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MONTEREY PARK, Calif. () — The election data is in and data centers are out — at least in Monterey Park.
With most of the votes counted, it appears residents have passed Measure NDC, which bans the power-hungry facilities there.
“We had a victory landslide,” said Steven Kung, who co-founded the group “No Data Center Monterey Park,” born last year when plans to demolish an office building and build a quarter of a million square-foot data center surfaced.
Data centers are known for consuming massive amounts of electricity and water. Kung says the proposed facility would have tripled the amount of electricity used in the entire city of Monterey Park, driving up prices and pollution.
“The noise solution, the air pollution, the rise in the electricity rates, the deal just didn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense for most, if not all, cities data centers go to,” Kung said.
Eyewitness News reached out to StratCap, the Australia-based company behind the data center plan, but it did not respond before our deadline.
While Monterey Park voters have succeeded in keeping data centers out of their city, other communities like City of Industry are actually wooing them, something Kung says his group has already taken aim on.
“They are paving the way for a data center as well. They’re building a battery energy storage system to power this data center and our goal is to stop this data center in its tracks,” said Kung.
The push for data centers is fueled by the growth of all things digital, from social media to cloud storage to the artificial intelligence sweeping the globe. Pulling the plug on data centers in Southern California will most likely mean the centers will plug into someone else’s community.
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