Monrovians attended meetings in droves to have their voices heard. (Clayton Baumgarth/WTIU News)
On his first full day as president in his second term, President Trump announced the $500 billion Stargate Project, a multi-company effort to build AI infrastructure and data centers throughout the Midwest.
“Beginning immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI, and this will include the construction of colossal data centers, very, very massive structures,” he said.
In October, financial company Blackstone estimated the U.S. would see a trillion-dollar investment in data centers over five years, with another trillion being committed internationally.
Now, Indiana is beginning to see those investors propose projects throughout the state — to the surprise of many nearby residents like Amber Boulianne of Monrovia.
“I learned about it the day before yesterday on the news,” she said. “So you know, there's the first problem, right? It's .7 miles from here…it causes concerns.”
Boulianne inherited her father’s 30-acre property and planned to use it for growing wildflowers, cash renting to farmers, and generally settling down. But now that a data center could be coming less than a mile away, her life plans are more uncertain.
“We don't know what would happen, you know, is it a situation where we need to move,” she said. “You know, inevitably, our property value is going to go down, and everyone surrounding this, your property value will go down. Look it up.”
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Data centers can use anywhere from 10 to 50 times the energy of a commercial office space, which impacts local energy bills.
They also use about six million gallons of water a day, affecting the watershed.
And then there’s the noise. Data centers have been reported to produce 55 to 85 decibels of noise to their neighbors, which is as loud as either a conversation or police sirens, all day, every day.
These are all concerns residents brought to an informational meeting at the Monrovian Christian Church two weeks ago.
They left feeling even more concerned, as the developers said many of their questions couldn’t be answered because they don’t know the exact technology they’ll employ at the site.
They also couldn’t speak on the potential benefits, including how much tax revenue they could bring to the town, because they plan on pursuing a tax abatement.
The lack of transparency includes town council members like Carol Youngblood, who are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement if they want to learn more about the project coming to their backyard.
“It would have been nice had the county had this group, had somebody come and more formally shared some of this stuff, and it would have been better,” she said.
A week later, the plan commission voted to recommend rezoning of the land to the Morgan County Commissioners, despite opposition from the community.
“Data centers are coming, whether we like it or not,” said Dustin Frye, Morgan County Plan Commission Member. “The state of Indiana is on a list of top five states ready for this type of infrastructure.”
The Citizen’s Action Coalition, a consumer environmental advocacy group in Indiana, shares many of the same concerns over data centers as residents, particularly where the energy will come from.
“A lot of the power brokers in Indiana are using data centers as an excuse to push for things like keeping coal plants online, building out new natural gas power plants, or pursuing really risky and expensive small modular nuclear reactor technology,” Program Director Ben Inskeep said. “So we're really concerned about that kind of trajectory.”
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Residents have been asking, why Monrovia? Inskeep said the companies want land that’s easy to develop and access to high-voltage power lines.
“These data centers are not siting in specific Indiana communities because of the subsidies that are being provided,” he said. “But rather, it's because these specific sites on the grid are some of the rare spots across the country that can accommodate them at the speed and scale that they need.”
This sort of development is just the beginning. The state legislature primed the pump for data centers in 2019 with House Bill 1405, which gives companies a property, sales, and use tax exemption on the purchase of data center equipment.
Now, lawmakers are scrambling to create more guard rails for the industry.
Rep. J.D. Ford (D-Indianapolis) has a bill on transparency that, if passed, would require data centers to disclose projected water and power usage.
“If you're going to put that in a community, let's do some pre-work,” he said. “Let's, you know, have some conversations and discussions on the front end. And I think so many times what happens is that we always get to the back end and people are upset and angry.”
For Boulianne and many other residents, they want their community to evolve, but they want it to happen without secrecy.
“I am not against growth of our county and community, I want that,” she said. “I want more people like me moving here that run small farms and businesses, spend their tax dollars in the community and run their businesses. That's how you grow a community in a town, not by building a data center, an empty box that's just going to suck up our natural resources.”
The Morgan County Commissioners meet Feb. 18 and may vote on rezoning the land for the proposed data center.
