County officials say there is nothing they can do to stop a multibillion-dollar AI data center planned for Calvert, but a stream of area residents who showed up to a Mobile County Commission meeting warned the project could push bears into neighborhoods, drive up utility bills and disrupt local agriculture.
The commission’s agenda for its regular meeting included no items pertaining to the Calvert Infrastructure Hub proposed by Beacon Data Centers, but a handful of Mobile County women concerned about the project questioned the three commissioners about it during the public comment period.
What Beacon plans to build
The Calvert Infrastructure Hub will feature two buildings on 95 acres of land west of U.S. Highway 43 and north of Shepard House Road supporting artificial intelligence, cloud programs and other internet services, according to Beacon Data Centers’ website. The company says the project will use “no more water than a small office building” in its closed-loop cooling system, will not affect residents’ power bills, and will sit at least 1,000 feet from the nearest neighbors.
Creola resident Melissa Bailey urged the county to stop Beacon from breaking ground on the project later this year, claiming it would draw an inordinate amount of water from the local supply and cause property values to decline. Describing herself as “a tree-hugger,” Bailey also worried the facility could drive wildlife out of the surrounding forest and into neighborhoods.
“We are already struggling with bears in the Saraland and Creola area,” she said. “They’ve become so accustomed to people they are just walking into people’s yards, which is not good for us or them.”
Claims about heat, crops and light
Linda Poiroux, who lives in West Mobile, told commissioners the data center would double residents’ utility costs and harm local agriculture.
“It will increase the heat up to 20 degrees five miles around that data center, so you can’t grow crops,” she said. “There are incidences of cattle that have stopped producing. They’re sterile since they put data centers next to farms. We’re talking about stillbirths and not being able to have cattle. What will that do to us?”
Poiroux also said the facility would create enough light pollution that Calvert residents “won’t be able to look at their stars” from their property. Noting that another developer is building a similar data center in Prichard, she argued the county’s investment in nearby Africatown as a destination for cultural and historical tourism could be jeopardized.
Washington County resident Lucille Campbell-Foster brought a petition she said contained signatures from more than 300 area residents concerned about the data center, and asked the commissioners whether any of them would make a motion to impose a moratorium on the project. An environmental impact study and a public hearing should be held before any work begins, she added. It is the commission’s “statutory authority” to protect county residents from projects like the data center, she argued.
Why the county says its hands are tied
District 3 Commissioner Randall Dueitt said he would not make that motion, because Mobile County does not have the legal authority to block the project from proceeding to construction.
County attorney Jay Ross was more categorical. Because the data center would be built in an area set aside for industrial development, Ross said, the county does not even have the power to issue the project’s construction permit.
“There is no authority the commission has to impose a moratorium or in any way stop this project,” he said. “We can’t stop it. There’s no statutory authority to do so.”
District 2 Commission President Connie Hudson said she and the other commissioners empathize with the residents’ concerns, but the county’s lack of zoning leaves the body without tools to act.
“We live in this community. We don’t live where you live, but we understand the concerns,” she said. “When you say ‘statutory authority,’ we don’t have that.”
The company’s response
Beacon Executive Vice President and Co-Founder Joe Shovlin has previously said the data center will be “a meaningful benefit” to Mobile County.
“We’ve taken great care to design this project to ensure that any impacts to neighbors are eliminated or minimized and that there won’t be any utility bill increases for ratepayers,” he said in a statement. “Through our meetings with stakeholders and community leaders, we’ve been able to refine project details to make this one of the best-designed and least impactful projects of its type in the country. We look forward to continuing those conversations, which will build on the great feedback we received in our community meeting.”
Calvert was selected for Beacon’s sixth American facility because the north Mobile County community offers “available industrial land with compatible surrounding uses, close connectivity to sufficient power sources and a strong regional workforce with industrial experience,” according to the project’s website.
A growing regional debate
The exchange in Mobile reflects a statewide argument over data centers, which have been proposed in communities from Foley to Lowndes County. Supporters point to construction jobs and tax revenue; critics cite water use, noise, power demand and the transformations that large industrial campuses bring to rural areas. Unlike municipalities, Alabama counties have no zoning power unless residents vote to create it, which is why commissioners in Mobile County say their only real role in the Calvert project will be watching it happen.
Construction is expected to begin later this year.