Three data centers rising along the county’s northern highway will together draw about 300 megawatts of electricity, the utility estimates, roughly the use of 90,000 homes. From the highway, the sites look like any large construction project: cranes, gravel lots, rows of trucks and long, windowless buildings slowly taking shape on what used to be soybean fields. Inside, once they are finished, tens of thousands of computer servers will run around the clock, storing files, streaming video and training the artificial intelligence systems that have become the hottest business in technology.
The projects bring about 400 permanent jobs and a large boost to the county’s tax base. They also bring questions about power, water, noise and who pays for the upgrades needed to keep the lights on. Over the past month, we spoke with county officials, utility planners, construction workers and the neighbors who will live next to the new buildings for decades to come.
Why here, and why now
Data centers need three things above all: lots of electricity, fast fiber-optic connections and large, flat parcels of land. The county’s northern edge has all three. A major fiber line runs along the highway, a high-voltage transmission corridor crosses nearby, and farmland in the area has been zoned for industrial use for more than a decade.