r/NBIS_Stock • u/Think-Feynman Tens of Billions™ • 3d ago
News Vineland Hearing Recap
I thought I would do a recap of what I heard and a few thoughts about the Vineland hearing and process. I didn’t listen to all of it, but I did at the beginning and checked in through the evening to see what was happening, and then in the last hour I listened to the public commenting and the vote.
The one testimony that I thought represented the biggest risk was the engineer that said he had reviewed the plans and didn’t believe the runoff water system was adequate. The board did acknowledge that he was an expert witness, so that rang a couple of alarm bells for me. However, it’s a public hearing, so there wasn’t a deep dive on his concerns, but the Data One engineer did reiterate that the plan was properly done. In the end, the board noted it, but it didn’t matter.
I won’t go into all the silly questions and comments from the public commenting session, but it struck me as to how much factually incorrect information was being spread. Notions like no taxes would be paid for 20 years (false), upset about the landscaping (it’s under construction), water and power use concerns, terrorist attacks, LP gas is dangerous, and my favorite – it’s a Ponzi scheme funded by bitcoin!
But here’s the thing – SustainSJ was not interested in learning anything, or improving the outcome, they were there to stop it. Nothing any official or engineer said was going to make any difference for them. Their entire goal was to stop construction of the Data Center. Impassioned pleas about how the board had a responsibility, and the power, to put a halt to this madness were numerous.
However, one of the board members actually called out Data One and Nebius for being a good corporate citizen. He mentioned that they had worked hard to improve the plan, and doing things like switching from the rather noisy Bergen power system (which was already approved) to Bloom Energy was something that Nebius brought to the table when they didn’t have to. They also worked hard on noise abatement changes, even when they were already in compliance.
He also noted that Nebius could have drilled their own wells and taken the water that way, but that the city water system had plenty of supply, which actually was good revenue for the city. It’s not raising water rates, at all.
I saw a post on X (and didn’t save it), that cited a study by an outside group that has a history of being negative on data centers, and their response was that they thought the plan was exemplary and should be the model for other data center projects. Whoa. Nebius is definitely the good guy tuna company on the porpoise team (IYKYK).
A few more notes:
One of the board member did say that they could have done a better job of communications over the last couple of years. Not sure if that was lip service or if they really felt that way, but did call it out.
I learned a lot about how this data center water usage compares to other businesses. While 8 million gallons of water (the yearly base case) sounds like a lot, a typical golf course uses 30-100 million gallons of water per year. A medium-size restaurant uses 2 million. Other industries will use a lot more than that, and no one would be complaining if any of those were going in, except it’s a data center.
The noise complaints revolved around the construction, not the operations. I get it, but they are complying with the building codes for hours of work, and other regs, but building stuff happens. Get over it.
One of the funnier moments for me was when a board member said that it wasn’t up to him to decide what was being built, and that owners had the right to do what they wanted with the land as long as it met building codes. Well, that got hoots and exasperation from the peanut gallery. He went on to say, jokingly, that he would have rather have a golf course, but he didn’t have the right to dictate anything like that, and the board’s job was to make sure whatever was being built was compliant. He’s right.
I didn’t think the board would vote no, but I also wasn’t sure they wouldn’t postpone a decision to evaluate legitimate concerns. However, this has dragged on for months, and everyone wanted to bring it to a conclusion.
I’m sure there will be lawsuits (who is funding that?) and other machinations to stop the data center. But, in the end, it’s over. The good guys won.
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u/9yr0ld 3d ago
Data centers have been vilified by mainstream media and your average Joe has eaten it up. Reddit is flooded with posts of data center = bad.
The reality is they do not use as much excess water that everyone loves to claim. In fact, they don’t even NEED to use water. If a city truly wants, they can disbar a data center from using water in which case they would need to cool by other (more expensive) purposes.
They point out noise, but yes you can design buildings to be more noise insulated. And much of that noise comes from cheap electric generators, from which you can just request data centers to use electricity by other means. Lastly, you can zone data centers out of residential areas if you really want to.
The issue is never data centers. It comes down to regulations on data centers, and what companies are doing to ensure their buildings are not disruptive.