By Bella McAtee
OMAHA, Neb. — Nebraska has added 20 major data centers in the past 20 years, according to DataCenters.com, due to it being the only 100% public powered state.
Although, as the data industry expands, innovation leads to lawmakers and community advocates pushing for regulation to protect Nebraskan utility costs as well as land and water use.
Senator Machaela Cavanaugh introduced bill LB1111 on Jan. 16, a bill aimed at addressing infrastructure and energy costs associated with data centers.
Jane Kleeb, founder and director of BOLD Alliance, an organization that advocates for rural land and water protection, said the legislation is a decent starting point for establishing the guard rails needed on the data industry in America.
“It says that all the energy infrastructure that has to be built has to be billed to the data centers, not to ratepayers, individual ratepayers, like you and me,” Kleeb said.
However, the data centers don’t just affect the utility costs for the citizens near them but also from where the power for the centers is created. The Meta data center in Sarpy County is powered through Omaha Public Power District’s North Omaha Station, which has burned coal since it was built in 1954.
The North Omaha coal plant burns coal against a bright blue sky.
The coal plant has caused the North Omaha community major health risks and polluted the land. OPPD has previously said the plant would transition to natural gas. However, in December, the OPPD board voted to continue burning coal for an undetermined number of years because it would be cheaper than the switch to natural gas.
Cheryl Weston, a North Omaha creator and activist with her talk show Conversations with Cheryl, said the decision left the North Omaha community with a sense of false hope and betrayal.
“You lied. And there’s no other way you can justify that,” Weston said. “Has it caused more anxiety? It’s caused people who thought that, you know, ‘Hey, my health is going to improve.’ [But,] instead, my bill’s going to go up, and this is going to continue.”
Weston said Nebraskans should stop, take a step back and regroup before they can effectively move forward in the fight against entities such as data and power.
