gets built, how often do you update the with technology changing everything else and speed, capacity, etcetera, how often do you on updating the interior of the building?

It's up to the tenant and their use of the building, their technologies. Generally, from industry of every five years or so, they do a technology change, which is basically the equipment inside the data house. Thank you.

I won't I won't do.

Go ahead.

There were some concern about air quality issues. Could you address that if you think there are any?

Yeah. Mean, US EPA sets standards for quality in every part of the country. When the tenant applies for their air permits for the emergency generators, they have to comply with the current air standards that affect this property. They issue generally one permit for the project. So we're this project will have a capped emissions level that they have to comply with.

The tenant will select equipment that complies with the air quality standards and Once the permit's obtained every single year, they have to submit detailed analysis on every single generator on one time amount of diesel they use and have to prove yearly that they're under their permit. So air permits are highly regulated, highly controlled, monitored.

Thank you.

Mister chair, I do have a question. Considering the project of this magnitude, what types of community benefits agreements do you all typically engage in that could potentially decrease the impact of the communities that are surrounding? We see the tax benefits for schools and things of that sort, but what do you all typically do with this scale of development in terms of community benefits agreements?

Yeah. As far as the developer, we we start engaging with local educational institutions because this type of facility will create an opportunity for specialized workforce for this type of place. The tenant, you can go on all the hyperscalers websites. They have very detailed analysis of what they do for communities because they will be the tenant in the building. We will they do a significant amount of benefit.

The commissioner as well, we're in discussions with staff about a very meaningful community benefits agreement, agreement, which is a broad ranging one that I think will have a very meaningful impact on the community as well.

Questions? Hearing none, now we're gonna open up for public comments. Or read off the first

name. First is Tom White.

Please always swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, not to but the truth.

I do.

State your name again.

My name is Tom White with Three Rivers Destruction Lights. I'm the executive director office at 233 Springfield Avenue in Joliet. I'm gonna keep it real brief. That was a heck of a presentation. Now I gotta stretch my legs and walk around now. But I'm representing union contractors and union trades. I was gonna have our union guys stand up with so many folks standing in the back. That'd be kinda disingenuous because a bunch of them are holding signs that they don't like what we're here for. But we are here to to urge you to vote yes on this. You'll see a lot of gentlemen in the room with us. Some are business agents. Some of them are union members. Some of them are here just to hear what's going on. Some of are here because they're hoping to get a job at some point. So, you know, it's gonna be a good project for us.

We've got an agreement with Hillwood. It'll be a union project.

We're gonna

put hopefully, put a lot of local folks to work out here. So thanks for your for your what you do for the city because I know it's it's gonna get a lot rougher from here on.

Next is Lydia Simraya.

Do you tell me a story that tells truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name again.

My name is Lydia Simraya, and I'm here on behalf of the Indiana Illinois Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting to speak in favor of the Joliet Technology Center. And as we've just heard here this evening, this project is going to generate 7,000 plus skilled construction jobs that's gonna bring an immense opportunity for your local workers, apprentices, and not just that, but to help boost local businesses and the overall regional economy. And not just that, but also the immense property tax revenue that you're gonna be getting millions and millions of dollars that can be used to help improve public safety, public infrastructure, local schools, and much more without raising the residential tax

in the community. So with that

being said, we highly encourage you to vote yes or tonight. Thank you.

Next is Doc Gregory.

This only swear or tell the truth, the whole truth, ain't nothing but the truth? I do. State your name, please.

My name is Doc Gregory. 2082 Oakleaf Street in Joliet. I am president of Will Grundy Building Trades. I'm also a business rep for Pipefitters five ninety seven who does a lot of work in data centers. So I wanted to address a couple things.

First off, the Hillwood Group, their team, it's a great presentation of all concerns for what from electric to water to the plan. I I'll just say this. We have had some me and Tom, the previous speaker, we have had some data centers that have come to Will County, not in Joliet, that we've lost. And we lost some of the neighboring states. One in particular, Pleasant Prairie in in Wisconsin.

And my own members, I had about 300 have to leave the state to go work. They got a job. It was two and a half hours away, but there are people that live here in Joliet and Will County surrounding communities, and they got compensated. They got paid. But the ones who really only made the money were the divorce lawyers in this downtown area.

So we need a project like this in our backyard. Commissioner Martin, I wanted when you asked about the community stuff, we have been working, myself and another business rep, Pat Young, with Hire three sixty for underprivileged individuals that get taught and get pre apprenticeship introductions into our apprenticeship programs. And they did the first two classes in Will County at the courthouse right here in Joliet. And I actually got Anna Marie, her last name, like, I am not gonna say it because I'll slaughter it. But I got her to call up Cline, my friend from Joliet Junior College.

So a lot of kids, and I call them kids, she yells at me, young adults, men and women are gonna go to Joliet Junior College to get pre apprenticeship training so we can get them jobs, hopefully, at the new data center down the down the road. I I don't know. I have a whole list of things I can say. It's kinda ironic. About thirty years ago, my father, who's passed away, obviously, I'm I'm not as old as him, but thirty years ago, we sat here in the same chambers annexing in the drag strip, the NHRA Drag Strip.

I think some of the people around here were they're here for that annexation, and we're all a little older. I get people don't like data centers for whatever reason. I mean, we all got iPhones, and maybe we maybe we could have a the city could put out a garbage can. We'll throw our iPhones out when we leave because that end up that end up taking a lot of stuff away. But my point being is our jobs are very important to our men and women.

8,600 jobs. There hasn't been a job like this since they built Braidwood Nuclear Station in the early eighties, and I compare it to that. It's a I went out to the site the other day, and for the people, I I had hoped you'd take a ride out there because the site there's two homes there, and they're both the sellers' homes. Okay? To the Northeast, and it's not the city of Joliet, the county, you have a solar farm there. So this my point being is it's land. It's not gonna sit vacant. Okay? You talk about noise. You wanna talk about noise.

Let's go out there in May. Let's listen to the drive strip. Now you're talking noise. Okay? Or maybe fourth July for the NASCAR race, let's talk about noise. I remember Stepha's family when they took it. So my point is we have, you know, a lot of guys and girls that need jobs. Please vote yes for Joliet Technology Center. Thank you.

Next is David Pump.

You're telling me I swear it's the whole truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Yes.

State your name, please.

I know we're not supposed to applaud, but that was a wonderful presentation, Mike. All these people I understand.

Settle down. We'll get your chance

to I'm

voting against data centers worldwide. Do you know there's 12,000

and by

the way, they're not data centers. They're mega data centers, 12,000 mega data centers worldwide. 45% are here in The United States. What? Here's the question you have to ask yourselves.

And I mean answer to yourselves. What is all that capacity for? How soon we forget what Edward Snowden exposed and warned every American about. You mentioned the phones. Yeah.

Do you know every single phone call, every email, everything you do online, it's captured? And yeah, it's in the cloud. It's in the cloud just waiting in case somebody needs to use that against you. Now, if you don't believe what Edward Snowden exposed, Why can't he come home? Think about it. The problem and look, the nuts and bolts of this thing, yeah, it's terrific. You want to talk about

jobs?

Jobs? Yeah. How many jobs over the next thirty years is artificial intelligence going to take away? And I'll tell you this. The customers of these mega data centers, they don't even know exactly who they are. And I thought, these are built on speculation. And what did we hear? They don't have anybody signed up yet till the building's built? I don't get that. I'll tell you who would be a terrific customer for all the data centers.

The NSA, they already are. So let me just say this. One quote I'll leave you with, my favorite quote in the history of civilization. And it's by Noam Chomsky. He said, the general population doesn't know what's happening. And it doesn't even know that it doesn't know. Yeah, think about that. All

right. Keep it down, or you're to have to leave.

People just understand where I'm coming from. And I would ask you to ask yourself that question. You live this stuff. What is all that data for? What's coming that it's accelerating by leaps and bounds? Just ask yourself. Thank you.

Next is Andrea Baumhardt.

You saw me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help me again.

State your name, please.

Andrea Baumhardt. First, I wanna say, tradespeople, I 100% support your right to work. But I hope we can leave with a mutual respect that both of our concern are important. Our living conditions matter, and they are your living conditions too. Regarding the open house, I went to the Joliet Technology Center open house, and I was able to meet with the consultants. I spent a considerable amount of time at the air quality table. K. I talked to the consultant there. I indicated to him where I lived on the map and the proximity of my home and neighborhood to the proposed development. I asked him to be honest with me, what do I have to worry about?

And after a short conversation, he said, you need to push for a tier four generator system, not a tier two. And asked for them to be placed on the north side of the campus furthest from your property lines. And my heart sank, and I felt sick because I didn't yet know the difference between tier four and tier two. And I have a conscience. I could not ask for alternative placements when I know people live on that other side.

Okay? And I feel that Joliet was not being transparent about that at all. The Chicago area and specifically Will County is classified as a serious non attainment area for meeting national ambient air quality standards. So how does this proposed data center project, the largest in the state of Illinois, meet those regulation guidelines? And how does it fit into your Joliet comprehensive plan where your polled residents cited health and environment as serious concerns?

Will you use tier four or tier two generators? How many generators will there be? It's an estimated that an 1,800 megawatt facility will need about 600 generators. Generators. It wasn't until today that we were even told that they would be run one hour per month. Not even till today. We couldn't be told. Will they also be run-in times of grid stress during peak summer months? Okay? Will that happen?

Because when it's combined with truck exhaust, it becomes even more toxic, especially to little children. Okay? That type of particular matter affects growing children and babies. Did you all communicate properly with your Spanish speaking constituents to ask them if they prefer prefer tier four or tier two so that they understand the difference and why that matters? Did you ask?

Since you wanna be a good neighbor, did you ask neighboring communities of Elwood and Manhattan who will be grossly affected by these selections? And it doesn't matter that you state you will follow the Illinois state emission standards because tier four and tier two both have different emission standards. Even if you support this, I think you guys need to be talking to your constituents about tier four and tier two. And you need to know what they think about it. Transparency isn't optional for the rich and powerful when it impacts our quality of life.

The public has a right to know about the water source, the power purchase agreement, the energy bills will incur, the impact on our wetlands and watershed. We have a right to review that soil study. You need to post it online, and no more NDAs. We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God. That water study that this gentleman just came up here to see that they're gonna flush the water system every twenty years, the tribune just quoted Schoenberg yesterday saying it's going to be every ten to fifteen years. So which is it? It's time to be fully transparent to the public. Thank you. Next

is Abby Bowmer.

Mister chairman, if you could remind

everyone

not

to keep their applause. Yep.

It's a public meeting correct, but you have to keep your applause on so people can talk. If you have something, you say you'll get a time chance to do it even if you're not signed up. So please be respectful. Do you tell me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name, please.

I'm Abby Palmer. I'm one of the residents of Elwood, also mentioned. Really worried about my town. I would like start to out by saying thank you guys for asking questions and not just being like, oh, okay. Cool. Because I'm not gonna lie, that was a really long presentation. I know we all felt it. I know there's a lot of information that kinda goes in one ear and out the other, so I appreciate the questions and the follow-up. I think that's really responsible and nice of you guys. I came in here with this whole speech I was gonna give, and

I realized a lot of

my peers will be mentioning points of it. So instead, I just really wanted to talk about people. I'm a person. You guys are all people. I want you to think very briefly about all the lives that touch your life that you like you are part of. Think of your homes, your friends homes, things that are important to you, to your friends, to your family. And then imagine a group of people who don't know you or your story proposing something that can be detrimental not only to you, but to your parents, your grandparents, your friends, your loved ones. It's really disheartening and scary. My parents worked their whole lives. I have a lot of respect for blue collar.

My dad worked until both his knees gave out, till his shoulders gave out, and he just freshly retired. I wanna see him live in the house he worked his whole life for. I think that's fair. My grandparents moved down here with nothing, went through multiple rounds of financial stress. They are my biggest, like, idol. They worked so hard for everything. They never stopped working. They were there in their eighties and still running a storage business and farming because they know what hard work means, and I don't wanna see their home disappear. I don't want them to have to pay a ton of money. I don't want my parents to have to pay money when they're retired and they have a fixed income now.

Me and my boyfriend, we're looking at buying a house. Joliet's been completely crossed off because I have concerns for the aqueduct. And then we're pulling in from Lake Michigan, and then we're putting more strain with the data centers. I'm somebody who lives in the center of a really nice area that's now surrounded by horrible warehouses, and I know the effect that the noise does onto us. It's not nice.

It's horrible to just wanna step outside and have a moment's peace and you just hear and a bunch of white noise that you don't wanna hear. It's not nice. And I just ask that you guys think about us, that each person that has come up to speak against this has concerns about health and safety and their families and the next generation. And a lot of the pro conversation is about money. And I know money makes the world go round, but I really believe that empathy is important, that people are important, that life is important more so than money. Because, you know, the world ends tomorrow. You can't eat your money. You can't drink your money. We're screwed if we keep abusing things like water, if we keep hurting our neighbors. Who's gonna wanna live in Elwood and Joliet?

I don't want to anymore, and I love Joliet. I've come here for schools. I have so many friends here. I spend most of my time in Joliet when I am not home. And it's anymore a place that I don't wanna be because we're selling out to to hurt our communities, hurt our neighbors. I have so many friends here who have great points and concerns because we all love Joliet, and we wanna see things be good for the residents of Juliet. So I just ask you guys to really think about us as people and not just dollar signs, to really think about us before you make your decision. Thank you so much. Have a great night.

Next is Rita Renwick.

This always work. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I do.

State tuned in, please.

Rita Renwick. I didn't really come here with very many prepared comments. But and a lot of this is I won't say new new. I did go to the open house, but I really felt I left there feeling like there were a lot of unanswered questions. I am glad that some

of you

asked questions. I'm sitting there thinking, is this the first time that all of you are getting this detail? I mean, I'm not sure. But obviously, it would be a lot of detail to get and then try to come up with questions. Some of them that I have is, at one point when staff talked, they talked about if flushing is done, the public our system would be notified.

And yet we're talking about flushing the system ten, fifteen years. I've heard that caustic metals and things build up in this closed loop system and that that shouldn't be put into a city's system to take care of. I talked to somebody and they said, oh, well, if it has to be trucked out, that would happen. But it sounds like it would happen more often than ten to twenty years. I mean, I'm really curious about that.

Also, we have no idea who's coming in here. And sometimes we're made to feel guilty that we use our phones and our data. But from what I've read, it's AI that uses tons of energy and bitcoin. And how do we know what people are going to use this for? The article in the paper about the technology center securing and paying for its own electricity, that just means they're going to buy it somewhere.

But 1,800 megawatts is a lot of electricity, is as much as Dresden produces. And that powers 2,000,000 homes. So to say that we're going to get it now, the two places that I did catch, Powhatan and Elwood Elwood uses gas. It's gas fired. Powhatan is coal fired.

So that is not helping our environment for sure. Powerington produces 1,700 megawatts, Elwood 1,300. But to think that we're going to use 1,800 megawatts and we're not going to end up paying for it, I don't think this development is going to produce a new power plant. And that's what it's going to take, more electricity electrical production. Some equipment.

Mean, ComEd just delivers. So they're going to build everything's going to be set up. And then I also heard that was going to be turned over to ComEd, which is part of who we get our supply from. So I mean, just a lot of questions. If we were doing this, I would bet you in two years, the size of it would be smaller.

Everything would be more efficient. Everything would be done in a cleaner way. Because that's how in fact, I've heard that AI actually was helpful in reducing water usage, that it figured out what to do. So here we are building something that even the state is working on new ordinances, that these places have to produce their own energy, their own clean energy at the site. Somehow they have to do it, not us.

We can say that it won't affect us. But just look at something happens halfway across the world, and our gas prices immediately go up. So to say that our electrical prices aren't going to go up, I have a hard time believing. So I think it's just there are so many questions. And I would think you have more questions, too. And so I think it's just not the right time to go ahead with this. Those are my comments. Thank you.

Next is Frederick Dahlmeier.

You tell me a story to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do. My name is Frederick Dahlmeier. I live at 1703 Heritage Point Court, Plainfield, Illinois. I'm here to speak against the Davis Center. First of all, I want to thank staff for their thorough work.

We heard all sorts of information about how it would affect the grid, how it would affect traffic, how it would affect water, etcetera, etcetera. And then we heard from the presentation, which was pretty much the same thing. It was redundant. And I want to kind of speak on the redundancy of this. The data centers and the servers that are currently being employed are currently at between 12 to 18% capacity.

We're not even using what we have to our full potential out there. So what is the necessity of these data centers? What is the necessity of building this? And if we are looking at the potential burden with what we've got now, what if demand increases? How will that affect when we get to 50% capacity, When we get to 60% capacity?

I don't have that answer. I'm just some guy. And that wasn't addressed at all during any of the presentations. We heard about the impact on the economy, impact on the water and the sound, but we didn't even look at where we are right now. And we didn't even address the demand. Frankly, if you look behind me, the demand isn't there. So why do we want to build this? Thank you.

Next is Geanne Howell.

This amaze works. The whole truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Yes. I'm Jeannie.

State your name, please.

I'm Jeannie Howell. And I've been in a home next month for three years that's built right in the center of where all of this data center is about to happen, which is Cedar Creek. I'd like to know if Doctor Horton knew about this project. And if so, when did they learn about it? Because I never heard anything about it.

I just retired. I'm looking for peace and quiet. I don't wanna hear the noise. I don't wanna be affected by some of what could happen as a result of the data center. I just want peace. And I think a lot of us want peace and quiet. And so that's my reason for being here because I am supposed to be in Zumba, and I never miss Zumba. But I'm here. Thank you very much. So my vote is no.

Next is Tim Broderick.

Miss Almighty swear, tell truth, the whole truth ain't nothing but the truth? I do. State your name again, please.

Timothy Broderick.

Good afternoon, chair, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Timothy Broderick, a Joliet resident and local taxpayer. I'm here tonight as a private citizen to express my strong support for the proposed Joliet Technology Center. Joliet has a generational opportunity in front of it to attract a major long term investment that can create jobs, strengthen the tax base, and signal that Joliet is open for responsible growth.

Projects like this are how communities expand opportunity when they're planned well and held to clear standards. I support moving this project forward for three reasons. First, economic impact. This proposal represents meaningful private investment with near term construction activity and long term operational employment that can bring steady local spending and added revenues to support city services. Second, good planning is achievable here.

A master plan campus style development can be designed to respect neighbors through strong buffering and setbacks, smart traffic circulation, responsible storm water management, appropriate lighting, and real noise mitigation. Third, this process ensures accountability. The Planning Commission's review is where Joliet can require measurable, enforceable commitments, not just intentions, on road improvements, utilities, water conditioning, and public safety. In short, I believe that Joliet should warmly welcome this opportunity with clear conditions that protect the community and deliver real benefits. I respectfully ask the Planning Commission advance the Joliet Technology Center and keep Joliet moving in a direction that is investment friendly, job creating, and responsibly managed.

Thank you.

Next is Isabel Gloria.

This one may swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. State your name, please.

My name is Isabelle Gloria, and I'm a lifelong resident of Joliet. And I'm here to say that I'm against the data center. One of the main things that I'm concerned about is the impact on our utilities. One of the gentlemen here mentioned that they're gonna follow the acts that Illinois has already passed so that they don't pass on the electric bills to us. But then why have our bills already gone up?

The guardrails that are in place right now in the state of Illinois and in the country are not actually enough to protect us from our utilities going up. I wrote something here about regulations. We're often told that regulations will protect us, but if exceeding limits only results in fines, those fines become a cost of doing business. Remember who we're dealing with here. These are mega rich people. They're not here doing charitable acts for us. They're not coming from Virginia. They're not coming from Texas because they love Joliet. I'm here because I love Joliet. And I don't want our utility bills to go up.

And so loopholes exist. Enforcement can be uneven. Regulations are lagging behind technology. So in terms of what's going on in the state, how many of you are familiar with the Power Act? How many are you familiar with the fact that our governor has a moratorium right now on building more data centers? They're wanting to implement more guardrails for data centers. And I want to speak about guardrails specifically because, again, we're not safe. They can promise us things, but things aren't going to actually go the way they're planned. We've all made plans before that change, even just planning a birthday party. Another thing that doesn't have guardrails besides protecting us from utility problems is AI itself.

If you guys follow the current events about what's going with AI, how many are you familiar with what happened with Anthropic and the Pentagon? Pentagon? What happened was that they they the government wanted to use AI to mass surveil all of us, American citizens, and they wanted to use AI so that they so so they could do autonomous killings. Kill people not based off of a person's decision that that person deserves to die, because AI thinks that they deserve to die. Do you guys think that's how AI should be used?

We don't have the regulations as a country. We don't have the regulations as a world. So why are we trying to make AI happen? We're basically giving our thumbs up to that kind of use because although Anthropic refused to do that, the next company will do it. So AI right now doesn't have regulations in terms of how it'll impact our utilities, and it doesn't have regulations in terms of how it's gonna be used ethically in our daily life in The United States and outside of The United States.

Another thing I wanna mention, sorry, forgot to mention earlier, in terms of our utilities, I work for Joliet Township government. I'm not speaking on behalf of Joliet Township government, I'm speaking out of my own personal opinion. But one of the things we do is help people with their utilities. And so last year alone, we spent $23,120 for people who couldn't afford their water bill. And we can't even help everyone that can't afford their water bill.

So are there guardrails in place that help the folks that all our water bills are gonna go up? What is gonna happen with them? In terms of the electric bill, we helped $11,687 for people who couldn't pay their electric bill. Now also the program LIHEAP, which again our federal government has been looking to do less with, to reduce the funding that that gets. So I really want you guys to think about the utilities of our local people, the people that live in Joliet Township, the people that are going to be in the surrounding areas that aren't in township. But please think about the guardrails. Is now really the time to allow this to happen? Can we wait until there's better regulations in place? Can we do that? Or are we just gonna go for the money?

Because at the end of the day, what it's gonna look like to most of us is that you guys sold out for the money. Is that worth lives? Is that worth people's ability to pay for their basic needs? Thank you.

Next is Serena Guzman.

You're telling me a story that tells the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name, please.

Serena Guzman. I'm here today to talk against the data center due to economic, environmental,

and health risks. I highly doubt a Texas

a company from Dallas, Texas, it has the best interest of the people of Joliet in mind. Just like I doubt planting a few flowers and a few trees will encourage wildlife to ignore the noise and air pollution and use these proposed areas as habitats and homes. Just sitting in here today, I've heard tactics of both manipulation and propaganda used by the spokespeople of this company to make this data center sound less threatening than it actually is. Some issues I have with the proposed solution are as follows. The payoff of closed loop water systems is increased electric use in the facility.

That will surely be a burden on the residents of Joliet through higher electric bills. Closed loop water systems are fairly new development with data centers, and there's actually little to no data that these systems are actually better at all overall. Current noise reduction efforts are being shown in real time not to work, and people who live in surrounding areas of currently functioning data centers already are directly affected as their cities now try to implement better protection for them, which can take up to many years to restructure and are not even guaranteed to work. Additionally, there are multiple studies showing increase in deterioration of health of communities which surround data centers. Higher instances of asthma and different cancers have been found, just

to name a few. It sounds like

all the issues that could arise,

and I firmly believe that

they will arise if the state of center is built, will take only more and more time to solve, leaving residents to bear the load of the noise pollution, utility bills, and health risks while the city scrambles to make things right. There is currently a repeating pattern of this happening across the country. If this area were to be developed at all, I would like to see things like a park put in place, a community recreational area, or even a community garden. Thank you.

Next is Lily Martinez.

It's always where to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So hold me on.

State your name, please.

My name is Lily Martinez. I'm a lifelong resident of the East Side Of Joliet. My father is a blue collar worker, he is living about seven minutes away from the proposed data center and thinking about, I believe due to his job, he is starting to have the respiratory problems and thinking of him living that close to the proposed data center would cause great harm. We know that data centers use millions of gallons of water per year. There's conversations that this one will use less water compared to other business centers, so let's explore that.

There's to my knowledge, there's different types of cooling technologies, and those that claim to be efficient either use excessive amounts of water or energy. Achieving both water and energy efficiency is impossible as existing systems cannot optimize both simultaneously. I heard that staff recommends capping the water usage at 150,000 gallons per day. That's still about equivalent more than 54,000,000 gallons per year. That is still a lot of water that we cannot afford to lose.

Not to mention, that's what they recommend, but I would like to know more about how they're going to enforce that. I've heard of closed loop systems being efficient in terms of water. But remember, in order to use less water, it means using more electricity. But closed loop systems still, again, use a lot of water. They require chemical treatment to prevent corrosion, scaling, and microbial growth, which over time, chemicals and minerals build up.

And in order to keep systems running, operators must discharge water through Blowjunk, which blowdown water contains biocides, corrosion inhibitors, and trace metals. At the scale of this large, almost about 800 acre data center, Blowdown will become a continuous wastewater stream. And since it's claiming to be water efficient, that means it will use a lot of electricity causing our utility bills to increase. So I urge you to vote no to this proposed data center.

Next is Barry McHugh.

Do you swell me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and not to bet the truth?

I do. Barry McHugh. Live in Joliet. The proposed data center in Joliet brings both potential problems and potential benefits. One problem is the water usage. You've been hearing about that. From reading your reports and listening to them, the potential problem can be mitigated. You've limited the debound. You've looked at the city to manage it. The water use is limited by contract, and according to the city analysis, is well within our means to meet.

If more is needed, if they gauge wrong on how much water they need, that's not our problem. That's their problem. They gotta figure out how to fix that because we have commitments. You were writing commitments in contractual language that they will have to live to. So they will be there.

The other problem that's out there is in the electric rates. Data center uses a whole lot of power and by doing that it requires PJM to provide the resources to provide that. That will increase the cost of wholesale power throughout the 13 state PGM territory. No matter where you put this data center, no matter where you put a load, PJM has to contract out to supply that and to supply the backup in case something goes down. And the wholesale power, which is where ComEd gets their pays for their money, goes up.

Whether you put it in Hammond, Indiana, whether you put it in Aurora, whether you put it downstate, the impact on the electric costs are virtually the same throughout the region. So that's not a consideration that we can deal with.

It's something we're going to have to live with.

And if they do put it in Hammond, Illinois, alongside the bears, then we will have to pay for that without getting any of the benefits. The jobs that will be developed and the workers that will be paid to build this comes into our community. The taxes not only go to the city, they go to the schools, they go to the park districts, and we get that benefit. If data centers and AI become worthless because there's a new technology, that's their money down the tubes.

We don't care.

So I recommend you do this. You bring the benefits to the people who live in Joliet. You bring this here for us rather than give somebody else the benefits and stick us with the same costs. Thank you very much.

Next is Patrick Young.

You tell me a swear or tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. State your name, please.

Patrick Young, business representative, operating engineers, Local one fifty. Local one fifty is in support of this project. First, thank you for giving me the option to speak. I concur with Tom, Doc, Lydia. I'm not gonna be redundant. Give you a bunch of stuff that's already been talked about here. Like I said, Local one fifty supports this project, and I hope you return a yes vote. Thank you.

Next is doctor Kip Klein.

Do you strongly swear to the whole truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. State your name.

Kip Klein, vice president at Lewis University. As someone who has worked in higher education for more than twenty years, much of that at Lewis University, I've spent my career thinking about how education prepares students for meaningful futures in their communities. The Joliet Technology Center represents more than a single development. It's the type of long term investment that helps position a community as a hub for technology, innovation, and economic growth. For institutions like Lewis University, the Joliet Technology Center will strengthen the connection between education and opportunity, helping ensure students can build meaningful careers right here in the area.

Investments of this scale help position Joliet as a place where innovative industries want to grow and invest. The project is expected to generate thousands of union construction jobs during development. That creates opportunities for students pursuing careers in the skilled trades, engineering, and construction management, all of which we offer degrees in at Lewis University. Once operational, the facility will support hundreds of permanent technical and operational jobs, many of which align with programs offered by local colleges and universities such as computer science, information technology, engineering, and other technical training programs connected to technology infrastructure. Developments like this can also create opportunities for partnerships between industry and higher education, including internships, workforce training programs, and pathways that help students move from the classroom into the workforce.

Long term tax revenue generated by the project will also support local schools and educational resources, strengthening the pipeline of talent across the region. Thank you for your time.

Next is Felix Ortiz.

You saw him swear or tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

God so, help me.

State your name, please.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Felix Ortiz. I'm a lifelong resident of Joliet. We I am here for a special commission meeting on a project that got tabled back in October because it wasn't ready at that time. It is now March and the core issues and questions still remain at large.

We are being asked to approve a massive development based on incomplete data and speculative promises. This rush proves that a developer's timeline is being prioritized over the long term health and safety of Joliet's families. This 800 acre project sits directly over a depleting aquifer. While the developer claims a 150,000 gallon per day cap, we know these facilities can consume millions of gallons when systems fail. Even closed loop systems require massive continuous makeup water to replace the inevitable evaporation that happens from these systems.

We are effectively handing a giant straw to a private entity during a regional water crisis. Furthermore, the energy demands is staggering. At 1,800 megawatts, this facility could cost could power hundreds of thousands of homes by equivalents. The 2026 data center power play study warns that we will be unable to meet basic energy demands by 2030 because data centers are projected to devour 72% of Illinois' power growth. We are literally voting to trade the reliability of our own home electricity for a developer's server farm.

Why is Joliet rushing to bypass looming state transparency laws like senate bill twenty one eighty one that will force data centers to be transparent on this development. These corporations are notorious for treating regulations as just mere suggestions. Once built, there is nothing to stop them from violating every environmental, water, and electric penalty on the books. Because to a multimillion dollar developer, a city fine or a state fine is just a tiny business fee for them to, you know, operate and make money here in the city. Hillwood is selling us hollow high risk guesses.

What happens when the artificial AI bubble inevitably bursts? If this developer fails to secure tenants, Joliet isn't left with a tech hub. We're left with 800 acres of permanent empty concrete warehouses as that kind PR guy from Hillwood just openly admitted earlier. Why should Joliet residents trade our natural resource to dirty billionaires who take all the profits while we take all of the risk? Why should Joliet homeowners watch as their property values go down and renters cost of living goes up?

We want jobs for our hardworking tradesmen and women, but it shouldn't come at the cost of all of our other working residents. Sustainable development requires certainty. If this city continues to prioritize corporate suits over its constituents, we will ensure that when it comes election time, every voting resident in Joliet knows exactly who stood in favor of this concrete monstrosity. That's a warning to the city council. We demand that the city of Joliet and the commission vote no on this proposal and find better alternative developments to keep our city functional for all of our working families and residents. Thank you.

Next is Dan Wexler.

You solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. State state your name, please.

Dan Wexler. Members of the Joliet Plan Commission, thank you for this opportunity. My name is Dan Wexler. I'm here representing the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting. I stand before you tonight in strong support of approving the Joliet Technology Center. This project represents smart, forward look looking public policy that delivers exactly what Joliet needs, long term, stable employment, and modern resource efficient technology, all without raising taxes on families. First, long term employment. A data center is not a short term construction site. It is a decades long facility, including excuse me. A decades long operating facility.

Nationally, data center employment grew more than 60% from 306,000 to 501,000 workers nationally between 2016 and 2023. Here in Joliet, this facility will create tens of thousands of skilled construction jobs and sustain hundreds of high paying permanent positions in operations, maintenance, security, and advanced technology. The real community benefit comes when we turn construction activity into lasting local employment through workforce pipelines. Hillwood and Powerhouse have already committed to training partnerships with local community colleges and local schools. That means our own residents, not outsiders from Iowa or Ohio, will fill these stable benefit rich careers for decades.

Second, this project uses the most advanced environmentally responsible technology available. Older designs once projected five to 6,000,000 gallons of water per day. This facility employs closed loop cooling systems that recycle water within a sealed system and slash consumption by nearly a 100 times. Under the city's agreement, total water use across the entire 795 acre campus is capped at just 55,000,000 gallons per year. For perspective, 1,500 single family homes on this same site would use about a 164,000,000 gallons annually, nearly three times more.

The city is investing $600,000,000 to rebuild the infrastructure and secure Lake Michigan water by 2030. Importantly, this data center will not strain our aquifer. It will actually use less water than the light industrial development originally planned for the site. The developer is also fully funding every ComEd transition I'm sorry, transmission upgrade, and has signed a ten year power agreement that protects ratepayers. Over the next thirty years, this private investment will generate millions of dollars in property taxes and another I'm sorry, will generate $310,000,000 in property taxes and another 40,000,000 in utility stapling revenue for schools, roads, and public safety while easing the burden

on

existing taxpayers. While some have proposed moratoriums due to grid and water concerns, these are blunt instruments aimed at a poorly defined target. They sweep in more far more than hyperscale AI facilities, granting broad discretion to agencies without clear direction and provide no real solution to the underlying issues. Data centers do not inherently raise residential electricity bills. They only do so when rate designs force homeowners to subsidize large users.

When the data center pays for its own infrastructure costs, as this project is committed to doing, the effect on other rate payers is neutral. City staff has already recommended approval. My clear ask is that you approve the site plan, rezoning, and annexation agreement tonight, including the recommended conditions on local hiring and responsible operations. Let's choose measurable progress, good jobs, and a stronger Joliet. I urge the Planning Commission to vote yes. Thank you for your time.

Next is Gianna Barone.

You sound we swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name, please.

Okay. Gianna Barone. Wow. My mind is my head is exploding with all this information. Nobody's going be able to follow it all. I agree with, I have so much. I'm very nervous about this data center. And I agree with a lot of the points these brilliant people are bringing up that aren't even versed in what they are. Don't have anything against the unions. They need jobs. That's great. The city needs money. But what about the citizens? What about us? Are we going to be safe?

Can we get some guarantees Can we have something in writing that we aren't going to be our electric bills aren't going to go up, that our water bill's not going to go up, that this is not going to hurt our health, the constant humming. Can we have guarantees? Can you put it in writing? Another thing is going to be eight council people that are going to decide for all of us and the mayor if he has to break the tie. It's up to them. And I would like to see transparency. If we have a we're gonna have a contract with them. They're gonna agree. They're gonna sign. We wanna see it.

Are are you gonna give them tax incentives? Are we gonna be out of taxes for five years, ten years? Is the money not gonna come? What's gonna happen? Who is gonna oversee all these specs that they're talking about? Are we going to have a commission or a department that's going to come in and monitor all these numbers that they say they're going to stay within the limits? Like, who takes care of that? We we have a lot of questions. Besides that, all I wanna say is I'm really upset about it for our health and for for the citizens. I mean, I don't blame you for coming here and trying to do this.

But you get to leave, and we're stuck with the problem if there's a problem down the road. I want some guarantees. And I'd like to see the contract. I think we all have a right to see it before it's signed. One more thing, and I'll be done. The fact that you said that Google and Meta don't want to meet with you until there is a what was it? Something in place? The The zoning? Wow. That's amazing. They won't even talk to you until it's already voted in, and you've got it done. So then they could come to you and say whatever they want. You know what I mean? And then it's they they got the ball. You know?

That upsets me. That upsets me. So anyway, that's all I have to say. I would say no on it. I'm sorry, but I really would like guarantees for us. Because we're stuck here. They're gone. The council probably doesn't live anywhere near it. And we have a there's more of us than there are everyone else. Okay? Thank you.

Next is Griselda Chavez.

Solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name,

Griselda Chavez. Good afternoon, members of the Joliet Plan Commission. This statement is regarding opposition to preliminary plan unit development of Joliet Technology Center subdivision. Data centers are popping up in the suburbs without cities like Joliet having rules or regulations for how they operate. The city of Aurora recently drafted an ordinance to keep an eye on this emerging industry.

Data centers are sprawling warehouse type buildings housing technology for digital storage and powering AI. The current use for the property proposed for annexation is farm land and residential. And the city sites examples like a typical single family residential subdivision on the same amount of land using more water than the proposed data center. Put simply, this is missing the point that for the people, it is not just about how much the water system will be impacted, but who is doing the impacting. Comparing a data center to homes in a time when people have stressed time and time again about housing availability, people would without a doubt choose homes, hospitals, and commercial areas to consume any amount of water due to public interest compared to data centers owned by big tech companies.

This particular proposal asks for light industrial zoning, and Hillwood and Powerhouse have told people that this industry is quiet. It won't cause traffic issues because it's technically not a warehouse. And the companies in Aurora told their people the same thing. And in Aurora, which has five data centers and more on the way, neighbors have confirmed they can feel and hear power sources from 1,000 feet away. And utility costs are rising and while the company's claim to pay property tax and provide construction jobs, there are still too many uncertainties for electricity and impacts of emerging AI technology.

People are concerned and have too many questions for how it's affecting their daily lives, whether their personal data is being used properly, whether AI should be in Joliet at all, and the fact that AI is driving the increase of the data centers in general. This is also to mention and we have heard also how AI has and could potentially replace jobs, especially for warehouse workers, the workers we rely on for the supply chain in this country. And many are dealing with poor working conditions, exploitation here in Illinois. And these workers understand how the logistics model that boomed in Joliet and Will County benefits from more and more people having to rely on these temporary lack of health benefit and physically demanding jobs, because that's all that's available to them at times. Context matters.

And for this data center, we need more time to create rules. And considering it is not sustainable, right, for the jobs. We want safe local jobs. And now those same workers from warehouses have to deal with uncertainty for their job security once again because of AI. So we do demand equitable transitions to different workforces in writing from the city of Joliet.

We can't solely accept verbal pledges from corporations and institutions legislation or just their word. For instance, they say the developers committed to partnerships with these institutions to expand technical training programs. And they'll work closely to target local residents. There's no mentioning that they will guarantee in writing that these roles are provided to Joliet residents, not just local. That can mean anything.

That can mean anybody in the Chicagoland area. So the solution here is for the Joliet Plan Commission and the Joliet City Council to mirror Aurora's place a moratorium on data centers until critical steps have been taken to ensure big tech pays their fair share so that working families do not have to foot the bill with skyrocketing electricity rates. With strong standards and accountability across energy efficiency and community benefits, using this moratorium or voting no is an opportunity to implement a Joliet ordinance around data centers. And it's a type of bold action that families and the workers in Joliet deserve. With rapid attempts for annexation, re permitting, and proposals, Hillwood and the city of Joliet demonstrated processes that provided insufficient access to public participation and did not include information available in multiple languages, provided inequitable access to information about this data center because people who didn't have internet or access to new subscriptions could not see this.

So for these reasons, I call in the Joliet Plan Commission to recommend a city a moratorium and to vote no on this annexation. Do not be threatened by Hillwood's ultimatums. And please think fairly and have an impartial decision for all parties. Thank you.

Next is Kurt Byler.

Do you soundly swear or tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. State your name, please.

Kurt Bealer. Members of the commission, mister chairman, have a a little bit different light on this, and I still wanted to speak. I am a semi retired affiliate resident. I live in the Reedwood subdivision, I look forward to the approval of the of the data center. The the developers and the consultants have really adequately expressed the technical details and and expressed how the power usage and water usage are well within the limits of what we have.

Joliet used to be an industrial city. We had Caterpillar and a number of other factories. It is the perfect place to put a Davis Center because we have the infrastructure that was abandoned by industry. Now we can have a new industry that comes in, and I'd I'd just like to see as a as a person I'd like to see Joliet flourish. And we're not gonna get manufacturing again.

We're not gonna get a steel mill on that site. A data center for that for that site is absolutely the best thing that could possibly happen for us. And that's it. Although she lives in a different city, my daughter is a union ironworker, and she would love to have some something like this for jobs.

Is Sandy Burcenski.

It's always so hard to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I will. I always do, so help me God.

State your name, please.

I am here today representing Citizens Against Ruining Environment CARE.

We've been

in Will County now for going on thirty one years. And the biggest thing and so many people here have voiced opinion. CARE is, of course, absolutely against the status on it. So many people have eloquently told you many of the reasons why. So a lot of my comments will cut.

But there's one comment that I have to say. And CARE has been working for years concerning this. And it's water. As most of you are aware, the Illinois State Water Survey concerning Joliet's water supply have determined that the current deep aquifer supply is unsustainable past 2030, even with conservation efforts. The gentleman who got up there and said, the data center will not strain the aquifer.

The aquifer is already being strained. The biggest part for me is, what I would like to ask this committee here, is how much water are you using now today? And I know you guys are in, I believe it's with five other communities to tap into Lake Michigan water. I went to the open house at Joliet Junior College too. And I asked a gentleman there, where are you getting the water? And he told me from the water main. And I said, what water main? And he said, well, Joliet. Here's the thing. And plus, oh, he also said Lake Michigan water.

What I would like to know is how much water because my research is showing that in 2030, Joliet is set to receive 55,300,000 gallons of treated Lake Michigan water per day through an agreement with the city. The other communities also are signed up on this, which is Shanahan, Crest Hill, Romeoville, Sherwood, and Minooka. You want to bring this big, the largest data center here in Joliet. Also, Minooka is looking at bringing one. How much of that money are you guys, Joliet, going to receive?

I think the biggest thing you have to look at I don't think even with Lake Michigan Water, you're going to be able to take care of this. A gentleman within the application or within one of your people stated that the city is comfortable that the planned water use will not strengthen the local system. Based on what? What are you basing this on? You've already got a situation where the aquifer is you're not going to have water beyond 2030. So you have to do something. And now, because you're getting Lake Michigan water, throw out the red flags. Let everybody come in. Take the water. What about the residents?

What happens if that goes dry? What are you people going to do? I mean, as far as I'm concerned, what you have to do is look at everything that's laid out, and you have to look at accountability and oversight. Everything they're promising, who's going to be looking over all of this? When somebody is up in the middle of the night and they're they're worried about the noise, you have to be there, and you have to have all this laid out just like the one lady had said. Everything's size sign and seal. And I'll tell you, water is the most water in the future, and even now, is the most valuable resource. And even though you get Lake Michigan water, don't just throw it away. Throw it away on something like this. There's too many questions.

There's too many answer uncertainties. And I know I only got twenty one more seconds. The other thing I want to ask, how many variances are you giving these people? You mentioned variances. And there sounded like a lot. I couldn't keep track of all the variances you're given. Are you just opening your zoning code to allow these people to just come in? Again, CARE has been around in Wilk County for for going on thirty one years and absolutely opposes this. Thank you.

Next is Portia Galopsos.

Miss Almighty swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do, so help me God.

State your name, please.

Portia Gallegos. I live in Joliet. I'm a member of Joliet Residence for Responsible Growth. I asked folks to check out our web our Facebook page for more information about data centers. My husband and I are homeowners in Joliet and registered voters. We've raised our three kids in Joliet. And one of the things I'm concerned about is that we really didn't hear anything from the city and from Hillwood for several months. And now there's this big push to approve the Status Center development right away. And I haven't seen a lot of transparency. And I know I'm not the only one saying that.

I went to Hillwood's open house at JJC a couple weeks ago and I stopped at all the tables because I wanted to learn more because I want good developments to come to Joliet because I love Joliet. And everyone was very polite. Almost everybody except for common and the unions and the nice lady who did the graphic study were from out of state. And I asked things like how much water the data center would use. One water consultant told me 2,400,000 gallons, one time fill. Double checked with him. Auchie told other people that too. Another water consultant told other people I knew that it would be 87,999,984 gallons a year, which is a really different number. Mr. Cloud retrieved me an article yesterday.

Hillwood said it would be about 20,000,000 gallons a year. So we've heard 2,400,000 gallons. We've heard 88,000,000 gallons, and we've heard 20,000,000 gallons. Tonight, seemed like you're saying more like the 2,400,000 gallons. But those are three different numbers, and this open house was just last month. I asked where the water would go, how would they dispose of it because there's issues with PFAS and with toxic chemicals being in the water when they discharge it. And just tonight, we heard that it would be going back into being treated by our into our sanitary sanitary sewers. I heard a lot of information today for the first time, and that's not enough time for everybody to make a good decision about this. And I wanna say everything at the open house was like that. I talked to one of the noise consultants, and I asked how many generators would be needed for each building.

And he said he didn't know. It depended on the plan. I asked him for a range and he said, you couldn't give it to me because it depends on the plans. And I told him when my customer asked me for a range, I can give my customer a range. I also asked the Hill of Representatives for information about what are best in class data centers. Because if they're going to come here, they should have a best in class data center. And they said that they would post that information and that they would text me with it. I gave them my phone number. I And haven't received anything. And the other thing is I'm a little concerned about Powerhouse because I went on their web page and what I can see is that they've completed one data center in Virginia that they sold in 2024.

This whole thing about the Keep With It Forever, the one that they've completed, they sold to CyrusOne, I believe, which is the company that's having problems in Aurora with noise complaints. They have a lot of projects that they're working on or they're working on permitting, including one in Reno. But they have only done one data center. And they started as a company in 2021. This is their biggest project that they have on the books, 1.8 gigawatts. And 1.8 gigawatts, by the way, that's enough to power the city of Orlando, Florida two times. It's adding two cities of Orlando to our power grid. That's a lot. I'm concerned about noise pollution. I'm concerned about air pollution.

I'm concerned about how people sleep and mental health is affected by these data centers. And a lot of the studies that you would expect for a huge project like this, 24 buildings on 800 acres, have not been done. There's no public health assessment. There's no soil study. Yorkville had its developer do a water study paid for by the developer and conducted by an independent company.

Here we have the City of Joliet staff saying this is okay and I think our staff is good. But there's no independent water study. Along with that, we have the issue of Jackson Creek, which Jackson Creek and the adjacent lands are protected waterways in The United States. And that wetland and that wetland area has been unassessed at this time. So there's a lot of questions that still haven't been answered. When you get married, have a prenup. Right now, the prenup's not good enough. I'm asking you to please table this until we have a better prenup, better information, and get a better deal. Get a better deal for Joliet. Table it until we can get a better deal and a better community benefits agreement. And thank you very much.

Next is Liz Reiner.

Someone may swear it tells the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I do.

State your name, please.

My name is Liz Rugnier. Good evening. I am here on behalf of Illinois State Senator Rachel Ventura, and I am reading the following remarks on her behalf. We are here today asking for a no vote for right now on the proposed data center development and the broader energy, water, and economic implications for our community and state. Proponents will argue that if Illinois does not approve this new data center, that other PGM states will build them instead and drive up regional electricity prices anyway, leaving Illinois to absorb higher costs without gaining jobs or tax revenue.

That framing oversimplifies the issue and shifts risks onto local communities. PJM operates a multistate regional grid, and wholesale energy pricing is set across the entire PJM footprint. A coalition of states, their governors, and the White House is actively pressing PJM to establish clear rules and cost allocation standards to ensure that the extraordinary energy demand from large data centers is borne by those creating it and not shifted out to residents and small businesses across the states. The appropriate response is regional reform and enforceable guardrails, not a race to approve projects out of fear. It is also important to closely examine the promised economic benefits.

While data centers can contribute to tax base, they are highly automated facilities that generate relatively few permanent jobs compared to their immense energy consumption and infrastructure demands. They often require major transmission upgrades with long term grid commitments that can expose taxpayer excuse me, ratepayers to higher costs if protections are not in place. Without strong state level standards, local governments may assume long term infrastructure and financial risk, while private operators capture the majority of the benefit. As you've already heard, the water impact cannot be ignored. Joliet has one of the worst groundwater situations in the entire country.

With the Joliet Aquifer already running dry, approving facilities that could withdraw up to 55,000,000 gallons of water places additional strain on a resource that hundreds of thousands of people depend on. At a time municipalities are working diligently to secure sustainable water solutions, allowing the largest proposed data center in Illinois to be built here would be irresponsible and could compromise long term water security for residents and businesses across our region. With this proposed data center so close to the warehouses of North Point, there is also the concern of additional environmental hazards, noise, and air pollution. Backup generators, low frequency hums, turbines, and power storage batteries are all present at data centers. If this data center must be built, the city needs to protect its residents and the environment by ensuring that noise studies are completed, battery storage is not lithium ion, but instead long duration storage systems, that green building initiatives are utilized, that emissions are monitored and regulated, and that there is a CBA in place that truly benefits the environment and citizens of Joliet.

Delaying the vote in this data center would allow Joliet and the state of Illinois to approach data centers deliberately rather than reactively. The general assembly is actively reviewing the regulatory, consumer protections, grid reliability, cost allocation, and resource sustainability implications of large scale data center expansion. We respectfully urge the city to consider waiting until the state legislator has had the opportunity to establish clear guardrails for this industry. A coordinated statewide framework would provide certainty, protect ratepayers and water resources, and ensure that any developments truly benefit Illinois communities without exposing them to unintended costs. Thoughtful planning now will prevent costly consequences later.

We respectfully urge you to vote no and wait until a statewide framework is established. Thank you for your time.

Next is Thomas Becker.

Yes. Good evening. My name is Thomas Becker.

Am So many swear to tell the the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yes, do. I hope not. Go ahead. Continue. Sorry.

Yes. My name is Thomas Becker. I am the chairman of the Watershed Committee. For the past twenty two years, we have worked in our local areas to preserve our natural resources. Something that's missing from the Hillwood discussion is that this entire parcel sits in the Jackson Creek Watershed. Watershed. And Jackson Creek is a federally protected waters of The US. It's not something that has to be protected along with its adjoining wetlands. There's a reason that wetlands are important. They can hold up to a million gallons of water per acre.

And when you mess with them, you damage them. You flood the neighborhood. And you flood and cause erosion and damage downstream infrastructure. We have done our due diligence here. In November, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the records regarding Hillwood. We received 1,300 pages that were fully redacted. We then went to the attorney general to get an appeal. And eventually, they were released with Mr. Lindsey. I talked with him.

And they were released. And what we were looking for isn't there. When you have a Waters of The US, you have to have Army Corps jurisdictional review. This is to determine where the waters are, where the boundaries are to preserve them for the future. And if Hillwood really wishes to be a good neighbor, this should have been done long ago. These are issues. You cannot do a wet the gentleman mentioned that they've done something for wetlands. These are farmed wetlands in which they're chilled. In order to have a wetland study, you have to have the hydric soil, which exists on the site. You have to have seasonal flooding, which exists on the site.

And you have to have hydrophilic vegetation, which provides you the boundary of how to define this. They can't have done that. They didn't do It requires the hydrophilic vegetation to be present. And they could not have done that when the land is tilled, nor you have to wait until it is seasonally available. So they've done none of the background research to preserve the natural resources in this community.

And until they do that, until they bring in the Army Corps, which is an obligation they have it's under the Clean Water Act then I would ask that you postpone and delay this process until they can come in. We've seen this multiple times. Once the Army Corps comes in, the entire plan changes. So I ask that you postpone this, delay this, until we can have the federal government come in, as they have a right to, to protect the natural environment and to protect the residents who live nearby. Thank you.

Next is Jeffrey Becker.

You're solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do. My name is Jeffrey Becker. So my brother did a foyer request for all the documents. So what I wanna talk about here is transparency from the city of Joliet. So in the documents, when he first did it, he did the foyer request. He got 1,300 there were 1,307 documents. 1,300 were completely blacked out. Nothing. And he got seven documents with a couple emails. After that, he had to file an appeal with the Illinois attorney general.

And and like he said, mister turned that information over in February. So in February, we got the documents that he should have had in November. So what we were looking for so I reviewed a lot of those documents. Some of them there was a 102 page traffic impact study, which was done by Kimberly Horn. That was the first document in the file. And it was for the Bernard Farms. And here is a document that this is the first document. How is the first document in the Joliet City file a traffic study for an 800 acre parcel? What happened? Where is where is anything else from the city of Joliet?

There was absolutely nothing. So I began looking at the documents. And one of the residents here at an earlier meeting said, hey, wait a minute. Jane Bernard is the director of city planning for Joliet. And Bernard family, is that her is that her family? What's going on? So this is from the patch article. It was 01/23/2026. The city is aware that Joliet city planner Jane Bernard's family owns farmland included among the properties under consideration for the Joliet Center Dad Park project. Jane brought this matter to the city's attention immediately upon a learning that these properties were being considered and has not been involved in conversations regarding the project.

So I looked, was that actually true? So in the June 24 document from Kimberly Horn, that is a document with already long standing that they've been reviewing this for the city of Joliet for the Bernard family. So when I went into them the emails in the discovery request here's a 09/25/2001 it came from the attorney for Hillwood, Mr. Silverman here. And it is being sent to Todd Lindsey, Raymond Heitner, and Jane Bernard.

This is long after, and this was the annexation agreement for Bernard Farms. Then I went and talked to 10/10/2025, the staff report. And here I'm quoting. This is from let's see here Duane Mr. Heitner, and it was copied to Jane Bernard. Quote, I incorporated a few additional talking points and edits with Jane's help. So Jane Bernard has been working on this project in writing in these emails, let alone what's been going on behind the scenes. So the question is, how is family involved, the Jean Bernard's family? She's the director of city planning. So there are 14 parcels.

So I looked up and I started doing some research. 13 of the parcels are owned by Jean's family. So we have one Leonard Bernard, that's her grandfather who's passed away. One Leon Lois Bernard, that's her grandparents. There is Joan Long, Jean Smith, and Joy Garza. Those are her aunts. There's the Bernard Family Farms. There's three properties there. Uncle her uncles are listed, Brian and Carl Bernard. There are five Bernard family trusts.

And then they've already said that her father is on one of those trusts. So is the city of Joliet how much money is being spent here? I mean, is it millions of dollars, multi millions? It had on the slide $94,000,000 Is the Bernard family getting $100,000,000 Is it 20 times the property I think you need to do an investigation and figure out why this specific site was chosen over other Joliet sites. Thank you. Alright.

Settle down out there.

Is Amina S. Brown.

I you saw my swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth? Yes. State your name, please.

Amina Brown. As of June, POLITICO states that gas powered super turbines used for AI emit around 2,000 tons of nitrous oxide in a year from a single power plant. But long term, said by doctor Kulkantertort, a neurologist of Bangkok Hospital, it can cause prolonged exposure to can lead to tingling in limbs, difficulty in balancing, altered cognitive functions, severe cases of brain damage, and death. Tell me, City of Joliet, how will you focus on guiding the city through its current financial crisis and return it to sound economic footing as per your website when your workers are bedridden from a gas choking on toxins when people open their windows? The people have expressed their concerns of water, but I'll add.

Clean drinking water should be given to the people, not to line the pockets of an industry that only contributes to the decay of the mind. As of February 2025, the EWG states that Joliet and Illinois as a whole has a 114 known contaminants in their water, manganese, arsenic, and radium, just are a few. And Joliet has had 412 administrative violations of their water. How can we trust you to filter out the water properly when you can't even do it now when these guys dump their waste into our water? But why would you bother?

If your masters of industry can liquidate consequences of money and false promises, then what's to stop you? Is Juliet more attractive to small businesses as for your website when you and your roll out a carpet for these moguls? I need to remind this council, as of October 2025, the UN officially states the Earth is entering a state of water bankruptcy in tandem by AI. Water given to help a tool of humanity, but not humanity itself. Water that we cannot live without for a matter of days, but is given to these people.

This will be our reality if these industries are unchecked and unchallenged if led to this council's decision? Do you seriously believe that these companies will obey these restrictions when the same false promises were made to the residents of Granbury, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee? Ask them. I can only ask now, city of Joliet. Have you even included the aftermath in your budget? Will health care be made accessible to families who are choking on smog polluted by your greed? Terry Terry Darcy, our mayor, ever known for his philanthropy. Will he pay out of pocket for insurance, medications, cancer treatments? Will he pay for that? Do you have an answer?

And to the blue collar workers laughing in the back, my great grandpa Bud Mallory was born of sharecroppers in Beckley, West Virginia, and he worked his whole life, day in and day out, as a coal miner and died of black lung before he could even meet his grandchildren. That was my mother and her four siblings. Do you think, honest to God, that these people right here, do you think that they would spare you from the incompetency of industry as they

spared my family? Thank you. Next

is Tina McGrath.

You sound me sorry to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

State your name, please.

My name is Tina McGrath. So I just wanna thank everybody for being here tonight. It is my birthday, and this is exactly how I thought I'd spend it. So I came here. I got I'm gonna be a 100% honest. Completely against this idea. I do against the data center. The presentation has helped change my mind in some perspectives. So I'm not a no. I'm not a never. I'm a no for now. And let me tell you why. Little housekeeping. I grew up in a union household. I understand the importance of a strong labor force.

And I believe Illinois has the best union workers in the country. I work in construction myself. I work for a national general contractor. I know this to be true. This is a beautiful project for the area, and it would generate a significant amount of money. But I have to wonder I mean, we have the highest property taxes in the country. We have the second highest gas tax in the country. We have the highest cell phone taxes in the country. Some of the highest tolls. We have some of the worst infrastructure. Frankly, I think you guys are crazy for wanting to

come here, honestly. I don't

know why any business would wanna come here. That being said, I'm asking myself, why? What would be the draw? Well, as James Carville once said, the economy is stupid. It's the electric stupid. Illinois does not require you guys to power your own buildings. Would be for this project if you had a system in place to provide the power to your own data centers. I don't think most people understand how you buy your electric in Illinois. You're not getting it from ComEd. ComEd is delivering it to you.

It's that power is purchased at auction, and those rates are determined by demand. These data centers have driven up demand tremendously. We all saw a bump this summer. Every last one of us got a shock when we started running our air conditioning. We opened our first bill. I don't know anybody who wasn't complaining about their electric bill. And it's because of this increased demand. We closed down 23 coal mines in this state. That was 45% of the electricity we needed to power everything in the state of Illinois. What do you that caused an increase.

Poor end data centers. AI is here, guys. It's not going anywhere. As somebody stated before, it doesn't matter if they build it here or in Indiana or in Ohio. We're going to be impacted by the rates. We have got to ask. I'm going to ask Joliet, has there been any conversations about asking these fine folks to provide their own power, not buy it from the same place we're buying it from? That's a totally different thing. Provide your own power. Other states are starting to do that. And I think you would have more people on board.

And union guys, that'd be more work for you.

Build little mini reactors and let them power their own buildings or shrink the scale of the project, something. The folks who live nearby, their voices deserve to be heard. Nobody bought a home thinking, man, I hope a 24 building data center is built right over there one day. Can't wait to look out my window and see that. Nobody did that. We all purchased homes for a specific reason, and it was not to be surrounded by concrete buildings and buzzing and humming. So please consider I'm not a no. I think it's a great project.

I think the city needs it, frankly.

But there needs to be some concessions and some tweaks to the project. I think we can do better. And I don't have a problem. I'm a free market capitalist. It's not often I find myself on the same side of an issue with Rachel Ventura, and here I am.

So please, I'm just going

to ask. Maybe we go back to the drawing board and we work this out. But right now, I'm a no. Thank you.

Next is Jennifer Guest.

Do you sound my swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do, yes.

State your name.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Guest. I am a resident of Joliet, and I have been career environmental educator for over twenty five years. And I'm against this project, although I'm pro union. I appreciate the jobs. But I I would like you to think bigger about this project and the the ecological impact that it's gonna have on the area. And that includes building it, the operation of it, and what's gonna happen in the end game. People have been talking about the EPA and the Illinois, you know, like our rules in Illinois, but the reality is there's there's no endgame. Like, what happens when this goes under? Where do those things go? How does that impact the environment?

The technology is already changing. We're talking about the water technology even. Like, what happens when the data center needs updated because the technology's changed? What where does all those things go, and what does that impact on the Earth? And when you look at the area of where you're putting this or where you're trying to put this, look at an example of Midewa National Prairie. That was the arsenal that was built out of necessity. But then when the arsenal was gone, that land was just vacant because no one wanted it. Because the ecological impact of the industry ruined that area for a long time. And we're lucky that the Department of Agriculture came in and said, we're going to turn that into a national tall grass prairie. And so we have an example like that.

And then we want to bring jobs to Joliet and opportunities. And you look at the NASCAR track that's there that bought in a bunch of jobs and union jobs and built that. And then it just has been sitting for five years. And I know we're going to have a race this summer, but it's just sitting there forever. And if NASCAR didn't decide to come back and do a race, what's going to happen with that? And we build all these warehouses, and we already have traffic issues. So I think we need to look at the bigger picture of what is the long term effects of this? What's going to happen when the technology keeps changing? How does that get recycled? What is our noise pollution?

What's our air pollution? What happens if this company goes bankrupt or the technology changes? And we know we can maybe use the building again, although that was not very convincing. What is going to happen? And there's no regulations that say, what happens to these things? How do we decommission them? What is going to happen to those? And someone mentioned this before, even there's regulations in place. All you have to do is pay a fine if you go over those regulations for the EPA. And there's industries in Will County that do that all the time.

And as a resident of Joliet, I think the most alarming thing for me was when they mentioned the sewer system. And I don't know if you know this, but I have State Farm insurance in my case. The sewer system in Joliet is so bad that you have to pay for a rider for storm sewer backup to have any of your property protected. That cost me as a single person in a small home of seven twenty square feet in Joliet an extra $800 a year just to have that rider on. We don't have the water.

We don't have the sewer system. And we are already in a water crisis in this area of Will County and Joliet. The water coming from Lake Michigan is going to happen, but it's not coming anytime soon. And I heard people snickering about thinking that there's unlimited Lake Michigan water. That is actually not the case. Like, it's gonna have an ecological impact on it.

We're not even supposed

to be allowed to have water from Lake Michigan. It's only supposed to be areas that touch and border the Great Lakes. But we have found a loophole, which many other municipalities have, to help us get water to fix the issues we're having in Joliet. But that water is not unlimited. And it will have ecological impacts on the wildlife and the bigger picture of Illinois, the Chicago area, and just earth in general. So I urge you to think harder about this project. Think about the bigger impact it's gonna have on the environment and the people in this area. Thank you so much.

Next is Kathleen Garthas.

It's been a long wait. Of my questions also being here this longer, were you gonna get parking tickets being here

so long? Yes, mate.

Are they gonna if we do get parking tickets, are you guys gonna pay our parking tickets for us? Yes, mate.

Yeah. Because we've been here long enough.

Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I'm so used to city council.

They solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but

the truth?

I do.

I do.

I am

sorry. I said, I'll let you know I'm doing. My name is Kathleen Garthas. I am here speaking because I have heard through the years, I have I'm the walking example of of lies and stuff being done to the cities and everything, you know, when industry comes in and they lie. I have been the more times being at city council meetings debating on all these lies that like, with CenterPoint, their mobile when they came.

Their noise, their air pollutions, all this stuff that they promised. And all what happened is is everybody's got more frustrated and everything, and everybody's paying higher costs and everything. Noise kills. You know, when CenterPoint somehow used Joliet to let him sneak in a Mars candy warehouse up the road from our my mom's house, That noise, when that place opened, immediately affected us, and we could not sleep. And it led to my mom's health problems.

My mom, you know, we're she was told she needs to get sleep, but she couldn't get sleep. And it end up having her she end up having a stroke because of lack of sleep, and then, know, her heart gave up and died, which is why I emphasize that we can't stress enough about the dangers of noises and how it affects our you know, take deprives us of our sleep. Same with the air pollution. I had my boss when Union Pacific opened their intermodal, built their intermodal right across the street from my boss' house. My boss had emphysema.

His emphysema turned to COPD because all the diesel exhaust coming over. We couldn't have our window window open, which I lived at my boss' house with him. We couldn't even have the windows open anymore because the diesel exhaust coming right into the house. And you could we couldn't even work outside because we'd be passing out. I passed out one time just walking from the house to the pump house, and luckily, a neighbor saw me pass out on the lawn and came to my rescue.

So it was all this pollution that the higher utility costs, everybody keeps saying, they ain't gonna go up. Well, oh, they have gone up. And comments, excuses, oh, we gotta upgrade our system. So we gotta increase your rate because we gotta increase you know, update our systems for extra utilities being used and a higher property taxes. CenterPoint, you know, promised us that our property taxes wouldn't go up.

But will county, the tax assessors, have ways of getting around that? Well, they say, well, because some billion dollar company company came in and bought land next to your house and paid millions for it. Your property now is you're getting taxed more on your property taxes because that million dollar comp that company came in and paid millions for the land right next to your house. So your property taxes go up because of it. And that's the little games that you all don't understand. You know, we all do end up paying higher property taxes. You have our quality of life went way down because now we got a noisy warehouse next to our house. We couldn't enjoy ourselves anymore, yet we're stuck paying higher property taxes. It's like a double edged sword. Like, we're Lairway School is another example.

What happened to Lairway School? Where is it at now? Is it still on Lairway Road? No. It had to move because of the effects of the truck traffic from the warehouses, which is what I get at. You know, I call EPA. I call Joliet police about these things, about the noises, about the traffic, and how my road my mom's road was even made this super four lane highway for for the warehouses, for Center Point. We called Joliet police about it. We called Joliet. I've been in one of our city council meetings debating all this stuff. What did they say to me? Oh, well, too bad. We ain't gonna accept that, and we shouldn't have to accept it anymore. We are here. We need to be able to live our lives and be a part of American dream. It's taxation without representation.

Next is Stephen Jay Kemmence.

Kemmence?

You saw me swear it tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth?

Yes, sir.

I do. State your name, please. Steven Kamlitsch, Joliet resident. The truth is I'm missing my AA meeting, and Jason, you look good up there.

Who's telling the truth? Who who tells the truth around here?

Now the young gentleman that told the supposedly told the truth saying our property taxes would remain constant. That means

Talk into the mic there, please.

Well, I'm not you can't hear me?

Okay.

Our property taxes are gonna remain constant. That means they're not gonna go up. Is that the truth? He raised his hand. I got the little I got it on, you know, video. He raised his hand. Yeah. He told the truth. Okay? This it goes to the schools. Our school our school part shouldn't go up. But it's gonna go up. I don't believe it. We need to table this thing and ask a few more questions. I I too would like to get some things in writing. I think it's wrong. We gotta stop caving things down the taxpayers' roads.

You know?

It's just wrong, man. And another thing, you're building this thing right across from the Veteran Cemetery. I'm gonna be buried there. I don't wanna listen to that. I just don't want to listen to it, man. It's not right. The truth. Nobody tells the truth anymore, really. But I think I'm telling the truth here. We need to table this. We they need to sign something that our property taxes are gonna stay constant. And and like one lady said, you're nuts for wanting to build here. This power goes out when it gets dark. And another thing, I googled AI. Is AI right?

I don't know. But AI says the biggest AI plant right now is in Grayslake, and it's 180 megawatts. This one they wanna build is 1,800 megawatts. It's gonna be the biggest one in Illinois. And it's gonna take and it needs the power it takes is like the power of 2,200,000 houses.

Now they rose the you raise your hands so the electric wasn't gonna go up. I'm a hold them accountable. I remember this. I'll remember this. This is why it's gotta be tabled. It's gotta be tabled. No ifs, ands, and buts because they rose their hand. You we're not doing our job. We're not doing our job. We're not telling the truth.

It's horrible. I got no problem against my brother is working. Union tradesmen working and stuff, you know. But 8,500 tradesmen, doc, you better start hiring some people, because I don't think we got 8,500 tradesmen in Will County, for one. And

no.

I'm retired. I'm an old stick builder, one board at a time. They don't make them like me anymore. So, yeah. I I don't know, man. I mean, I think it's gotta be tabled. You know? Move the thing 50 miles south, you know? There's nothing out there building, you know, build a small new plant. That put more people to work. You build a new plant, now people's got to work at the new plant. You know? There there you go. All you union guys, you work at the new plant. I don't know, man. I don't know. It's hell to get old. I'm out of here.

Next, we have Jeremy Brzezinski.

You sound my swear or tell truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. State your name, please.

Hello. My name is Jeremy Brzecki, and I'm against the data center campus here in Joliet. Frankly, I can't believe such a wasteful project is being considered during a time that Joliet citizens are struggling with paying our utility bills, but here we are. A data center here in Joliet is a terrible idea for a number of reasons. One of them is the inevitable energy rate hikes we'll be subject to when a 1.8 gigawatt data center that consumes enough power for all Chicago households combined is put here.

We are already experiencing higher comment bills thanks to data centers. 70% of last year's increase in electricity cost was due to data centers, according to the citizen's utility board. I haven't seen an estimate of the level that our electricity bills will balloon to when this project is completed. So how can anyone that represent our community support this project? Electricity is already a significant expense for my household, and that will only get worse after this project is completed.

And once it's completed, it's something we're all gonna have to live with. Another thing, the 700 permanent jobs that Hillwood stated for the project, it's a ridiculous number. Data centers as a role employ the fewest amount of people possible, with 95% of them being janitorial. Hyperscale facilities, in particular, rely on automation and remote management. This trend will continue as technology advances.

These things don't employ people long term. Small sites even employ around 27 people. Larger hyperscale facilities right now employ around 100. The US Chamber of Commerce itself says the average facility has about 200. So how are we to believe that this facility will employ four times that amount?

Why is this project being fast tracked without us fully understanding the environmental toll that this will enact on our community? We know that this facility will rely on diesel generators for backup power, extended use of which can cause respiratory issues. What happens if they install more than they originally contract for? How are they penalized if the turf if the generators are run more than they're allotted to? In Memphis, XAI installed 35 unpermitted gas gen turbine generators, which contributes right now to health issues among local residents.

What's to stop them from doing that here? Data centers will just pay the fine and continue as normal while the damage is done to us. We need better guardrails than just fines. If they exceed what they what they agreed to, they need to be shut down, period. The data center industry in general is predatory.

The companies go up and they communicate with small rural towns and force them to make a choice. You're either gonna install it here or we'll install it right next door to you, and then you're gonna be stuck with the bill. We are just beginning to understand the long term risks and costs of data centers. It seems like this project is being rushed through. The power network that Hillwood needs so badly, the reason why they're building there, will will still be there.

Everyone keeps telling me that AI is here to stay and that demand will only increase. Why not table this project until Joliet residents are protected from utility bill increases? We do not need this data center right now. We probably won't need it in the near future. I encourage you to vote no until we can better plan this out, until we can have guardrails to protect ourselves, and that we can actually realize the economic benefits that are being promised to us. Thank you.