In the American psyche, data centers have become so reviled that big tech can’t even pay residents life changing money to welcome the facilities into their backyards.
That’s not an exaggeration: voters in the former coal-mining community of Hazle Township, Pennsylvania are mobilizing en masse against a massive Amazon Web Services facility that would come along with a $10,000 direct cash dividend to every resident.
That’s according to reporting by PennLive, which notes that nearly 17 percent of the township’s residents live below the federal poverty line. Despite the possibility of a $10,000 payout, residents are organizing to reject both the data center campus itself — named “Project Hazelnut” by the developer NorthPoint Development — and a lengthy stretch of power lines meant to supply power to the facility.
As PennLive observes, the $10,000 scheme is an unusual attempt by a data center developer to smooth over opposition in a section of the country which is overwhelmingly opposed to the facilities.
“We think it’s creative. We’ve not seen (anything like) this,” executive director of the Pennsylvania Ethics Commission Mary Fox told PennLive of the strategy.
Yet residents of Hazle Township aren’t swayed by the prospect of fast cash, viewing it as a payoff, and a weak one at that.
“It’s like bribery,” as local resident Brian Malloy told PennLive.
“Our property values are going to drop. Dramatically,” said Ed Negra, a homeowner and small business owner who characterized the $10,000 as a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of allowing Project Hazelnut to go forward. “If that’s not a bribe, I don’t know what is.”
The matter is far from settled, though it doesn’t help that both state and local officials are acting shifty. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, for example, has previously characterized the project as a “technology campus,” using an executive order to fast-track the process by which developers can erect data center facilities across Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, PennLive reports that Hazle Township supervisor Anthony Griguoli has struggled to present a united front with NorthPoint Development, even as his office works to engineer a zoning ordinance which would allow Project Hazelnut to plow forward.
When residents cornered Griguoli at a town meeting in August about the $10,000 bribes, he shrugged that “that’s what they’re saying they want to do,” adding that “I don’t even know if that’s legit, that it’s going to happen.”
More on data centers: This Graph of Data Center Spending Compared to All Other Construction Will Give You Chills
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