About 100 Adams County residents gathered at a Thornton library to raise concerns about proposed data centers.
Roughly 100 residents from Thornton, Brighton and surrounding Adams County communities attended a meeting at the Anythink Wright Farms Library on Saturday to discuss concerns about proposed data centers in the area. The event was organized by the Adams County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and covered water use, power demand, noise and wildlife impacts tied to large-scale data center development elsewhere in the country. Attendees also raised questions about potential conflicts of interest among local elected officials connected to data center proposals.
About 100 people crowded into a meeting room at the Anythink Wright Farms Library in Thornton on Saturday morning to talk about something that hasn't broken ground in their neighborhoods yet: large-scale data centers.
The gathering was organized by the Adams County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which put together a presentation drawing on data center developments in other parts of the country. The presentation covered water consumption, electricity demand, noise levels and effects on wildlife and agriculture, according to residents who attended.
For many in the room, the numbers on water use stood out most. Sam Barnes, who lives in Brighton, said the figure that stuck with her was the estimate that data centers can consume roughly 5 million gallons of water per day. Thornton resident Chris Cook said he was struck by a different detail: even facilities that reclaim water for cooling still lose a large share of it in the process.
"There's many alarming facts I heard today, but the one that was primarily stuck in my mind was the even in the data centers where they reclaim the water, they still lose a good like 60 to 80 percent of that water," Cook said.
Other attendees focused on effects beyond water. Oliver Stanton, also of Thornton, said he hadn't previously considered how the low-frequency noise produced by data center cooling systems, known as infrasound, could affect nearby farmland and animals.
"I didn't even know about the extent of like the infrasound, and the impact on like the full extent of the impact on agriculture, and the potential impact on wildlife and pets," Stanton said.
The meeting also touched on questions about whether local elected officials have financial or professional ties to companies pursuing data center projects in the county, a concern several residents said they wanted addressed before any proposals move forward. No specific allegations against named officials were laid out at the meeting.
Adams County has drawn interest from data center developers in recent years as companies look for land near Denver with access to power infrastructure and relatively lower costs than the metro core. The industry's expansion nationally has followed the growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence services, which require enormous amounts of computing power housed in server farms that run around the clock. Those facilities need constant cooling, which is typically achieved either through water-intensive systems or large electricity draws for air conditioning. Both approaches have drawn concern from residents near existing data center clusters in states like Virginia and Georgia.
Residents at Saturday's meeting said those examples from other states were part of why they showed up. Cook, who has a young daughter, said his motivation was straightforward.
"I primarily care the most about my daughter and pretty much everybody else within Colorado," Cook said. "These data centers have a bad track record of wrecking pretty much every community that they're in, and we're not talking about the normal small data centers here. We're talking about huge megaplexes that drain resources."
Kai Pegg, who lives in Brighton, said her attachment to the area's open space factored into why she showed up on a Saturday morning.
"I love my city, I love everything about it," Pegg said. "I love that I can drive 20 minutes away and be in a beautiful state park with beautiful and important animals, and I will do everything I can to protect my city and the animals and the people that live in my community."
Organizers framed the gathering as an early step to inform neighbors before any formal proposals reach public hearings, distributing information on water and power figures drawn from data center operations elsewhere. No specific data center project has been formally approved in Adams County, and Saturday's meeting was not tied to a pending vote or hearing before the county commissioners.
Residents who attended said they plan to keep tracking any data center proposals that surface in Adams County and to show up again if a specific project comes before local officials.
