Clinton to hold public meetings on proposed data center

Clinton Mayor Scott Maddasion and members of the City Council reviewed the timeline for the proposed 1,100 acre hyperscale data center project ordinance for the city during Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting. Council members supported devoting more time for study on the project, slowing down the process and providing additional opportunities for public input. Twenty members of Clintonians Against Data Centers spoke during the August 11 City Council meeting audience comments section, sharing concerns and perspectives about the proposed ordinance and the city’s approach to data center development. Concerns included a lack of transparency, how decisions are made, clean air, clean water, consideration of a new moratorium and increasing citizen involvement. About 40 members of the organization were present.

Kevin Bradley with Clintonians Against Data Centers spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to talk about the group’s concerns and the roundtable series that has been proposed.

“We had a meeting on Sunday with our core group of people,” he said. “We discussed that when we go up for our three minutes, that we each would come up with a specific area so that we’re all kind of on task and utilizing that full three minutes of the concerns we have with regards to traffic, the water issues, the electric issues, etc. I feel that was helpful. I also feel that the city council is actually starting to listen and realizing and recognizing the fact that there could be some things that they haven’t considered.”

Bradley said QTS, the company in charge of the data center project, sent a letter to the city attorney, outlining the company’s ordinances for this project. “I’ve never known a company to write their own ordinance, and according to (city attorney Pat) O’Connell, he kind of told them no. QTS is trying to go around the system, and I’m hoping that the city council isn’t just saying something to us to appease us but actually wants to work with us as citizens. We talked about what the city council talked about this and usually it’s during the time in which the citizenship is not allowed to speak. They allowed us to speak, which really was very positive, very helpful and hopefully indicative of what we might see coming forward with the roundtable discussion about the ordinance that’s been presented to them by the planning commission.”

He called QTS’s approach a “slap in the face” to residents. “That’s just blatant disregard to the process, and it’s a slap in the face to the citizenship here of Clinton, or any city for that matter. I’d be curious to know if they’ve done that with other cities, presenting their own ordinance.”

The first in a series of public roundtable meetings will be on September 1 at 5 p.m. at Eagle Park Point Lodge, 4101 N. Third Street and more meetings will be planned later. “What we’re going to do is sit down with a city councilman, with about seven or eight of the citizens,” Bradley said. “Each table is going to go line by line over the ordinances, sharing their thoughts and taking notes.”

“Working with the planning commissioner, a commissioner and a city councilman, we hope to go line by line with the ordinance and then the city council will get together. We talked about getting together with some of our core people that we have of the representation for the Clintonians Against Data Centers, there’s seven of us. We’re talking about maybe an eighth person as well, so we have eight sitting down together as a cohesive team, working through all the suggestions that came through. From there, we might be able to come up with an ordinance that could be acceptable by the citizenship and also by the city council. By no means are we trying to make this so restrictive, but we do have concerns with regards to making sure that the citizenship is protected.”

Bradley said there are more concerns with data centers that people might not realize. “One of my main concerns is decommissioning, with the lithium ion batteries. I talked with a number of people about trying to put together a security bond. They’re usually two or three-year bonds where Clinton is listed as an additional interested party. My concerns are abandonment, bankruptcy – when I say abandonment, I’m talking also about the fact that technology changes so quickly that they could just walk away because they have a better way of doing things. Meanwhile, we’re left with this abandoned building and all the lithium batteries to get rid of and dispose of.”

“They’re talking about giving the City of Clinton $20 million for a sports center, which is really ludicrous. We should use that capital for something else. But if they should leave us with this building, it could be $200 to $250 million dollars to dispose of all these lithium batteries if we can even find a way to dispose them.”

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