Letters | Digital land grab
Digital land grab
Editor,
Indian Country is the most vulnerable to everything and anything that happens on the national scene because the government agencies that are mandated to protect Natives are the weakest in the entire system. The current data center construction craze has approached several Native tribes to build on their lands. So far, the only tribe to issue a total ban of data centers on their lands is the Seminoles of Oklahoma.
Tribes will be approached, offering jobs and economic development monies for usage of their land but they don’t have the existing water needs nor the electrical capacity. A typical data center can occupy hundreds of acres, use more than 5 million gallons of water every single day and require an amount electricity needed for the entire reservation. But data center builders don’t care because they will take whatever water is available, including acquirers and develop such a strain on existing electrical grids that the people will end up without any electricity or clean water.
Job offers will be in construction but once the center is built, there will be no need for construction workers and economic opportunity disappears. A data center will employ only 10 people (at the most) to monitor the computer equipment that runs 24/7.
Worst case scenario is if a tribe is approached to sell their water rights and/or has their water rights to existing streams or rivers used (stolen) by these data centers. Then they have to be prepared to go to court to defend their water rights, which could take years, but in the meantime data centers will continue to steal the water, perhaps drying up the only water source available. Data centers have no plans or process to restore used water.
In communities around the country, people living near data centers have complained about a noise resembling a low rumbling hum and constant ground shaking. Rural people are experiencing low water pressure, or dirty water, or no water at all. People in dry states like Texas are being hit the hardest.
People in Utah are currently fighting against a proposed data center that would use more electricity than the entire state. Las Vegas needs three times more electricity than they are currently using for the data centers that were built there – might have to darken some of their casino’s neon lights. Data centers and its computers generate a lot of heat and have become so hot that it has created a “heat island” effect, raising air and ground temperatures up to six miles away. Hot summers will get even hotter.
The Trump administration has virtually stripped the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department of any and all rules and regulations protecting the environment. That includes Native lands and water. Right now, the EPA is proposing reforms to allow data centers and gas plants to break ground before even receiving a permit.
With data centers needing enormous amounts of electricity, the Trump administration is urging the use of coal-fired and nuclear plants for electrical generation. Hence the start up in coal and uranium mining.
Looks like Indian Country is back at square one, being approached to use and damage what livable lands that are left for the people.
Carole Wright
Nixon, Nev.
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