Concerned residents from around the area packed the auditorium at Ivy Tech’s North Campus to demand IDEM deny Google’s permit for an additional 142 diesel generators on the site of the future data center campus.
In the developer's original plan, they asked for 34 emergency diesel generators, but speakers at the meeting suggested that proposal was in bad faith.
“They knew, or should have known, at that time, that that was not enough to sustain their operations,” Gina Burgess said when addressing representatives from IDEM.
More than a hundred people signed up to speak, though the three-hour meeting only made it through about 75. Speakers also suggested IDEM force the developers to change their plan for emergency power management.
Several speakers also suggested IDEM should revoke the permits for the original 34 generators.
As the night wore on, speakers grew agitated, with several lashing out at IDEM and suggesting that, if the agency chooses to approve the permit despite the opposition, the public hearing was “a sham.”
“At this point, my question that I would want to have addressed with whatever response you give is either did you ignore us or did you listen?” Jeanette Wise asked. “Because there are well over 150 people here right now to oppose this data center.”
Several speakers also questioned whether this would be the last request from Google, or if they’ll continue to need more generators to support emergency power.
“Are we gonna be back here in 18 months?” Burgess asked. “We need to know in advance how big this project actually is going to be.”
In September, IDEM granted a permit to developers of the data center to fill in an additional 2.47 acres of wetlands, bringing the total build to 8.54 acres, just for the first two phases of the project.
Developers are required to buy wetland mitigation credits to replace the destroyed wetlands, but they aren’t required to be in the same area.
