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By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams
The New Brunswick, New Jersey City Council voted Wednesday to cancel plans to construct an artificial intelligence data center and instead build a new public park where the 27,000-square foot facility would have gone.
Artificial intelligence data centers—which house the servers and other infrastructure needed to train and power AI models—have major environmental and climate impacts, as they consume massive amounts of electricity and water, as well as rare earth metals and other resources.
According to New Brunswick Patch, hundreds of people packed into Wednesday evening’s city hall meeting to voice concerns that the proposed data center would send their electricity and water bills skyrocketing, and that the facility would harm the environment.
“Many people did not want this in their neighborhood,” New Brunswick NAACP president Bruce Morgan said during the council meeting. “We don’t want these kinds of centers that’s going to take resources from the community.”
The site of the nixed data center, 100 Jersey Avenue, is already slated for development including 600 new apartments—10% of which will be affordable housing units—and warehouses for startups and other small businesses. Now, thanks to Wednesday’s vote, a park is on the agenda too.
“This is great news, no data center,” New Brunswick resident Anne Norris told Patch.
“My kids went through the public school system; we didn’t pay for lunch because we have so many families under the poverty line,” Norris said before taking aim at what she said was the dearth of affordable housing approved for the site.
“Given the economic status of the people who live in New Brunswick, I don’t think 10% is really sufficient,” she contended.
Following the council meeting, jubilant residents celebrated the data center’s cancellation, chanting slogans including, “The people united will never be defeated!”
“We say a big ‘fuck you’ to Big Tech!” local organizer Ben Dziobek shouted to the crowd. “We say a big ‘fuck you’ to private equity! And it’s time to build communities, not data centers.”
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Brett Wilkins
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.