Prichard Councilman hosts data center forum, gives residents a first look at operations
What happens inside a data center? It's a question many residents say they still don't have an answer to.
"I myself, respect your opinion, but the community is asking you to say no to this happening in this community," said one local resident during last week's city council meeting.
District 5 Councilman Roy Smith, II is hosting a public, informational forum on Wednesday to give the community a closer look before conversations about the proposed project moves forward.
"I'm tired of making knee-jerk decisions just because we've heard this, we've heard that, let's look at the facts and we make our decision from there," Smith said.
The local debate comes as data centers become a statewide campaign issue. Gubernatorial candidates, Doug Jones and Tommy Tuberville, have both recently weighed in on the rapid growth of data centers across the state.
"I want to be unequivocal about this I am for a one-year moratorium to halt data center development in the state of Alabama. One year. One year until Alabama until we have guardrails and policies in place that protect our people and our communities. Those concerns are not bull crap. They're real," Jones said.
"You know, I understand why Alabamians might be hesitant about data centers coming to their communities. But we need somewhere to secure and store our data. Otherwise, it'll go to other states like these blue states or it will go to China," Tuberville said.
The proposed AI data center development from Edged Energy, located off Telegraph Road, is zoned for industrial use, and was purchased back in 2016. During last week's council meeting, the discussion of a temporary moratorium was brought up to stall the development in hopes of rezoning the property. But according to the council's attorney Moshae Donald Walker, it's not that simple.
"Even if the citizens voted to say we don't want this, even if the city council issues an indefinite moratorium, because of the zoning of that building there's nothing anybody can really do right now to stop them," Walker said.
Walker cautions that halting the project or changing regulations in the middle of the process could expose the city to significant legal challenges.
"We want it to be as litigation proof as possible. Nothing is litigation proof because this is America, anybody can sue for anything, but the approach to stop it, if that's what the council and the citizens want is the zoning. But this moratorium puts a freeze in place so we can figure out how to do that in the meanwhile," Walker said.
For now, Councilman Smith says tomorrow's meeting isn't about convincing anyone to support or oppose the project, but it's about making sure they understand what's bein proposed before weighing in.
The forum will be held at Prichard City Hall in the council's chambers at 4:00 p.m. NBC15 will be there and will have an update to this story on air and online as we learn more.