I Live Next To Amazon's Largest Data Center. They're Stealing Our Water

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - I don't cry anymore. - Sure. - I'm just exhausted from it. [00:00:03] Speaker 2: - Every house to farm to take 4 to 11. - Joy and Jean Van Loo are a fifth-generation farming family in New Carlisle, Indiana, a small town with around 2,000 people in the northwestern part of the state. This is where Amazon is building their largest data center in America. - How is your water situation here? [00:00:22] Speaker 1: - Tainted, it tastes weird. It's just not the same. [00:00:26] Speaker 2: - Do you think it has to do with the data center, [00:00:28] Speaker 3: the construction? [00:00:29] Speaker 4: - Well, yeah, they have them two 24-inch pipes pumping water across the street over here. [00:00:33] Speaker 2: They're dewatering, as they call it, so they can put the foundations in. - They went through this process called dewatering because of Amazon's data center construction, where they were actually removing groundwater that people rely on here for their drinking water. And this pond normally would be full up, but now you can see it's been vastly depleted. The Van Loo family owns over 200 acres, but their new neighbor will consume as much power as a million homes, guzzling millions of gallons of water from the Kankakee aquifer to cool hundreds of thousands of computer chips. It will serve the AI startup Anthropic, which is working to create an AI system that matches the human brain. And Amazon is its largest financial backer. - You don't think you can win? - No, you can't be. [00:01:18] Speaker 4: And they got better lawyers so we can get ahold of them. The Toninooka Isle threw us under the bus. - Still a lot of dewatering going on, even though they've been pulled, they're in violation. But like I say, we're a little fish in a big pond. [00:01:32] Speaker 3: Little fish in a pond that's been sucked your eye by Amazon. [00:01:38] Speaker 2: - Indiana is experiencing a data center invasion. 30 minutes away, another data center fight is unfolding. [00:01:45] Speaker 5: - I ask for you to show More Perfect Union's wasteland tonight so that people can see with their eyes. [00:01:52] Speaker 2: - At this city council meeting in Michigan City, Indiana, resident Eileen Mark is asking city officials to play a More Perfect Union video we made a few months ago about Musk's XAI data center in Memphis. [00:02:05] Speaker 6: - Not one trucker went to XAI to see that they have 35 gas turbines operating and polluting our hands. [00:02:12] Speaker 2: - Why isn't this video being shown tonight? - The reason, the developers behind that XAI facility, Phoenix Investors, is now trying to secure a tax break for a new data center in this small Indiana town. [00:02:24] Speaker 5: - What is going on in Memphis? What Phoenix Investors has done in Memphis with their end user, tenant Elon Musk. I didn't get even a response from you. [00:02:38] Speaker 2: - I came here in the middle of a fight between residents and local officials to witness it all play out in real time. The end user who would control the data center would also receive a massive tax break. Their identity is a secret. [00:02:53] Speaker 7: - This vote is about the future of Michigan City. And so we've just been pounding pavement, hitting every door we could. - Have you heard about the data center coming? - Yeah, everybody's concerned about it. - To alert residents. [00:03:05] Speaker 3: - If the data center gets built here, you want to move away? [00:03:08] Speaker 8: - We would want to move. - I'm reading some of the effects with like the diabetes, the lack of sleep, how it can lead to all these different health effects. [00:03:15] Speaker 3: - And how much are you paying in your electric bills now compared to before? [00:03:19] Speaker 5: - My electric and gas bill was more than my car payment. - I mean, it's insane to me. [00:03:24] Speaker 7: - Everything is coming down to tonight and whether or not the city is going to put the profit motive, put big tech over people. [00:03:33] Speaker 9: - The evidence is out there and residents that live nearby these hyperscale data centers are sharing their stories. You can find them if you care to look. [00:03:40] Speaker 2: - These are just two of the data center battles taking place in Indiana. [00:03:45] Speaker 10: - What we're seeing in Indiana is a lot of data center development, over 30, maybe over 40, and some stage of development throughout our state for a variety of reasons. [00:03:54] Speaker 2: - Meta, Google, Microsoft, CoreWeave, and QTS, owned by Blackstone, are in the state too. I wanted to know why Indiana became such a hotspot for big tech and how billionaires and the shell corporations they hide behind seem to be winning so big in the Hoosier state. [00:04:12] Speaker 10: - Number one, we have an incredibly supportive policy at the state level. We have leadership, we have a supermajority, we have regulators who are all very, very supportive of attracting business in the state of Indiana. [00:04:25] Speaker 2: - Republicans hold 40 out of 50 seats in the state Senate and 70 out of 100 seats in the Indiana House of Representatives, including Senators Eric Koch and Edmund Saladay, who authored a bill allowing utility companies to pass along some of the cost of small modular nuclear reactors to its customers and keep coal plants online. All in support of AI data centers. We reached out to both lawmakers to ask for an on-camera interview, but received no response. But it was another bill, House Bill 1405, introduced in 2019 by Representative Martin Carbo, that laid the groundwork for the data center boom, providing sales and use tax exemptions for equipment purchased to build. And there's another reason why Indiana's towns and cities are feeling pressure to welcome data centers. [00:05:16] Speaker 10: - They're losing federal funding for certain programs and certain support. They're losing state funding for certain programs and certain support. Some of these local leaders are very concerned about the financial health and wellbeing of their local communities. [00:05:35] Speaker 2: - But many residents and community organizers are adamant that data centers are not the answer to their economic woes. Organizers canvassed Michigan City neighborhoods just before the city council was about to meet for a final vote. [00:05:48] Speaker 7: - There are nine counselors. So we are trying to play the numbers game and work as hard as we can, even within these final hours. This community has long suffered the impacts of coal pollution, of being able to endure a century of this coal plant in their backyards. [00:06:07] Speaker 2: - Ashley Williams lives in Michigan City and runs a grassroots organization focused on a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Long before she found out about the secretive data center project this summer, she's been fighting to shut down the coal-fired power plant owned by the monopoly electric utility company called Nipsco, which she fears could end up staying open to support data center energy demands. [00:06:31] Speaker 7: - We just really don't know whether or not the coal plant will ultimately come down, or if it does, it's just gonna be a reinvention of a different injustice at that site or across our community. [00:06:43] Speaker 2: - And the energy monopoly is in the midst of an effort to create a spin-off sister company called Genco to put all data center load growth under a new separate company. [00:06:53] Speaker 11: - As we covered before, you are president of both Nipsco and Genco, as well as CEO, correct? And COO? - That's correct. - Were you involved in the decision to create Genco? [00:07:05] Speaker 2: It was. - But consumer advocates warned Genco is just a way to have an unregulated cash cow energy company with no plans for cost control, cost allocation, or guarantees for how it will ultimately impact residential customers. - Nipsco said that they do not intend to raise rates. Can ratepayers trust that with a deal like this, their rates aren't gonna go well? [00:07:29] Speaker 10: - Absolutely not. No, you'll always hear when these proposals are presented to the public, don't worry, they'll pay their fair share. - It's very easy for a utility CEO or utility representative to say, "Trust us, nothing to see here, your bills aren't going up." [00:07:46] Speaker 8: - If people choose to look to the actual people living near them and stop just trusting the developers and the big corporations coming in here, you could actually go talk to the people living there. [00:07:55] Speaker 5: - You better not come here and pollute our children, our homeowners, stomp all over our small businesses and think that there won't be backlash. Even if they vote this through tonight, it's just the beginning of a fight and people are not gonna stop here. [00:08:14] Speaker 2: - I'm standing inside the city hall in Michigan City, Indiana right now, and you can see that so many people have come out here for this vote tonight that they've actually had to put chairs outside of the city hall council chamber room because of the overflow. People are signing up to be able to speak about their feelings on this project, whether they're for or against it, and we're gonna find out tonight whether this project is going to get those tax breaks or not. [00:08:45] Speaker 6: - And if you pass this resolution, I can promise you afterwards, it's that private equity that will tell you what it is you're allowed to vote on. They want to own all of us through you. And the decision as to whether or not they're going to be able to do that happens here, it happens now, it happens with you. - For the Lord of God, do your duty. [00:09:11] Speaker 2: - The time for voting finally came. [00:09:13] Speaker 12: - May I entertain a motion for approval? - Dr. Cora. - Hi. - Mr. Beatrice. - Hi. - And Mr. Coulter. - Hi. - We have seven in favor and two in favor. - And this resolution has passed. [00:09:28] Speaker 2: - In a 7-2 decision, the city council voted to grant the data center tax abatements for the next 10 years in exchange for 30 full-time jobs and some $26 million in economic development incentives over the next 40 years. Another big win for tech companies who seem to be getting their way in Indiana. [00:09:48] Speaker 13: - We were not shocked by the sort of lure of the money and the millions of dollars and the predatory tactics that this company has pulled on our community and has pulled on the council. Just the fact that they gave in so quickly is really disheartening. [00:10:08] Speaker 8: - And one of the council members just said, "We just gave away all the leverage." So now we have no leverage with a bad deal, like a terrible financial deal they accepted at the risk of all of us. [00:10:19] Speaker 2: - 20 miles away, back where we began our journey in New Carlisle, Amazon, has said that its data center project will be a case study and will use lessons learned here from this multi-year project to improve as they build data centers elsewhere. But this is little comfort to the residents who live here, losing their way of life and paying the biggest price. [00:10:41] Speaker 1: - We would have moved already if we could have afforded to. We don't have that much in our savings account, you know? We're little farmers. [00:10:49] Speaker ?: We're little farmers. - So where are we heading, Gene? [00:10:53] Speaker 3: - You can go straight. - So this is all your farm? - Yeah. [00:10:57] Speaker 4: - Slow down on the other side of the trees there. We'll drive through the field. So this is our hay field here. [00:11:07] Speaker 3: - That's Amazon. [00:11:08] Speaker 4: - That whole thing is Amazon, yeah. [00:11:18] Speaker 3: - So this pond was full of water, and then they started a dewatering process? [00:11:24] Speaker 4: - Yes, if you look and see the gravel there and you can see where the grass is, that's how high the water used to be. And it's considerably lower now than normal. Say right here in the middle, there was a sandbar in there and you could walk across [00:11:39] Speaker 2: from one side to the other and just hardly touch any water at all. - However, there is a path forward. Just like in communities I reported in around the country, residents across Indiana are coming together in solidarity in their shared fight against big tech. [00:11:54] Speaker 10: - We're seeing folks coming together in local communities, pushing back. Nobody wants these data centers in their community. You know, the MAGA crowd and Bernie Bros coming together, if you will, all across the state and pushing back. Folks on varied political spectrums finally realizing that they've been duped by this system for a very long time. [00:12:14] Speaker 2: - Before you go, please support our work by liking this video and subscribing to our channel. We're always looking to tell more stories like this one, unpacking economic systems that impact all of our daily lives. Are there other issues that you want to see us cover? Sound off in the comments and again, don't forget to like and subscribe.