Cities and towns across Missouri are facing the reality of a data center being built nearby. As of late September, there were 13 active data center projects across nine Missouri counties, according to Missouri Data Centers, a website that tracks data center construction.
One of those active projects is in Festus, Missouri, where citizens filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the development of an AI data center. Tensions over conversations between city officials and data center developers led to a 12-count, 54-page lawsuit, four incumbent council members ousted from office, another council member resigning and a mayor recall petition in progress.
While no projects or proposals are active in the city of Cape Girardeau or Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, Data Centers states that the area's proximity to the Mississippi River, along with its power and land availability, puts it at a “moderate risk” for a data center project.
SEMO REDI helps to support regional and economic development in Southeast Missouri, and according to CEO Shad Burner, data center developers have looked at land in the area.
Burner said that if a data center were proposed, the City of Cape Girardeau has regulations it would need to follow, while Cape Girardeau County has no zoning or business regulations.
“Depending on where the process would look different, if a data center came to the city, it would be pretty quickly and in front of everyone, and we would have a public conversation about that and go from there,” Burner said. “If it was in the county, certainly we would hope to be engaged in that process, although a business doesn’t need to engage anyone to establish a business in the county.”
A major concern raised about data centers is rising energy costs for consumers. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley sent a letter to the Ameren Corporation President and CEO expressing his concerns about rate hikes and power shutoffs, according to his website. Specifically, Hawley was looking for answers to how these possible rate increases due to data center expansion would affect working Missourians, who were already struggling to pay their bills.
However, Burner said that based on his research, there is not a lot of evidence to support this. He said Missouri Senate Bill 4 has measures in place to prevent large data users from raising costs for consumers.
“What I haven’t seen yet is anybody actually able to show evidence that residents' rates have gone up because of them specifically. Rates have gone up and will continue to go up because costs have gone up. So it costs a lot more today to maintain a grid than it did five years ago,” Burner said. “That's why costs go up. But when I look at it, and I've done the research, I just don't see where there's a lot of evidence that costs could go up based on the laws of Missouri and based on what we've seen in other areas.”
Burner said he suspects the electric grid will have to be updated regardless of whether there is a data center. However, with respect to what updates will take place with a data center, there are no specific answers.
Many residents also worry about the use of water. For example, in the Kansas City area, the Meta Data Center uses 9.5 million gallons of water per day, according to Missouri Data Centers.
Burner said that while earlier technology raised concerns about water usage, newer models are able to recycle water.
“The interests that we’ve seen as of late are newer closed-loop systems and what that means, from the best I can tell, is it ingests quite a bit of water early on, but then after that, it just recycles the water,” Burner said. “Typically, a project that’s using closed-loop systems has far less requests for daily water usage than any other industrial user we see when we’re looking at potential opportunities. I think that there were very clearly some water concerns with some of the early technologies, but it appears that the industry has shifted.”
Despite these concerns, Burner highlighted the potential benefits of a data center, including new jobs, roughly 70 to 150 based on his research, and more funding for the community.
“These data center projects are often a billion or more dollars to build, and so when that happens, your property tax assessment on that project alone will typically become the largest property taxpayer in a community, so it funds education, it funds public safety, things of that nature,” Burner said. “There's even some evidence in some communities where residents' property taxes have gone down because of the algorithm for how we pay our property taxes.”
While nothing has been proposed yet, Burner said that if the issue arises, the community should stay open-minded.
“I think that we, as a community, should be open to any economic development project, and we should explore each project on a case-by-case basis, and weigh the positives and the negatives, whether that's a data center or food manufacturer or any kind of industry,” Burner said. “And if it's good for the community, then we should pursue it and try to get that to add jobs and grow our GDP in the region.”
Southeast Arrow originally published this story.