A proposed $500 million, 280-acre data center in southwestern Sangamon County, Illinois is drawing heavy public scrutiny around local environmental impact.
Residents like Gary Schultz are pushing back on air and noise pollution risks, signaling potential friction for large-scale compute deployments in rural areas.
The project’s scale implies a sizable power draw and substation build-out, though the article doesn’t detail grid upgrades or cooling strategy, which are critical for AI workloads.
Local leaders are emphasizing a property tax windfall, highlighting the usual tradeoff between hyperscale infrastructure and community quality-of-life concerns.
For AI infrastructure planners, the hearing underscores how siting, power planning, and community engagement can make or break a half-billion-dollar data center.
Public resistance at this stage is a red flag for project timelines, permitting risk, and long-term operating certainty.
The full article is worth a read for the on-the-ground perspective that often gets glossed over in high-level AI data center narratives.
Source: Hundreds attend public hearing on proposed $500M data center
