KAAL TV reports…

A new poll is looking to answer the question of how much support there is in the Pine Island community for the data center project.

The person behind the poll, who shared the results with ABC 6 News, said it only counted people who have addresses within 55963 area code. It should also be noted that the author has publicly pushed back on the data center project.

Of the over 650 people who responded to the poll, just over 19% said they support the project while nearly 76% said they did not support it. 4.4% said they were not sure.

These numbers track with broader results, including a recent KSTP/SurveyUSA poll that found 60% of Minnesotans oppose data centers in their area, 27% are in favor, and the remainder were uncertain.

The article includes the full report.

Sun This Week (Dakota County) reports…

The Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development in Farmington will halt its lawsuit today against the city of Farmington, the Farmington School District, and Tract Land Development of Colorado due to the increasing costs of the litigation.

“The merits of the lawsuit are valid, but the ongoing high costs of litigation are no longer sustainable by the few residents who have personally shouldered the legal costs to keep the lawsuit alive,” said Cathy Johnson, chair of the CRDCD.

The Coalition is a group of residents opposed to the 2.5 million-square-foot data center concept that has been proposed to be built near residential neighborhoods.

The Coalition’s decision to withdraw from the lawsuit does not affect the Castle Rock Township’s companion lawsuit against Farmington that challenges the breach of the Orderly Annexation Agreement.

More information on the Castle Rock Township’s lawsuit…

The Farmington City Council approved in December 2024 a final planned unit development with Tract to build up to 12 data center buildings in a $5 billion project. The data center end user has not yet been identified.

Castle Rock Township Board voted unanimously to sue the city of Farmington on Jan. 14, 2025, accusing the city of violating the orderly annexation agreement when it granted the approval. Castle Rock’s move followed a Dakota County judge’s November 2024 approval of an injunction that halted the technology park project.

The article goes on with greater detail.

The Reformer asks an intriguing question in a recent article: Big Tech wants to build a data center in your city. Is it worth it? The answer is potentially more intriguing for readers because is seems to depend on several factors, including where it is located. City, suburb, rural area? Are you retrofitting an older building or building new? What deals have been made?…

Community opposition to data centers is rising fast, but big computing facilities still have at least one influential fan.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state and I had a chance to get a big … AI plant or data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous,” President Donald Trump told reporters last month.

He returned to the subject recently, in harsher form.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”

Recent public polling shows Trump’s stance on data centers is unpopular, even within his own party. A recent Economist/YouGov poll finds the general concept of data center construction underwater by more than 30 percentage points, and Americans opposed to data centers in their communities by a margin of more than 3 to 1.

Fifty-two percent of Republicans would say no to a new data center nearby, while just 28% would support one, the poll found. Respondents expressed particular concern about data centers’ impacts on electric bills and home values.

Those worries and others — about excessive water usage, air and noise pollution, strain on the power grid and secret deals between developers and local officials — are bubbling up across Minnesota as Meta brings the state’s first hyperscale data center online in Rosemount, and Google seeks permission to build two more near Rochester and Duluth. There’s unease about what happens inside these facilities, too.

The use several local examples, such as downtown Minneapolis…

Downtown Minneapolis has several smallish data centers in operation and at least one more under construction. A few dozen more dot the Twin Cities’ suburbs. Some of these have operated uneventfully for decades. But Minnesota does not yet have any computing clusters to rival Quincy’s or Loudoun County’s.

Rosemount…

Meta’s Rosemount facility will be the state’s first experience with the newer generation of industrial-scale facilities that has soured public opinion on data centers generally. Rosemount says Meta could pay the city up to $20 million in property taxes over 20 years and support 148 permanent jobs once operational, likely later this year or in early 2027. The city reported total revenues of $68.8 million in 2024.
The Dakota County assessor expects the project to have a total tax bill of $2.6 million in 2028, Rosemount community development director Adam Kienberger told the Reformer.

The article continues to compare and contrast the experience or potential in each area.

KSNI reports…

The City of St. Cloud is trying to write its data center rules before anyone proposes building one.

The St. Cloud Planning Commission holds a public hearing Tuesday evening at 6:00 at city hall on draft amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code that would, for the first time, define what a data center is in St. Cloud and specify where the largest ones could go.

The city itself is the applicant. In a September 1st memo, Community Development Director Matt Glaesman writes that the city’s current position leans on general industrial language and “a dated zoning definition with no specific site design standards.” Acting now, before a site-specific proposal lands, is “the best practice to establish appropriate standards based on community goals,” he writes.

The drafts split data centers into two categories. Enterprise or on-site facilities, the kind that have quietly operated inside businesses for years, are capped at 2,000 servers, 10,000 square feet and 50 megawatts of peak electrical use. Anything bigger is considered hyper-scale.

The St. Cloud Planning Commission plans to make a recommendation…

The Planning Commission would forward a recommendation to the city council, which holds its own public hearing before either document can be amended. Because the city is the applicant, either body can postpone action to gather more information.

The Aitkin Age reports…

No major data center projects are currently proposed or planned in Aitkin County, however, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy said, “More than 20 large hyperscale and AI data centers have been proposed across Minnesota, with key projects located in Rosemount, Farmington and Pine Island. Tech companies are targeting Minnesota for its cool climate, available land and clean energy goals, though these projects face growing local pushback over massive water and power use.”

KSTP TV reports…

A poll shows most Minnesotans oppose data centers as debate grows over new proposals across the state.

A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS/SurveyUSA poll found 60% of Minnesotans are against data centers, while 27% are in favor and the rest are unsure.

State officials at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) say there have been 12 proposed data centers in Minnesota this year, with more proposals expected next year.

To get Minnesotans’ perspective, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS took to the Minnesota State Fair to ask residents about their opinions regarding data centers.

Minnesota Star Tribune reports….

Google’s controversial northeast Minnesota data center proposal has “gaps” and “deficiencies,” the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said of its final environmental review. But the agency stopped short of objecting to it.

In a late August letter to the city of Hermantown the state agency wrote that the second environmental review of the forested 234-acre site leaves several questions unanswered. But as the governmental unit in charge of the project, state law dictates the city has the legal authority to decide whether the review is adequate. Its City Council could vote on it this month.

The specifics from the DNR…

The DNR said the review inaccurately described it as an agency tasked with ensuring project compliance for ground and stormwater. It’s not and that expectation could “create a false public expectation about MNDNR oversight,” Kuskie wrote in her letter to the city.

Other DNR concerns include:

• The project’s proximity to a Minnesota Power substation, where the utility is expanding, in part, for the data center. The effects of that should be studied, the agency said.
• Inadequate baseline data for groundwater, which was gathered during a year of drought.
• The project’s location near trout streams and on wetlands, and a need for more information on how they will be protected or have harm minimized.

Northern News Now reports...

Some businesses are pulling out of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, after the agency put its support behind the proposed Hermantown data center this week.

Now both Zenith Bookstore and Townline Farms & Stable have now severed ties with the Chamber. The departures are due to a move these local business owners call a devastating betrayal and misrepresentation of small businesses in the organization.

On Tuesday, The Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce formally announced their support of the proposed data center.

I wrote about the Chamber’s support a few days ago. The article details the specific reasons specific businesses left the Chamber and the reaction of the community.