Joplin group plans to fight data center

BY DEBBY WOODIN

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

The Joplin Sustainable Technology Alliance is launching an effort to try to overturn any Joplin City Council action that could allow a data center to be built in west Joplin.

Amid a crowd of hundreds, some of whom spoke in favor but many of whom expressed opposition, a council majority gave first-round approval Jan. 20 for annexation of the proposed site for the data center. That land is near the area of 20th Street and Central City Road. There also was a majority council vote for first-round approval of M-2 industrial zoning for the site.

Final action will be taken on those measures at the council’s meeting Feb. 2.

Rebecca Collins, a representative of the Joplin Sustainable Technology Alliance, a nonprofit environmental group that focuses on legislation and government oversight, said the group will try to overturn any final decisions by circulating referendum and initiative petitions.

A referendum would automatically suspend needed zoning for the site. The initiative petition would establish a one-year moratorium on construction and require an environmental study on the potential effects to Joplin’s environment, including the Ozark Aquifer and the Chert Glades, she said.

The petitions would need 6,000 signatures to call for an election on the issues.

Collins said the group needs volunteers to

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conduct the drive for the referendum and the initiative petitions.

Meetings will be held starting Thursday to train volunteers in how they would legally need to properly collect signatures. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old, Collins said.

The meetings are scheduled from 6-7 p.m. Thursday, and 11 a.m.-noon and 1-2 p.m. Saturday in Conference Room 3 at the Joplin Public Library.

An estimated 400 residents turned out for the Jan. 20 meeting, and many of those residents spoke in opposition to the proposals. They cited concerns with the amount of water a data center would use and its effects on Joplin’s water supply. They also contended that the volume of electricity that would be used would drive up residents’ electric rates.

Representatives of Missouri American, the water utility, and Liberty, the electric company, said there is plenty of water and electric generation available and that the data center owner would pay the costs, which they said would not affect residents.

In introducing his proposal before it was heard by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission on Jan. 12, James Pinjuv, owner of the land, said: “It is an enormous power consumer and an enormously large water consumer, and there will have to be improvements of the water system and the grid, and those costs will be completely 100% borne by the developer.”

He also said a recently passed law in Missouri, Senate Bill 4, would protect consumers from adverse utility effects.

Since that meeting, Pinjuv said he had been meeting with area residents and officials to address questions, and while he said some of the concerns people have about noise and pollution are not based on facts, others have reasonable questions about the effect on utilities, particularly water and electric.

He said he has been working with Liberty for more than two years and Missouri American for more than a year, so that a data center would not adversely affect the rate base for either, and in a way that would “actually have a beneficial impact.”

In the Joplin project, Collins said residents will have only 20 days to collect enough signatures to defeat the project.

The group would have to conduct the petition drive in February. The council would review and certify the outcome in March or April, and the election would occur in August.

The council vote last week was 6-3 for annexation of the proposed site with members Chuck Copple, Josh Detar and Mark Farnham casting the “no’’ votes. The rezoning question was advanced 7-2 with Copple and Farnham voting “no.”

Opponents of a possible data center on land west of Joplin included Natasha Klue-Michael, a candidate for Joplin City Council and a member of the Joplin Planning and Zoning Commission. She appeared at a recent Joplin City Council meeting.

GLOBE | JOHN HACKER