Since mid-December, when San Gabriel Valley residents uncovered the City of Industry’s plans to transform the Puente Hills Mall into a data center — a facility meant to house large computers often associated with Artificial Intelligence — they have been mobilizing to express their opposition and concerns that the new development might cause environmental hazards that ripple out to surrounding communities.
Community members say they have been given very little information about the data center. Samuel Brown Vazquez, an environmental activist in Bassett and a member of the Avocado Heights Vaqueros, said that when he first heard about the potential data center in December, he and other community members filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain more information. Those documents confirmed it: the City of Industry was approving zoning changes and planning to allow a data center in the Puente Hills Mall, along with two battery centers in the city.
Sophia Ramirez, a Whittier resident who has been involved with the activism against the data center, said that when she, Brown Vazquez and other organizers canvassed and went door to door with fliers about the data center, she found that many people did not know about it…