ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy has called for close monitoring of a growing number of projects to build hyper-scale data processing centers. These centers, according to the Center’s chief executive, Kathryn Hoffman, have voracious appetites water to cool huge banks of computer banks that process data from around the world. At risk, Hoffmann said, is Minnesota’s water quality. These “data miners,” as she calls them, conceivably could drain aquifers that have been essential to Minnesota agriculture for two centuries. The Center is a nonprofit advocacy group based in St. Paul. The Center has sued the state’s Environmental Protection Agney to wake up to potentially horrific impact from data mining. Promoters, she said, often are negotiating for permits, licenses and rezoning with local governmental units that lack the experience to ask the right questions. This is while promotors dangle the prospect of hundreds of construction jobs that would be created to build water-mining facilities — although the centers would have only much smaller operating staffs after they’re built. Hoffman listed these Minnesota water-mining project that her group has identified:
> Apple Valley (population 56,000)., a far south Minneapolis suburb: The city is reviewing an application for a 134-acre “Technology Park” that would include five large data center buildings.
> Becker (population 3,800) in Sherburne County: After suspending plans for a major data center in May, Amazon purchased a 350-acre parcel of land.
> Faribault (population 24,00): A project called “Archer Data Center.”
> Harmony (population 1,020), in Fillmore County: The City Council has reviewed a petition to annex 60 acres of farmland into the city. The land needs to be zoned industrial. MiEnergy and Dairyland Power co-ops want for a data center.
> Hermantown (population 10,000), outside Duluth: A 1.8-million-square-foot data center complex has been proposed for a 200-acre site. Called r “Project Loon.”
> Monticello (population 15,000), on the Mississippi River east of St. Cloud: Developers have proposed a 550-acre technology campus for a data center.
North Mankato on (populaton14,000, on the Minnesota River.
> Pine Island (population 3,700, north of Rochester on the Olmsted-Goodhue county ljne: Ryan Companies proposed a 482-acre tech campus for a Google data center.
> Rosemount (population 28,000), a southeast St. Paul exurb: Meta, formerly Facebook, is constructing an $800 million data center.
> Worthington, population 14,000), in Nobles County: A data center is in development by Geronimo Power.
Logo centerpiece a tree. Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
Hoffman. On Advocacy Center’s staff since since 2020, chief executive since 2017.
Norquist. A legal fellow at Advocacy Center.
North Mankato case study
A Minnesota Center for Environmenntal Advocacy, Luke Norquist, drove to North Mankato in July to attend a City Council meeting regarding what he strongly suspected involved a hyper-scale data center. At issue, he said, was “a vaguely defined 4 million square foot “technology park.” Very little information had been provided to the public about:
> What a technology park was.
> What a technology would do.
> How the project would have environmental impacts.
Norquist, however, had been tacking the project. He saw troubling signs. for example: He learned that the project would draw 30 million gallons of water per day from the area’s Mt. Simon Hinckley Aquifer. Also: Promoters had admitted that the project would produce a lot of noise, just as would come from mega computer banks. Also, a document attached to an application listed a land use code commonly used for data centers. At the meeting, Norquist urged the City Council against approving the project unless it asked more questions. The City staff dodged Norquist’s concerns: “They said there was no data center project on the agenda, that they didn’t know what the development might end up being: ‘It could be a warehouse, or a data center, or a lot of different things.’” Days later, Norquist obtained city records through a public records request that showed the project indeed would be a water-mining data center.