Data Centers, Politics Make Strange Bedfellows

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

The City Council’s town hall meeting between representatives of Emergent Data Centers, a company that constructs facilities for lease, and San Angelo residents was well planned, but did not end in a public relations victory for advocates of economic development in San Angelo.

City staff, led by Mayor Tom Thompson, went to tremendous lengths to clear the air before public comment, with head planner Aaron Vannoy outlining proposed regulations, from landscaping requirements to water usage.

This was followed by a lengthy panel discussion as officials from Emergent Data Centers, the site’s developer, addressed a handful of the most pressing questions received from the public. 

Read About: Data Center Water Regulations in San Angelo

Mayor Thompson opened the meeting and acknowledged that this subject has led to a recall effort to un-elect him, a cause that sprang up in the last month.

Emergent executives Mike Coleman and Chris Sumter fielded questions and provided lengthy answers.

Their approach was simple; try to address every possible concern. From water usage to community projects, the pair answered each question very thoughtfully, and in a very businessman-like manner — always leaving the door open for future improvements and tweaks. 

While most of the big concerns garnering attention on social media were addressed directly by Coleman and Sumter, the same questions re-emerged during public comment, with several seeking more long-term answers. 

One fundamental flaw in the opening presentation, it’s possible, could never be avoided. Do we regulate data like we would a regular business? Is ‘big data’ anything like businesses of the past?

What People Are Worried About

On April 16, officials with Beacon Data Centers, another potential developer, met with residents of Dove Creek, an unincorporated community about 15 minutes drive outside San Angelo. That meeting did not go well for Beacon.

Early on in the meeting, it became clear that Beacon did not come prepared. Most questions went half-answered, without any specifics, and some not answered at all. They tried to spin it, slightly, saying that the meeting was intended to measure community concern. If that was the goal, they definitely achieved it.

One early question that arose was about noise from the construction and from the future facility, with one resident asking for specific answers, pressing Beacon Vice President Joseph Shovlin on the results of noise studies.

“We were trying to intend this to be a more non-technical session,” Shovlin said, which caused the room to erupt in hostile laughter. Residents of Dove Creek in attendance had been hoping for exactly that, a technical session. They were craving specific answers about specific problems.

Back to the San Angelo meeting, both the City and Emergent clearly wanted to avoid this problem in the first place. The presentation and panel went over 90 minutes, with many of those specific questions asked directly, and answered quite honestly.

A few who rose for public comment said their questions had been answered and went on to ask some follow ups.

Several asked questions that had been directly answered, expressing doubts that the officials were telling the truth. 

For the remainder, the questions turned away from specifics about this data center, (how much, how far, and for how long?), turning into general criticism of larger economic trends, most notably, consumerism.

One speaker voiced concern about the nature of artificial intelligence specifically and its use in warfare.

Someone asked about malfeasance on the part of AI companies, like “Grok” and “X,” which the commenter noted was an AI company with an unsettling tendency of allowing user-generated deepfake pornography, including images involving children.

Concerns were heard regarding the referenced “Big Tech Five” – Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. Namely, what their goals were as an industry.

And of course, many were concerned about what effects all this new development across the state could have on the future cost of living in a small West Texas city, where most people have historically earned incomes lower than the national average. 

What Wasn’t Said

There was much not mentioned in the meeting.

One concern lurking behind the scenes regards troubles surrounding AI startups on the West Coast openly telling their customers to “stop hiring humans,” with anyone who has visited a major city with a big-tech or high-finance presence in the last year attesting to their ominous presence.

For the locals who spoke against the data center, it was not so much that this particular data center coming in that was the problem, but that the larger economic trend it represents makes working people scared.

Scared that their job could be replaced by a robot that can pay for itself in five years.

Or that their job could be automated away through large language models.

A lot of this rhetoric from the tech industry has cooled down in the past few months, partially because they may have realized asking people to be okay with having their jobs taken away wasn’t a great marketing strategy.

Strange Bedfellows

Among the crowd, I recognized many faces I’ve met over the last year of reporting, and then going back my whole life. Some I knew from Mertzon, where I grew up.

Most from San Angelo.

Amongst the crowd I saw people that I know from when I use to play live music, and when I used to work at a sporting goods store. There were some folks I met doing catering gigs.

I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the mix of people represented at the meeting.

In the past, I’ve heard some of these people call others “tree hugging hippies” for their support of the Paris Climate Accords, and the so-called “Green New Deal.”

Now, they’re sitting with others who I’ve personally seen argue tooth-and-nail that climate change is the greatest challenge we face as a species.

Now I can say I’ve seen it all, because amongst the crowd are private-property absolutists, who believe that if you buy land, you should be able to do quite literally whatever you want to do with it. If you wanted to open a combination “Bucc-ee’s”, pig farm, and an oil refinery, well there shouldn’t be anyone to consult other than your maker in that equation.

I see these voters, sitting next to people with whom they would likely be three-rounds deep in a screaming match if it came down to differences on domestic policy.

But on this matter, they all seem to agree.

What is the deep down question that draws them all here today?

A frequent question during public comment was simply “what are we doing?”

A cynic might dismiss this, but since I kept hearing it, I started thinking about it.

Are they asking the city council? Are they asking the officials from Emergent? Are they asking the whole room that question?

Yes to all three, perhaps. This “what are we doing?” repetition felt more like a criticism of society writ large than a specific question about this specific data center. 

“Is It All About Money?”

To sum up, Texas’ data center problem has quickly become a sort of grass-roots referendum of all that companies have been allowed to get away with for years, one that stretches across the state.

And it seemed that no amount of promising responsible resource usage would calm the worries of the crowd who arrived to protest. 

All of these concerns, I think, anyone would be hard pressed to find fault with.

Many questions that local officials are not at liberty to go on record and answer, as it would require speaking without knowing the full, long-term answer with certainty.

Questions which nobody anywhere seems to have the definitive answers to. 

I think about one woman’s comments earlier in the meeting: “When will we stop looking at the end of our noses?” She asked the city this question, but does the question apply to humanity in general?

Of course, if the data center boom was actually an oil-and-gas fracking expansion across the state, whose water consumption and environmental impact are off-the-charts by comparison, would we have the same mixture of people in attendance?  

Trying to get to the kernel of this debate, I would have to say confidently “no, it wouldn’t.”

The big data argument has something much larger cooking behind it.

As we’ve seen, clarifying water-use regulations, land-use requirements and other conditions doesn’t seem to clear the air, as it was hoped.

It does, however, force opponents of data centers to alter their arguments.

Some might call this moving the goal posts. But really, the same concern has run through all of the discussion. It might be less goal-post-moving, and more a matter of finally getting to the heart of the concerns.

I would say one of the real concerns at San Angelo’s town hall was seeking an answer to the big question in our society: “Is everything just about money?”

That answer depends on who you ask, of course.

For billionaires cashing in on the AI tech boom? Yes. Definitely.

For cities in Texas that need to bolster their tax base to avoid cutting jobs and constituent services? Another yes. 

Ultimately, in the modern world we’ve constructed, everything is about money. So, was this a manifestation of an underlying hatred of that fact?

At the Dove Creek data center meeting, people we’re captivated by County Commissioner Shawn Nanny’s comments, telling the data center folks to find somewhere else to build, and “leave us the hell alone!”

That comment was memorable of course, but something said by Nanny just a few moments earlier has stayed with me further. He asked: “Is everything about money?” 

Are people mad that everything is about money these days?

Once again, it seems the answer is “Yes.”

Further Reading: The Future of Texas at the Texas Tribune Festival

Group Seeks Pause In Data Center Construction