PLATTEVILLE, June 24 — To the surprise of no one paying attention, the Grant County Board unanimously approved a 12-month data center moratorium in the county’s unzoned areas last week.
More interesting is our Wisconsin Watch story (also on page 1) that tells how the unnamed data center developer enjoyed the county’s attention … and then disappeared, or so it seems, upon discovering blowback from county residents.
This is, by the way, the strategy that has been used by opponents of wind farms and solar projects — make as large a stink as possible in every possible arena (including the courts) so developers exceed their own aggravation tolerance level and abandon their plans. So far that has not happened with wind projects.
A developer came to the Grant County Economic Development Corp. looking for a data center site. (Or so we are told. Business negotiations are usually not in the public eye because of what could happen if that business’ competitors finds out what the business is trying to do.) Negotiations progressed until county residents started considering what a data center might mean for the area, after reading what they considered excessive secrecy around other proposed data center projects.
This appears to be, depending on what side you’re on, a case of the squeaky wheels getting greased, or the political process actually working for a change. County board chair Bob Keeney is quoted as having called data center supporters “a silent majority,” but were that actually the case one would think the moratorium would have gotten more opposition … unless everyone who voted for it was more concerned about their next election than the merits of data center projects. The non-silent people won this one … for now.
In a very real sense the controversy over data centers is a symptom of a much larger force in American society today — erosion of public trust in anything that resembles an institution beyond skepticism to automatic cynicism. Consider the Gallup Poll percentages of people who have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in police (45 percent), higher education (42 percent), organized religion (36 percent), the medical system (32 percent), the presidency (30 percent), banks (30 percent), public schools (29 percent), organized labor (29 percent), the Supreme Court (27 percent), large tech companies (24 percent), health maintenance organizations (19 percent), the criminal justice system (17 percent), daily newspapers (17 percent), news on the internet (16 percent), big business (15 percent), TV news (11 percent), and Congress (10 percent).
I would say this has been happening since the COVID-19 pandemic and elected officials and “experts” getting things wrong, except that I am old enough to remember Watergate (for those unfamiliar: look it up), and Watergate’s effects on national politics were largely over by the end of the 1970s.
Data centers probably cover at least five of the aforementioned frowned-upon institutions — big tech, big business, organized labor (which usually supports projects because of construction jobs), banks (projects have to be financed), and politicians (who have to approve them), who are constantly hearing and/or saying they don’t have enough money from some other level of government (that is, taxpayers) to do what they want.
You have probably noticed that many opponents of local “green” energy projects are also opponents of data center projects and were opponents of the Cardinal–Hickory Creek power transmission line. They are two of the exceedingly rare cases of political issues that cross party lines.
One motivation is fear of this area’s becoming some big tech firm’s factory and losing what makes this area special for those who choose to live here. That is not merely a fear. Those wind turbines and solar arrays you drive past are not producing energy for this area. If you believe those wind turbines are having negative impacts — health problems for some people who live near them, and impacts to our groundwater and wildlife, to name two sets of objections — those impacts are not being felt by people who sit in their suburban-Madison houses and use their electrically recharged devices to make videos on their devices. (Or those who pontificate about the need for data centers.) Property owners may be getting paid for the use of their land, but are property taxes decreasing because of government revenue from green energy projects?
One political party is identified with regulation to the point of overregulation. The other is identified with wanting no regulation of anything. The correct issue here is appropriate regulation — for instance, why they have to be built on undeveloped land when the state should require building first in brownfield sites (take a look for yourself at https://apps.dnr.wi.gov/rrbotw/botw-search). That could be one example of how the state and Grant County can reverse the teeter-totter of projects that don’t benefit the people who have to deal with their negative effects and aftereffects.
