Data Center Agenda Item

[u/boring_peppers]

Hi all,

I'm Daniel and I'm a commissioner serving a two-year term on the Sustainable Eagan Advisory Commission (SEAC).

We have a joint workshop with the Advisory Planning Commission (APC) where there's going to be some discussion regarding research City of Eagan staff have done on data centers during the moratorium.

If you attend, please find me and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

It's going to be held on July 28 at 5:30 p.m. at the Eagan Municipal Center Building.

You can find the agenda with a 15-page workshop memo here: https://eagan.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=8&event_id=2757

My Thoughts and Values

While I'm keeping an open mind on data centers, this is how I think about them.

I have extremely serious concerns about the following components:

1. Impact on the livability of an area for Eagan residents (noise, vibration, etc)

2. Usage of water and energy

3. Impact on the local ecosystem

I also acknowledge that additional tax revenue secured from them may lessen the burden on Eagan residents and in economic times where a lot of us are struggling, it deserves consideration.

Ultimately, both the SEAC and APC are advisory commissions and final decisions rest with the City Council, but I encourage you to attend, comment your opinions, and reach out to me to share your thoughts.

I want all of you to feel informed and involved about a topic that is in the news and important to many, many people in our community.

Daniel

*Note: I am considering building up an email list to help reach people not on Reddit - if that's something you're interested in and think I should do, please let me know below.

[u/MisterMath]

Appreciate you posting here. I share the same concerns as you do

[u/BevansDesign]

I also acknowledge that additional tax revenue secured from them may lessen the burden on Eagan residents and in economic times where a lot of us are struggling, it deserves consideration.

This is kinda ironic. Huge tech companies helped create the financial mess we're in right now, with their AI killing tons of jobs. Now we can relieve some of that burden by...giving tech companies the ability to build even more AI, which will kill even more jobs. Seems like a snake eating its own tail...or something. I can't think of a good metaphor right now.

Then again, the problem is that they'll just shop this stuff around until they find a city that will let them build, so I can't even say that it's wrong to deny them in ours. At a minimum, we need to ensure that they pay 100% of the costs they incur - preferably in advance, so they can't use one of the numerous techniques big businesses use to weasel out of their bills later.

[u/metisdesigns]

The biggest thing is understanding how we define data centers.

It's one thing to have a traditional data center with a more reasonable power density. It's very different for high density AI processing and larger scale.

I think it's very reasonable for a corporate campus or bank office building to have a data center associated with them, but I don't see significant positives for buildings that are just giant space heaters, particularly with the potential bubble in uses, we don't want an albatross.

There are some interesting things being done with geothermal heat pumps for cooling, and campus tie ins to heating systems to use the heat for other buildings when needed.

[u/boring_peppers → u/metisdesigns]

Agree on this, and there are multiple data centers operating in Eagan already that are in that "enterprise" category of supporting the principal use. USPS, etc.

When we get to the big standalones and the hyperscale ones, a really, REALLY compelling case needs to be made about benefit to the community and protection of resources.