Data Center Interim Zoning

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I have read several pages of comments and would encourage the committee to ignore most of the comments as the parrot partisan political ideology and exhibit no intelligent study of the AI data centers. This is a technology that will shape the nature of our society for years to come. It behaves us to be at the lead in the discussion and not be at the mercy of other countries.

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I support these interim zoning restrictions. I think Missoula county should continue to prioritize the people who live here. Please keep the county free of data centers and the high costs and environmental degradation that come with them.

Absolutely NO

Thank you for considering this moratorium. I am writing in support of the moratorium to give the county time to examine and tighten our regulations to keep Missoula County free any data centers.

As Commissioner Slotnick mentioned, the zoning regulations in 2021 mentioned data centers - but the centers then don't even come close to the centers now. As we consider regulations as a community, I urge the county to look ahead another 5 years and put in place stringent regulations that will protect our air, water, climate, and wildlife. Whatever we come up in a year will be almost immediately obsolete, so I urge the County to think ahead.

Time and time again, these Data Centers have proven to expand beyond the size, resource usage, and neighborhood impact that they propose in their initial materials to successfully land a lease. Time and time again, these companies prove that they are disingenuous at best. They withhold information. They contradict themselves. They lie. Keep beautiful Montana for Montanans. Don't let these big tech companies come and assault our land for their own profit, making our state less inhabitable, and hurt our ability to recreate in our own home.

The Bonner debacle is proof that Bonner-ites, Missoulians, and Montanans don't want Data Centers in our backyard. Though I understand the County's current regulations are a step in the right direction, I would urge Missoula County (as well as the State of Montana, and the entire country) to flat-out ban these large-scale data centers. They are not good for us. AI is not good for us. These centers will only hurt our community.

But for now: Please establish this moratorium. So no data centers move into our backyard before we have a chance to thoroughly evaluate their impacts, and the County's stance on them.

I am grateful the county is conducting a deeper investigation of zoning such a project.

Data centers are proving to be incredibly disruptive and toxic to the communities they are occupying.

It is my sincere hope that the county does vote to put off allowing data center consideration until current zoning law reflects accurately the resource pressure and toxic byproducts of this industry.

I am in favor of interim zoning restrictions on data center applications. The environmental, economic, and lifestyle costs to Missoulians and Montanans have not been adequately considered and the rush to build new data centers put all of these at risk. It is important to make any decisions regarding data centers in a thoughtful and measured way. Interim zoning restrictions will help insure that we can make the best decisions about these facilities. I support the interim zoning restrictions. Thank you.

I strongly support interim zoning pausing development or expansion of data centers.

We have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. Any data center established in Montana will absolutely infringe on that right as they are responsible for mass consumption of water, energy, and resources. Additionally they impact the health and welfare of the people in the community (as seen in Virginia, for instance), with little to no benefit for the economy. Data centers also almost guarantee dark money seeping further into our state’s government. No data centers in our state, let alone our county!

It makes sense to determine all the things that will affect the county from such projects and tobensure minimum distruption to the functioning of the county before allowing such projects to proceed . Please vote for the interim zoning plan.

I strongly recommend that Missoula County adopt interim zoning.

-We need sufficient and enforceable regulations to guarantee data centers have no negative impacts on MT citizens and our environment before approval is considered.
- According to our state constitition, which was upheld by Held V MT, our state must ensure the present and future health of our youth, which data centers are in direct violation of. Example- electricity and water usage and r
The esulting pollution and lack of availability.
- Data centers contribute to our lack of privacy and freedom that is foundational to our country.

Now is the time to do what is right for the children of today and tomorrow, not what is in the best place interest of corporate profits.

NO. NO. NO to these data centers. They have no benefit to the citizenry of Montana and WE. DON'T. WANT. THEM.

My concerns are captured well in an online post entitled "Man at City Council Meeting Makes Devastating Case Against Proposed Local Data Center" (https://futurism.com/future-society/city-council-meeting-case-against-data-center):

The growing anger over the AI industry’s obsession with building massive and resource-intensive data centers across the country is as palpable than ever.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center highlighted widespread public concern over the facilities’ environmental harms, effects on home energy costs, and the quality of life of nearby residents.

These concerns do seem justified. Experts have found that data centers can spike local electricity prices, generate copious amounts of greenhouse gases, and place a major strain on freshwater resources.
Now, a self-described content creator and digital artist named Will Hollingsworth who spoke up during a city council meeting in Ravenna, Ohio — a small town of 11,000 residents — is turning heads with his passionate argument against data centers. The council’s chambers became overwhelmed with a crowd of almost 100 people during the April 10 meeting, which hosted a debate over a proposed 12-month moratorium on data center construction in the area inspired by a nearby community’s own moratorium.

Hollingsworth’s four-minute speech perfectly summarizes why the backlash is starting to reach a tipping point, as more politicians are calling for a moratorium on new construction.

“These facilities can use millions of gallons of water per day,” he said, as seen in a video that went viral over the weekend. “We are being asked to drain our reservoirs so a chatbot can write a poem or so our sheriff can generate a picture of himself standing next to Bigfoot,” he added, picking up laughter in the room.

Hollingsworth said that he used to rely on AI at his job overseeing video content production at a mattress company, making his point of view particularly noteworthy. He explained that he used to feed AI image generating app Midjourney “prompts to create the perfect commercial, training the very machine that would eventually replace me as three months later they would lay me off.”

Now he’s become a foe of the tech, he said.

“They want us to trust a trillion dollar industry that tells us with a straight face that they can suck five million gallons of water out of our ground a day,” Hollingsworth argued, to “use it as a liquid heat sink, and return it to our rivers without a single consequence.”

Yet the water “does not stay in the loop,” he explained, but “evaporates into the sky by millions of gallons,” while AI companies downplay the amount of “forever chemical runoff” which is used to “bleed the lines to remove toxic sludge.”

“They say the water is filled once and recycled forever,” Hollingsworth said. “In a laboratory, that might be true. But we aren’t living in a laboratory. We’re living in Ohio.”
The content creator also pointed out how few jobs these data centers could offer, despite being a massive strain on resources.

“A big employer who uses the water of 50,000 people… which only hires about ten people is not an employer,” Hollingsworth said. “They are an extraction.”

“I am not a cynic when it comes to technology,” he concluded. “I am a believer in community. I believe that a drop of clean water for a Ravenna child is worth more than a billion AI generated images. Let us choose the child.”

His powerful speech clearly struck a chord. Beyond the assembled committee voting for a one-year moratorium on all new data centers in the area, other netizens lauded him for speaking up.

“There it is right there,” one Reddit user wrote. “Lies, lies and more lies from megacorps invested up to their eyeballs in having just a few people in government believe them.”

“God damn that was good,” another user wrote. “Seriously this should be used as a script in every county these corporations are hustling.”

The fight is far from over. Ravenna is only one of several locations across the state being eyed for data center expansion projects. And plenty of other battles are being fought in other parts of the country as well, as the anger continues to grow.

Just earlier this week, voters in a small town outside of St. Louis, Missouri, were furious after city council approved a $6 billion data center. As Politico reports, local residents showed up in droves, successfully unseating four incumbents mere days later.

“I do hope other towns stand up and speak out like I did,” Hollingsworth later argued in a comment on Reddit. “I know I’m not the only good orator here in the country, maybe this will inspire a wave of political action!”

The impact on the surrounding area these data centers have need to be more closely studied before approving anything. Time and again they are disrupting people's lives, causing health issues, wrecking the waterways, wrecking the surrounding habitats, and in general making the area around them uninhabitable. I don't believe a single one of these data centers has improved the lives of the surrounding area. They've not even had a neutral impact.

Put the brakes on these installations. Vote YES to implement the interir zoning and pause any further development of data centers in Missoula county.

You all need to protect us from the mega data centers. They hold no benefit to communities. They do not create jobs. They consume too many resources and they wreck communities. They produce all kinds of pollution including heat and light. The ill effects and costs ALWAYS get passed onto the community. There is no benefit here.

One more point: Please do whatever is necessary to protect the aquifer and the rivers. I hope you all understand how important that is--once lost it is gone forever

The harms of data centers are too great for them to be built here. Look at what happened to the water in Wyoming (https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-data-center-waste-water-bacterium-cheyenne-wyoming-2026-7?op=1). We are being asked to carry the cost while tech companies profit. This must be stopped. Water is a precious, limited resource, as is clean air. We do not need AI, but we do need water and air.

Please vote yes on pausing data centers. They do not fall in line with the values on Montanans, and are incredibly taxing on our resources and are harmful to the environment. They also do not support the local economy. We need affordable housing and opportunities for the local economy to grow, not data centers.

I strongly recommend that Missoula County adopt interim zoning under the emergency of:
- no sufficient legal framework at the local, state, or federal levels for data centers and AI
- the climate crisis that Missoula County and Missoula City claim to be leaders in addressing
- a rapid progression of fascism utilizing data centers as a method to control resources and the populous
- preventing the negating of all historical investments in environmental rehab
- and most importantly, the severe lack of public trust as more corruption is uncovered at the state and local levels, all related to the "demand" for data centers and AI

In light of how this emergency includes so many categories of statute, and the severe lack of independent and scientific assessments on data centers and AI, the minimum time for emergency zoning should be 2 years. Even this timeline is hardly sufficient for scientific studies, so a much more appropriate timeline would be 4 years, which allows for studies to occur, and the Legislative / Local Rule processes to follow.

Your voters are paying attention. The time to choose between being a dedicated public servant or a holder of empty promise is now.