Several more residents shared opinions about data centers in Marion County.
“For the past few weeks, national news and radio flooded the airwaves about the harm and devastation of advanced artificial intelligence because of a huge hack meltdown that IT companies had with their own systems. Until the corporations designing these systems of advanced technology are regulated, they should not be using it and data centers should not be built. What is really behind this hurry up push they are instigating? They already know most Americans are against big data centers coming into their neighborhoods. Why? These massive centers swallow up our natural resources and leave a negative financial impact on any community near them. They use too much water and electricity. They put out a loud noise overload into the surrounding communities that are impacted by their presence. They do not create jobs except for their initial massive construction design. The state of Florida now has 16 counties that have put a temporary moratorium against data centers and three counties have banned them all together. Marion County boasts of this area as being the “Horse Capital of the World, yet this county still has no mandatory recycling for it’s tax paying citizens and hopefully our commissioners and the citizens of Ocala will not allow big tech to come here and ruin our communities and take our natural resources. Don’t let the “bad genie” out of the bottle.” – Deborah Green, Silver Springs
“This local government does not have a clue what the power that these data centers require! They are doing nothing more then guessing! They need to look at existing centers at place like Chicago, Illinois area and Virginia/DC areas. The current utility infrastructure in Florida will not handle it. Even place like Texas which has a horrible power grid can not handle these requirements at peak usage. You will see brownouts during these super hot summers.” – Kevin Schubert, Ocala…