Harrison Meece of Normal would like to one day help bring a data center to McLean County — but only on the people’s terms.
The owner of Harrison Meece Consulting, LLC, has experience in helping to develop several hyperscale data centers across the country. He previously helped with creation of a small data center at Rivian in Normal and is currently working to bring a 500-megawatt facility online in Denton, Texas, near Dallas.
While he knows of no specific discussions about possible data centers in McLean County, he would like to see his home take advantage of what he characterizes as a vast economic opportunity.
He said he also recognizes the need for regulating an industry to allay fears and protect communities from what he calls "bad actors."
“Normal is my home. It’s always been my home and I love this place more than anything else,” said Meece in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas. “[Data centers] is a field I enjoy being in, but I also have a strong vested interest in my community and my state, and so that’s when I hear all of this going on in the news, I wanted to offer some perspective as somebody who both loves McLean County but also loves this industry.”
Meece said he would like to see a data center locate in the area — but not unless the public approves of such a project.
“I would do my best to protect our residents and the people working here, but the one thing I will not do is go against what the general consensus is of the people in McLean County,” he said. “I don’t want to be a part of that; I don’t want to be a part of putting something in our town that people don’t want.”
Meece hopes his knowledge as a data center consultant could bridge successfully with the county to have a wider conversation.
'Misinformation'
Meece said he understands people are desperate to gain a better understanding of how data centers work. While that effort continues, moratoriums like those in Bloomington and Normal are a good first move, he said.
“I think the important step now is to continue that fact finding and understand what is the result of bad actors, what is the result of misinformation and what are real things that are concerns. Because when we address what is real and what is out of the ordinary, we can start focusing on solutions for those real problems,” Meece said.
One example of what he has a hard time understanding is fears about water pollution.
At a U.S. House of Representatives hearing, Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez of New York had a viral moment, raising a jar of muddy drinking water from near a data center in Morgan County, Georgia.
Meece said he could not understand how that was possible.
“Because every facility that I’m working on, there’s almost no way for us to pollute the water," he said. “The chemicals that we use are all [Environmental Protection Agency] EPA-approved, they can be released back into the groundwater without any effect to the wildlife that’s there, and almost all of the facilities that I’m working on, too, have moved to a close-loop system.”
In a closed-loop system, data centers fill a significantly large amount of water once every several years and repeatedly treat that water alone for cooling needs, reducing its drain on the local water supply.
In the Georgia case, Meece called it "egregious" for the contractor to pollute the water, adding the companies he works for would be under contract to clean up that water.
Another area of concern is power and the fact that a data center places a burden on the electrical grid.
Meece acknowledged that and personally advocates for legislation like the proposed POWER Act in Illinois, which did not advance during the spring legislative session.
“Data centers should know, per their design, what they maximum power usage is going to be,” he said. “Now, are they gong to use that full power the whole time? No, especially with AI data centers there’s fluctuation…but basically, the amount of power that’s going to be put into these facilities is well known by those data centers.”
Legislation like the POWER Act, requiring data centers to pay and account for their own power, would do more than just protect consumers, according to Meece. It would help the entire area around it.
“Whether we decide we want data centers built in Illinois or not, the grid needs an upgrade,” he said. “We are electrifying our lives, we’re moving towards electric cars, we’re putting heat pumps in our houses. The demand for electricity is ever growing.”
Economic gains
Meece said it is "more than reasonable" for municipalities and governments to expect major concessions from data center developers, such as improving and expanding electricity infrastructure.
For example, he said the City of Bloomington should demand that any data center developer help expand its water capacity.
"It concerns me if we are already having issues with restricting water.... if we did have a hyperscaler that was coming here, we would need to say 'you need to help us fund a new source of water' before you begin construction," he said.
Another example comes from U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, a Democrat who represents parts of Bloomington-Normal and Greater Peoria. He has suggested legislation to protect consumers without driving away data centers.
Meece said this strategy is more efficient to bring money back home because completely driving away data centers would take their benefits to another state.
“We need to have a clear understanding of how that money is transferred, how it’s taxed and then how that trickles down into providing these services and utilities, But 100%, I think this is an achievable goal,” Meece said.
So, while the drive for AI and for cloud storage is not expected to come to a halt, Meece said municipalities can take advantage of the opportunity to make tech giants pay for what their community needs in exchange for a data center. He said data center developers are making "tons of money," and should be largely agreeable to what local communities demand.
“It’s not the question of should we build this, but how do we build this in the most sustainable way possible that benefits the most amount of people? And I think that we can be the example for other states to want to adopt, and say we’re not going to let you just use all the water you want and all the power you want. You've got to pay for some of this,” he said.
In the case that Bloomington or some other place in McLean County did accept a data center, Meece said another economic benefit comes from jobs.
Along with local contractors and construction work, some parts of a potential data center would require outside experts. Other industry experts also would likely come in from outside the area to operate a center long term, but with far fewer employees than what's needed for construction.
“We’re talking about bringing in 1,000 extra people for a minimum, probably a two-year stint, that are going to be eating, dining and living in our town while we’re doing this work,” said Meece.
Another possibility, like Meece saw at a center in Virginia, is lowering property taxes with additional revenue.
“Now, is that what we’re going to do? I don’t know what we’re going to do, but what could we do?” he said. “What could we do with millions upon millions of dollars of additional revenue just by letting a [data center] sit there?”
Public perception
Meece said he hopes his knowledge and expertise can open a wider discussion on data centers, aside from just their negative attributes circulated in the news and at public meetings.
Back when wind farms were first coming online in Illinois, residents also expressed concerns. Eventually, they produced millions of dollars in tax revenue and that changed some perceptions.
“That would be my hope, that we could [do the same]. We could create this list of guidelines that we just talked about, and we could actually have a builder come in and developer and say…’We’re going to design this building in a way that benefits the community by not being an ugly gray box that annoys people with light and sound.’ And I think if we can achieve those things, and we can show the people in McLean County that building one of these facilities is possible and sustainable, I think it could change people’s perception,” said Meece.
His goal is to lend a voice to the other side of the story not often seen in data center discussions. Whether that’s local government or citizens, Meece would like to have the opportunity to educate.
“You can tell them all of these things and maybe that’s good enough for them, but maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s still just too much concern for whatever reason around this, and so I’m hoping that people even smarter than me get a chance to come and talk about possibilities that we could do," he said.
Both of the data center moratoriums in the City of Bloomington and Town of Normal will expire in November of this year.
McLean County has adopted some of the most restrictive regulations for data centers in Illinois, limiting them only to manufacturing districts.
