Bonner Data Center

At the first meeting in town at the church the company rep failed to bring with him a design engineer who could intelligently discuss the cooling system being vaguely described by the company publications. A "closed loop" system is great, but what's the cooling medium? Air cooled? Water cooled? What's the source of the water? Ground coupled? Dx chiller?

What is their anticipated annual domestic water consumption?

Will they be touching the river at all, in any way? That includes filling the cooling system or supplying cooling towers with water. That includes dumping anything at all into the river because "it's just water."

They were unable/unwilling to address these questions at the public meeting. These questions need answers.

I am opposed to the proposed data center development in Bonner and urge decision-makers to carefully consider its long-term impacts on our community. Bonner is a small, rural area with limited infrastructure, and a data center represents an outsized form of industrial development that is incompatible with the character of this valley. These facilities place significant demands on power, water, and transportation systems that were never designed for such intensive use. Of particular concern is groundwater. Data centers often require substantial water resources for cooling, and in an area where groundwater is already finite and essential for residents, agriculture, and the Clark Fork/Blackfoot Rivers, this poses a serious risk. Once groundwater levels are depleted or contaminated, the damage cannot simply be undone.
In addition, the increased traffic from construction, ongoing maintenance, and supporting industrial uses would strain local roads and reduce safety for residents who rely on them daily. Development should be planned and scaled appropriately to ensure it benefits the community rather than overwhelming it. This is not opposition to all growth, but a call for growth that respects the limits of our infrastructure, protects our water resources, and preserves the rural nature of Bonner. A large data center fails to meet those standards and would permanently alter the community in ways that many residents do not support.

Removed by moderator.

Removed by moderator.

I am a 4th generation Missoulian born and raised. NO, we do not want a Data Center here. No we don’t care what supposed “opportunities” to the economy it will bring. No, we will not allow these companies or private equity conglomerates to pollute, drain, and destroy our homes. We will attend any meetings with said businesses to ensure they don’t come back here ever again.

As stewards of the land in Missoula County, it would be incredibly irresponsible of the commissioners to approve this data center or any data center. In addition to ruining the River and the water supply for the residents, the noise has proven to impact animals. For instance chickens nearby data centers lay 50% less eggs, cattle, goats and sheep lose 30% of their body weight, horses and wildlife suffer from stress.

There are reports of the water sources near data centers turning milky white with massive erosion and dangerously high levels of metals including strontium. Wasn’t the area a superfund site? Millions of dollars were spent rectifying the polluted rivers and now a data center is being proposed which will be another disaster and create another superfund site.

Missoula County should be aware that all over the country data centers are being cancelled due to power shortages, Grid strains and supply chain issues, as well as massive pushback from residents.

We live in such a beautiful place. Please do the right thing and listen to your constituents and deny this data center. We do not have the right to pollute the water and take water away from residents just for greed and AI. We don’t have the right to subject wildlife and human life to the very negative affects of data centers.

Thank you for your attention to this very important issue for the residents of Missoula County and Montana, as well as wildlife and domestic animals.

Please, please, please reject this proposal. I can’t even believe we have to submit comments on this. This would be a disaster. An absolute disaster for Montana and the entire surrounding areas. These centers put a significant strain on energy, water, infrastructure, environment, and quality of life. Costs can offset gains. They have a high electrical demand and can consume power equivalent to tens of thousands of homes, straining grids driving up demand for new plants/transmission lines, raising rates for residence as costs are passed on. Utilities sometimes negotiate favorable deals with data centers shifting burdens to households. They use millions of gallons of water daily for evaporative cooling depleting, local supplies and straining well/aquifer. Much water is lost to evaporation. They emit pollutants linked to respiratory issues. They create 24/7 noise. They are disproportionate burden in rural, low income communities. it would be so devastating to the people of Bonner, missoula County and the beautiful state of Montana for the county commissioners to approve this data center or any data center in the surrounding area/county. We all already have huge tax burdens and the amount of new apartments being built is irresponsible as it is.

I urge the Missoula County Consolidated Land Use Board to reject this proposal. Data centers are already causing irreparable damage to the environment and human lives across the country. We cannot allow the same to happen to our county.

There are already communities living within 500 feet of a data center (such as the proposed Bonner Data Center) that are experiencing a significant decrease in quality of life. Communities near such data centers have experienced a loss of access to clean drinking water, increased health problems from air pollution including premature deaths, and an increase in anxiety from the constant drone of the data centers so severe they can no longer sleep or feel safe in their own homes, even after moving to the basement and putting on noise canceling headphones.

According to the American Public Health Association, “chronic noise, even at low levels, can cause annoyance, sleep disruption, and stress that contribute to cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, metabolic disturbances, exacerbation of psychological disorders, and premature mortality,” along with many other health risks.

Research done by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative has shown that “communities within one mile of data centers not only tend to be disproportionately communities of color—relative to the national median—but also face particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and diesel particulate matter levels above the national median.” Research also estimates that as much as 90% of air pollution related health impacts come from fine particulate matter, and has also been shown to contribute to premature deaths in the impacted regions.

Data centers not only put our health at risk, they also increase the cost paid by costumers to power their houses. A report by the Brookings Institute has shown that “electricity costs have outpaced inflation, increasing by 42% since 2019, while overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) has only risen by 29%.” According to their report, data centers push up residential electricity prices due to the amount of electricity they consume, which requires new generation, as well as new infrastructure to transmit that energy.

Data centers don’t help create jobs either. Most of the jobs they create are for their construction but not their long-term use, making them temporary. For the amount of land they take up, data centers employ very few people, anywhere from twenty employees to one hundred-fifty for the larger data centers.

On top of community harm, data centers are also very resource intensive. A study by the Lincoln Institute has show that large data centers consume as much water every day as a city of 50,000 people, they use as much energy as a large city, and take up hundreds of acres. Even if these data centers use reclaimed water, and not local drinking water, that water is not going back into the rivers and streams. Even small data centers can be incredibly taxing to their surrounding environment.

In a time of where more and more people are struggling to make ends meet, where the health of our environment is rapidly declining, and where big tech companies and billionaires are profiting off of the systematic abuse of the American people by failing to pay us livable wages, we don’t need more data centers. We need renewable energy, clean water, affordable housing, access to food, and healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us. In fact, the Pew Research Center has a report stating only 17% of US adults in 2024 said they believe AI will have a positive effect on the US over the next twenty years.

The Montana Constitution clearly states that: “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment.” The right to a clean and healthful environment is one of our inalienable rights. That is one of many reasons why I oppose the construction of the Bonner Data Center.

I graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Environmental Studies. I know first hand how overburdened our environment already is. AI, regardless of what it can do for us, should not come at the cost of our rivers, communities, and breathable air.

AI isn’t dangerous because it’s evil, it’s dangerous because we’re choosing to ignore the true cost of it. We simply cannot afford to build more data centers that overtax our ecosystems without regulation or restraint if we want to avoid climate disaster. We must either find ways to build sustainable data centers without using trade-offs to skirt around environmental responsibility and local harm, or we must not build them at all.

AI has never generated anything that could compare to the beauty of the Treasure State, and it never will. We don’t want more AI slop. We want a livable world. That is why I cannot in good conciseness stand by and do nothing while more data centers are built knowing their true cost and the fact that it is the generations who come after me that will bear the brunt of it.

This land would be better put to use as a place for renewable energy generation, or a community garden. Let the community near this land and the Indigenous people who have been here since time immemorial decide how to use this land—not big tech companies that will always chose profit over the people of this world and the planet we live on.

Thank you for your time.

Resources:
-American Public Health Association: Noise as a Public Health Hazard
-Brookings Institute: Confronting and addressing rising energy bills linked to data centers
-Environmental Data & Governance Initiative: Communities Close to EPA-Regulated Data Centers Face Heightened Air Pollution
-Lincoln Institute: Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom
-Pew Research Center: How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence

I’m concerned about the data center cooling system. As noted previously by “Ben C.” the expected use of the “closed loop cooling system” will have a minimal water requirement, all drawn from the on-site water well. However, the periodic flushing of the coolant will potentially release hazardous chemicals. Neither the County Land Use Board Zoning Special Exception Review nor the County staff Zoning Compliance Review is enabled to address this potentially serious contamination. During their Zoning Compliance Review, County staff should request the engagement of the Missoula Valley Water Quality Board and/or the Missoula County Health Department to identify the chemicals in the coolant and recommend safe disposal, which could possibly mean transporting it offsite to an acceptable waste repository. Any County approval that does not address the disposal of waste coolant would be inadequate.
Gary Matson

I vehemently urge Missoula County Planning to reject this proposal. This data center offers no benefits to the community and has the potential to cause irreparable financial and environmental harm.
1) No employment: Data centers employ very few people. We need an industry in Bonner that can offer employment opportunities for the community.
2) Noise: Data centers generate low frequency noise. Studies have concluded low grade noise leads to detrimental health consequences.
3) Increased utility prices for the rest of us. Their promise to “buy renewable energy” is an accounting term and not a direct supply. Companies meet renewable requirements through energy credits or contracts, not by directly powering their facility with new local clean energy.
4) Water use unsustainable - Water contamination and use in an area with a limited water table. They consume and pollute too much water.

The reason it goes in there is so they can pull thousands of gallons of water from the Blackfoot, to cool the equipment in use…. ABSOLUTELY NOT! Leave our rivers alone and go somewhere else.

Please understand that the losses to our environment and in particular the river ecosystem that will be forever adversely altered, can’t be undone. What AI has to offer us is minuscule when compared to what will be lost in our Montana way of life, by the money grab of a few. Say NO to this data center

Data centers all over thr us, more than 50% failed to even get built. Its a gut check and shotgun spread. They're trying to see what sticks where. Apathy is not an option in this scenario. We need clean water more than we need AI slop. The building owner needs to consider other venues, perhaps a farmers market or flea market for time being.

I absolutely do not support an AI facility at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. We have no need to endanger another waterway for absolutely nothing but greed. Our Montana constitution mandates protection of our water. To give vague information regarding long term impacts to our water is a joke. No good will come of this facility. Protect our small community. Do the right thing Missoula, keep AI facilities out of Missoula and the rest of our small towns.

Upon attending the most recent Bonner city council meeting and hearing from some of the folks with the land use board and the Dept of health (?), it is abundantly clear how unequipped Montana and Missoula county are to handle proposals for AI data centers without federal and state regulations.

There are too many unknowns due to lack of research on AI centers and a dearth of information from Krambu themselves, for our land use board to feel comfortable with approving this project. It is unnerving to hear that a project may still be approved as long as it falls within the confines of zoning laws when our county government and officials know how deeply unpopular this development would be. It is doubly unnerving for the remainder of our state, that a progressive county with strict zoning laws may still allow a data center to be built. I fear that this would lead to a proliferation of AI centers along with those planned or proposed in Butte and Broadview.

It is also extremely disappointing to know that the public will essentially be unable to hold the commissioners, the land board, or our politicians accountable for something that is deeply unpopular with the vast majority of people if they were to approve the data center.

I am absolutely against this project for all the aforementioned reasons and would further suggest Missoula Co. implement conservation standards that would prevent similar project proposals in the future. We should not have to keep fighting the same battles to protect our natural resources!

I have a home directly across the street from the Mill.

I am horrified that this project will have a dramatically negative impact on our water, power, mental health and way-of-life. Not to mention the drastic effects it will have on the schoolchildren at Bonner Elementary.

Please consider this lovely community and decline this project!!

The consequences of this project will lead to more inflation of energy costs, pollute our rivers and environment, threaten our aquifer, etc, and offer no benefit to the local economy. It is a just plain ugly project for our beautiful communities, Bonner and downstream. The County must say no.

This project is of no benefit to the general public, is a huge draw on state water resources, and will result in ecological catastrophe if implemented. The County should refuse this project in its entirety.

I strongly urge the Missoula County Consolidated Land Use Board to deny this proposal. This project is not in the communities best interests. The future of Missoula County’s natural resources are uncertain and are stressed. They are only going to get worse. A project such as this would only stress our natural resources further. We live in a time where we need to conserve our resources, not allow them to be experimented with.

The fact that the reps for the company thought it was fine to be half-hearten and vague about their resource consumption is enough to decline their proposal. From the Berkeley Pit to the Smurfit-Stone Mill, these extraction companies never show the communities upfront what messes will be left for us to clean up. Let’s not wait and find out. It is hard to claim that this project is sustainable. Sadly most e-waste is not recyclable. It would be terrible to see our community contribute to more carbon emissions by enabling companies to extract the minerals to make the batteries, and then throw it back into the soil. If the company were to go bankrupt, will the infrastructure be sitting around? Or will it be shipped somewhere else on the planet to rot and pollute the soil.

Almost every concern a person could have for this data center are high risk concerns. They are not mild or moderate concerns, they are great big huge concerns. What’s worse, is that each concern a person could have about a data center is too new to humanity to be fully understood. If in a decade we find that there are harms to human health, will Krambu still be around to pay their medical bills? If their water-cooling system, that has never been deployed at the proposed scale, doesn’t have the results they promised, do we get to revoke their permit? I do not want this community to become a test dummy for this corporation or this industry. It is unfair to place the burden of such magnitude of uncertainty on the community.

Additionally, the moral and societal implications of supporting an industry that may lower cognitive abilities, memory, and exploit and pirate off of others skills and creativity are so vast, they could not possibly be accounted for or responsibly planned for.

The priorities of this community are for community health, student health, environmental stewardship, local business, and to work to lower housing costs, and responsible planning. Please do not let this cooperation take advantage of our community. We are demanding that this project be not approved.