5 ms·

No more data centers: Ohio township pushes back against influx of Amazon, others

58 points by ericmay 1y ago

ericmay 1y ago
Archive link: https://archive.ph/GSaoN https://archive.ph/GSaoN Dispatch.com link: not sure why the link I added (or thought I added) wasn't to the Dispatch article: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-township-pauses-data-center-construction-amid-influx-of-amazon-others/85989839007/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-to...
Tangurena2 1y ago
Lobbyists for crypto-farms have gotten laws passed in many states that prohibits this sort of regulation. sample: https://dailycoin.com/crypto-mining-law-under-threat-road-to-potential-repeal/ https://dailycoin.com/crypto-mining-law-under-threat-road-to...
delfinom 1y ago
>The Amazon centers are property tax-abated for 10 years, providing instead 1.5% income tax on workers via a joint economic development agreement with Marysville. After construction, a small fraction of workers remain to be taxed, she said. Lol, gotta love the scam. Small town politicians must get some amazing bribes. >While under construction about a year ago, a worker at the Warren Road Amazon facility was crushed to death, Stewart said. Another fell to his death in February at the Industrial Parkway site. And an April 17 fire at the Industrial Parkway center tied up firefighters for more than 30 hours, causing $50 million in damage, Stewart said. During each call, Stewart said, Amazon officials have not been helpful. "They wanted to do background checks on all my firefighters; I wouldn't let them," he said. "And we've struggled to gain access to emergencies. They'll stop us at the gate, and our medic units have been delayed. They're denying us access to patients. You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Repeat until Amazon runs out of employees dumb enough to continue doing so.
- hermannj314 1y ago
  But our CISO paint-by-number checklist says only people with background checks and the NDAs can enter the data center. We can't have emergency services stealing our customer's bits!
- guardiangod 1y ago
  >You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Imagine that you work for a 3 letter US agency and is storing confidential data on AWS. Would you allow random individuals (yes even for emergency personnel) to have unfetter access to your computation and storage systems? What about health data? What about data belonging to other countries? Do you do a sweep for unauthorized remote access device after the incident?
  - stackskipton 1y ago
    If that’s what they are storing, they can do what many other government agencies are doing and staff their own first responders.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    Well the thing with emergency services needing emergency access right now is that Amazon would have needed to think about that at an earlier stage.
  - PenguinCoder 1y ago
    So you let them in with an eyes on, constant escort.
  - stronglikedan 1y ago
    Then they need to have staff on site that is fully qualified to handle any type of emergency any time there is anyone at all in the facility, which they don't.
  - hakkoru 1y ago
    I've never experienced it but I've been told that if an emergency responder needs to enter an area where classified information is stored you let them in, escort them, and security will debrief them and have them sign an NDA after the fact if they saw any classified information.
djohnston 1y ago
Wow that video of the house next to the mine in Arkansas is nuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrkZtuVPdU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycoin.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycoin.com&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrkZtuVPdU&embeds_referring... I would legitimately have driven my car through that building if I lived here.
- ksec 1y ago
  How is that legal in US? I am pretty sure that is not legal is many part of the world even if the sound was only on from 9 to 5. And last time I went to a Datacentre it may be an eye sore but it doesn't produce any noise at all. Do all DC in US produce noise like that?
  - bearjaws 1y ago
    It's Arkansas which follows the golden rule, those who have the gold set the rules.
  - djohnston 1y ago
    I've been never to one that sounds like that, but I've only been to a handful of small ones. I would imagine a company crude enough to set it up so close to someone's house isn't doing any sort of noise abatement either.
  - ramesh31 1y ago
    >How is that legal in US? I am pretty sure that is not legal is many part of the world even if the sound was only on from 9 to 5. Because the people who live there voted for the kind of people who would allow it to happen. And they'll do it again, every time.
    - ActionHank 1y ago
      That's the "capitalism" these politicians are referring to when they are saying they're "pro-capitalism". They're saying that they're very much in support of people with money doing whatever they want to people without.
ctkhn 1y ago
First off I do think being a NIMBY about amazon and data centers is fair game, I wouldn't want those either. But I've been to Columbus, and as far as the metro area goes, this is not the highest and best use place. There's a lot of land in neighborhoods nearer to downtown actually being redeveloped for higher tax value with residential, offices, shopping, and nightlife or that's primed once developers make their way through Old Town East and Franklinton. Even the land being redeveloped in the new fake-downtowns of suburban developments are more around Dublin and mostly within the bounds of 270.
ImJasonH 1y ago
This link doesn't seem to work for me for some reason, but here's the same article in the local paper: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-township-pauses-data-center-construction-amid-influx-of-amazon-others/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-to...
- justaguitarist 1y ago
  I wish the Dispatch was still local but it was bought out a while ago. They pretend to be but it's gone significantly downhill since.
  - Spivak 1y ago
    Not at all the same caliber but one of the Dispatch editors left to go make The Clintonville Spotlight and other local neighborhood papers if you want some actually local news.
  - thepryz 1y ago
    I think you raise a good point. Everything from local newspapers, local TV news, HOA and rental management, and even community sports programs are increasingly run by national organizations that have no connection to the local community and no interest in the community aside from extracting money. Focusing on just the media side of things, you already see how easy it is to spread propaganda and it's only getting worse with SkyDance's merger with CBS. Not sure I have any answers here, but it's definitely a problem we need to solve sooner rather than later.
- ericmay 1y ago
  Thank you - I'm not sure what happened. I know the Dispatch is owned or affiliated with USA Today, and given the paywall I copied the link to post it here with an Archive URL too, but somehow USAToday.com was copied to my clipboard from their site.
- meatmanek 1y ago
  This now 404s.
thepryz 1y ago
I'm familiar with site in question and not surprised. The location of the first campus built in Hilliard is extremely problematic, but more due to traffic patterns than anything else. The entrance is along a road that gets busy and trucks going into and out of the campus have been known to cause backups while they wait to get access through the security gates. They alienated a lot of the local residents from that alone. As for the safety record, I think it's fair to say that the issues are largely due to AWS leadership in the central Ohio region not taking safety seriously and internal politics where leaders tend to be more concerned with their own self-interest, avoiding a PIP, managing perception, and advancing their careers. There's a lot of talk about prioritizing safety but there's a distinct lack of ownership from the senior leaders. The relationships between Safety, Security and Operations are more adversarial than collaborative but it's easy to simply ignore the problem and/or push the blame to others while nothing gets solved. I have plenty of anecdotes I could share but it would just be airing dirty laundry and ultimately not productive.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report

58 points by ericmay 1y ago

Archive link: https://archive.ph/GSaoN https://archive.ph/GSaoN Dispatch.com link: not sure why the link I added (or thought I added) wasn't to the Dispatch article: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-township-pauses-data-center-construction-amid-influx-of-amazon-others/85989839007/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-to...

Tangurena2 1y ago

Lobbyists for crypto-farms have gotten laws passed in many states that prohibits this sort of regulation. sample: https://dailycoin.com/crypto-mining-law-under-threat-road-to-potential-repeal/ https://dailycoin.com/crypto-mining-law-under-threat-road-to...

delfinom 1y ago

>The Amazon centers are property tax-abated for 10 years, providing instead 1.5% income tax on workers via a joint economic development agreement with Marysville. After construction, a small fraction of workers remain to be taxed, she said. Lol, gotta love the scam. Small town politicians must get some amazing bribes. >While under construction about a year ago, a worker at the Warren Road Amazon facility was crushed to death, Stewart said. Another fell to his death in February at the Industrial Parkway site. And an April 17 fire at the Industrial Parkway center tied up firefighters for more than 30 hours, causing $50 million in damage, Stewart said. During each call, Stewart said, Amazon officials have not been helpful. "They wanted to do background checks on all my firefighters; I wouldn't let them," he said. "And we've struggled to gain access to emergencies. They'll stop us at the gate, and our medic units have been delayed. They're denying us access to patients. You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Repeat until Amazon runs out of employees dumb enough to continue doing so.

hermannj314 1y ago
But our CISO paint-by-number checklist says only people with background checks and the NDAs can enter the data center. We can't have emergency services stealing our customer's bits!
guardiangod 1y ago
>You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Imagine that you work for a 3 letter US agency and is storing confidential data on AWS. Would you allow random individuals (yes even for emergency personnel) to have unfetter access to your computation and storage systems? What about health data? What about data belonging to other countries? Do you do a sweep for unauthorized remote access device after the incident?
- stackskipton 1y ago
  If that’s what they are storing, they can do what many other government agencies are doing and staff their own first responders.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  Well the thing with emergency services needing emergency access right now is that Amazon would have needed to think about that at an earlier stage.
- PenguinCoder 1y ago
  So you let them in with an eyes on, constant escort.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  Then they need to have staff on site that is fully qualified to handle any type of emergency any time there is anyone at all in the facility, which they don't.
- hakkoru 1y ago
  I've never experienced it but I've been told that if an emergency responder needs to enter an area where classified information is stored you let them in, escort them, and security will debrief them and have them sign an NDA after the fact if they saw any classified information.

djohnston 1y ago

Wow that video of the house next to the mine in Arkansas is nuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrkZtuVPdU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycoin.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycoin.com&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrkZtuVPdU&embeds_referring... I would legitimately have driven my car through that building if I lived here.

ksec 1y ago
How is that legal in US? I am pretty sure that is not legal is many part of the world even if the sound was only on from 9 to 5. And last time I went to a Datacentre it may be an eye sore but it doesn't produce any noise at all. Do all DC in US produce noise like that?
- bearjaws 1y ago
  It's Arkansas which follows the golden rule, those who have the gold set the rules.
- djohnston 1y ago
  I've been never to one that sounds like that, but I've only been to a handful of small ones. I would imagine a company crude enough to set it up so close to someone's house isn't doing any sort of noise abatement either.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  >How is that legal in US? I am pretty sure that is not legal is many part of the world even if the sound was only on from 9 to 5. Because the people who live there voted for the kind of people who would allow it to happen. And they'll do it again, every time.
  - ActionHank 1y ago
    That's the "capitalism" these politicians are referring to when they are saying they're "pro-capitalism". They're saying that they're very much in support of people with money doing whatever they want to people without.

ctkhn 1y ago

First off I do think being a NIMBY about amazon and data centers is fair game, I wouldn't want those either. But I've been to Columbus, and as far as the metro area goes, this is not the highest and best use place. There's a lot of land in neighborhoods nearer to downtown actually being redeveloped for higher tax value with residential, offices, shopping, and nightlife or that's primed once developers make their way through Old Town East and Franklinton. Even the land being redeveloped in the new fake-downtowns of suburban developments are more around Dublin and mostly within the bounds of 270.

ImJasonH 1y ago

This link doesn't seem to work for me for some reason, but here's the same article in the local paper: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-township-pauses-data-center-construction-amid-influx-of-amazon-others/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/08/ohio-to...

justaguitarist 1y ago
I wish the Dispatch was still local but it was bought out a while ago. They pretend to be but it's gone significantly downhill since.
- Spivak 1y ago
  Not at all the same caliber but one of the Dispatch editors left to go make The Clintonville Spotlight and other local neighborhood papers if you want some actually local news.
- thepryz 1y ago
  I think you raise a good point. Everything from local newspapers, local TV news, HOA and rental management, and even community sports programs are increasingly run by national organizations that have no connection to the local community and no interest in the community aside from extracting money. Focusing on just the media side of things, you already see how easy it is to spread propaganda and it's only getting worse with SkyDance's merger with CBS. Not sure I have any answers here, but it's definitely a problem we need to solve sooner rather than later.
ericmay 1y ago
Thank you - I'm not sure what happened. I know the Dispatch is owned or affiliated with USA Today, and given the paywall I copied the link to post it here with an Archive URL too, but somehow USAToday.com was copied to my clipboard from their site.
meatmanek 1y ago
This now 404s.

thepryz 1y ago

I'm familiar with site in question and not surprised. The location of the first campus built in Hilliard is extremely problematic, but more due to traffic patterns than anything else. The entrance is along a road that gets busy and trucks going into and out of the campus have been known to cause backups while they wait to get access through the security gates. They alienated a lot of the local residents from that alone. As for the safety record, I think it's fair to say that the issues are largely due to AWS leadership in the central Ohio region not taking safety seriously and internal politics where leaders tend to be more concerned with their own self-interest, avoiding a PIP, managing perception, and advancing their careers. There's a lot of talk about prioritizing safety but there's a distinct lack of ownership from the senior leaders. The relationships between Safety, Security and Operations are more adversarial than collaborative but it's easy to simply ignore the problem and/or push the blame to others while nothing gets solved. I have plenty of anecdotes I could share but it would just be airing dirty laundry and ultimately not productive.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report