Bloomington city officials heard lots of pushback on the possibility of a data center in the community during a public forum on Wednesday.
At the 2 p.m. session that included 70 attendees, they heard an overwhelmingly negative reception to the idea of a hyperscale facility, sometimes called an AI farm, being built in collaboration with the city.
The city held an additional session, also at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, at 6 p.m.
Mayor Dan Brady and City Manager Jeff Jurgens led the sessions. Current members of the council, Micheal Mosley of Ward 2 and Michael Straza of Ward 5, and Deputy City Managers Billy Tyus and Sue McLaughlin, were in the audience.
“The forum is about listening to you, ladies and gentlemen, and that is what I’ve tried to do in my entire political and government career is to be transparent, and that’s what we’re trying to do here today,” Brady said.
Jurgens told attendees there is “real interest” from outside developers on building a hyperscale data center in Bloomington. Jurgens previously told WGLT the city likely does not have room for a center and could look to annex county land in such a case.
Jurgens and Brady said the community feedback will be relayed to the Bloomington City Council and help inform a city policy on data centers.
“As a city, as a council, there needs to be some decision on what do we want to do, what is the direction we are going to go,” said Jurgens, adding “…[the forum] is the desire to get that feedback and get that information, so I just want to say I appreciate everybody coming today.”
While the city currently has two small data centers, Jurgens confirmed they are not the scale of the AI farms residents shared concerns about. These facilities, like a center recently approved in Sangamon County, are large, impactful projects.
At the forum, some residents urged Jurgens and Brady to consider a moratorium on the matter. Champaign County enacted one last month.
As the nation sees the push for hyperscale facilities, localities are still in charge of most decision making.
Benefits of a data center
Bringing a data center to a community can bring different benefits, such as increased property values, industry advocates say. Cities also can require the centers to sign community benefit agreements that contain revenue sharing provisions.
Artificial intelligence, one of the main uses of the centers, also offers various industries an opportunity to increase work productivity.
That’s what Bill Clark of Bloomington was thinking of when he spoke at the forum. He argued AI is inevitable and Bloomington should take advantage of the opportunity if it arises.
But Clark was the only resident at the 2 p.m. session who was supportive during public comment.
“Somebody is going to use this technology, and if we don’t use it in the United States, then someone overseas will use it,” he said.
As a retired IT professional, Clark said he finds AI assistant technology to be powerful.
“I’m going to say I can program better with [AI-powered] Claude Code than I ever could as a coder, young coder starting out in IT, so I think the technology has some uses,” he said. "Can this thing be built properly? I like what I heard about regulations coming out of the state. I think, to me, that’s the way to do it.”
The Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers Act, or POWER Act, is pending legislation in Springfield. In short, the law would require data centers in Illinois to pay for their own energy costs, including new infrastructure, rather than shift costs to residents.
Water and pollution
The other 23 public speakers expressed their disapproval of and opposition to a data center coming to Bloomington and one expressed uncertainty. The chief concern of the majority is water.
“I don’t know why in a city that has water problems, we’re even talking about this,” said Dale Nafziger, former owner of Growing Grounds. “I’m kind of upset. Government always seems to screw things up.”
Earlier this year, Bloomington and much of Central Illinois was considered to be in a drought. Jurgens told WGLT in February the city also loses up to 3 million gallons a day due to aging water mains.
In his presentation, Jurgens noted the city has a daily average use of 10 million gallons of water, with a peak usage reaching 17 million gallons. He said the city will continue to explore additional water sources, regardless of a data center.
“I don’t like most of what I see. I want to see the water usage,” Nafziger said. “There’s no water at Hickory Point, but we’re going to fix it now? We can’t make the water taste good from Lake Evergreen.”
Matt Hickman of Normal said his main concern is conservation.
“Data centers are not clean or invisible infrastructure simply because we interact with them through screens,” he said. “They are massive industrial facilities that consume enormous amounts of electricity and water while generating continuous waste, heat, noise and environmental strain.”
Hickman thinks the physical burden of a data center is not worth the possible benefits.
Land use
Several residents brought up concerns about land use and farmland. It’s an issue other energy sources, like wind and solar, have faced in McLean County.
Wayne Karplus of Bloomington wanted to know specifics about the location, asking “..it is placed outside city limits? It would be taking, most likely, farmland away. We have valuable farmland in McLean County and I think that we should keep and maintain that as farmland. I would encourage if there’s going to be a data center, it’d be put on a brownfield site…”
Brownfield sites are designated land of abandoned or underused properties that may contain some kind of environmental contamination. Karplus suggested Bloomington’s west side as a possibility, on the site of former rail yards.
He also asked the city to have more communication about zoning possibilities so a data center would not further exacerbate the city’s housing shortage.
“I would encourage the city to be more comprehensive and also to be rather forthcoming as to who has come to the city and said, ‘We’d like to build a data center,’” Karplus said. “Let us know, we don’t know.”
In March, McLean County approved zoning changes to limit potential data centers to land only zoned for manufacturing.
The county also is not currently considering any data centers.
A Heyworth resident, Taylor Stanton, said she worries about the use, or misuse, of soil.
“I’m here to ask a simple question to you,” she said. “Why are we choosing to sacrifice irreplaceable farmland, strain critical water resources and expand industrial infrastructure for something that does not feed us, does not sustain us and does not give back to the land it replaces?”
“Because once you make this decision, we are the ones that live with it.”
Stanton also raised concerns over water, mentioning the Mahomet Aquifer that supplies drinking water to nearly 1 million residents across Central Illinois.
Transparency
Another recurring theme brought up was over transparency in the city’s involvement with data centers.
“I just want to plead with you and your council to please include the city and your constituents and the people in these conversations,” Stanton said.
Residents, like Zach Gittrich, pressed the issue repeatedly, asking questions concerning the use of AI, Brady’s position on the POWER Act and possible regulations.
“If Bloomington cannot answer these questions, or if Bloomington cannot control how these data centers are being used in order to guarantee they are being used for the good of humanity instead of its destruction, then we should not be giving tech billionaires or bank oligarchs access to our land, our electricity, our water, our oxygen and our people who will be exploited,” he said.
Some residents just expressed not having a full understanding of what a data center could mean for Bloomington.
Craig Gates of Bloomington said he felt not enough people know about them.
“I have so many questions, more questions I think than any of the answers that’s been given,” he said. “I don’t know a whole lot about the data centers.”
Gates said he struggled to understand why the idea had not even been “sold” to Bloomington, rather the argument immediately centered around having one or not.
“I mean, if a new hospital has to come to this town, they would have to sell us on the fact that they’re going to really help us," Gates said. “Well, I understand there’s going to be construction jobs to build the thing, but after that, that’s it.”
Jurgens and Brady repeated the city council has not made any decisions regarding the centers that the public is not aware of. As Jurgens did in a WGLT interview, he and Brady pledged transparency.
But residents still pleaded for answers.
One resident asked Jurgens directly to name the parties who have approached Bloomington about a center.
“I don’t have the specific entities that I can share, but there are people that are calling and interested in trying to pursue bringing a data center here, and I’ve said that in other interviews,” he said. “That’s why we’re having these conversations, and we’re trying to figure out what is the council’s policy going to be on that.”
