LAWRENCEBURG, Tenn. (WTVF) — Residents of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, are raising questions about transparency after learning of plans to build a data center on the outskirts of their mostly rural community of around 11,000 people.
The proposed facility would be approximately 60,000 square feet and sits on land that was previously zoned as Large Lot Residential. In January, the city council voted to rezone the property to Light Industrial. The facility has been previously described as a cloud storage data center — a type of building that, according to IBM, houses IT infrastructure resources for shared use by multiple customers through an internet connection.
Many residents say they only learned of the project after Elle McCann wrote a Letter to the Editor published last month in the local Advocate newspaper.
"The response from the community was overwhelming," McCann said.
Alan Salhany, a local business owner whose great-grandfather first moved to the area in 1911, said he found out the same way.
"Actually I was told by a friend who read the Letter to the Editor that was in the paper," Salhany said.
Within days of word spreading, an online petition gathered thousands of signatures. A crowd packed the April 23rd city council meeting, voicing frustration to the mayor and council for not providing more specifics about the project. City leaders listened but did not respond.
McCann said the city followed the legal minimum required by the Lawrenceburg City Charter — which includes notices published in the local paper and a posted sign at the site — but that previous proposals had been handled with far more openness.
"I think, personally, they did the bare minimum of what was required to get it out there," McCann said.
"I think that we've seen so many times with other things, like we got a Waffle House and it was all the talk and you could see the plans. It felt exciting and you could see how it was progressing. But then there was nothing at all about a data center being mentioned," McCann said.
Salhany said the silence surrounding the project has made him suspicious.
"There's been no talk about it. It's very, it's hush-hush," Salhany said. When asked why he thought that was, he said, "I think that was because they didn't want us to know."
Kolby Willis, a local business owner, said the lack of communication reflects a broader frustration.
"People are sick and tired of being left in the dark, and being put on a 'need to know' basis with things that affect us on a day-to-day basis," Willis said.
Among those most directly affected is Ashley Massey, whose family has raised beef cattle on 40 acres of open farmland just a few miles from the center of Lawrenceburg since the 1900s.
"Flatwoods is definitely our home place. The Massey family has been in this area since the 1900s," Massey said.
"It's all we have, really. And it's disappearing at a rapid rate," Massey said.
The proposed data center would be located approximately 3 miles from her property. Massey said research she has reviewed suggests the noise from such facilities can carry far beyond that.
"It's about three miles from here. And from what different reports and research I've seen is that other data centers, you can hear them and see them from five miles plus away," Massey said.
Noise from large generators is a significant concern for many in the community. Rocky Stone, a resident of Summertown, north of Lawrenceburg, raised the issue at a recent meeting of the Lawrence County Rules Committee.
"When they're on, those are two jet planes taking off. I've called people that live next door to these data centers, and you can hear them five miles away just like a racetrack," Stone said.
Diane Lowey, who lives in Loretto, just south of Lawrenceburg, said the impact would extend well beyond city limits.
"It will affect all of us," Lowey said. "Not just the city of Lawrenceburg. So I move to make it a county issue as well as a city issue," Lowey said.
Opponents also cite concerns about power and water consumption. Data centers are known to draw large amounts of electricity from local utilities and often rely on local water supplies to continuously cool equipment.
"All across the nation when you look at everything involved with data centers, the power consumption, and especially in small towns like this, it always, the power consumption always goes way up. Water consumption goes way up," Willis said.
Carla Nicholson, a Lawrenceburg resident, said the environmental impact could be wide-ranging.
"It's impactful not only on the animals within our community, the people within our community, but the whole environment. The birds and their migration patterns are gonna be affected, as well as butterflies and bats. All of those things are gonna negatively impact all of us," Nicholson said.
Two local leaders did speak publicly about the plan during an April 20 interview with local radio station WLX: Vic Pusser, the CEO of Lawrenceburg Utility Systems, and Ryan Egly, President of Lawrence County's Chamber of Commerce.
There are dozens of data center facilities throughout Middle Tennessee. For Massey and many of her neighbors, the project represents more than just a land-use dispute.
"This is really close to home and close to heart," Massey said.
"This just feels like yet another hurdle, yet another stress," Massey said.
William Sellers, pastor of the Lawrenceburg Seventh Day Adventist Church, said the lack of advance notice caught the community off guard.
"This one took us all by surprise, who found out about it," Sellers said.
Next week, we check in with leaders from Lawrenceburg Utility Systems about cost concerns that residents have raised, as well as more about the project that has not yet been widely reported.
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