Kudos to the Salem Reporter for providing live updates on the City Council meeting underway at the moment (9;30 pm), having started at 6 pm with a packed house, drawn by an agenda item about the five billion dollar Verrus data center planned for the Mill Creek Corporate Center.
The council president, Linda Nishioka, said they expected five hours of public testimony. Most of it will be in opposition to the data center. Which is to be expected, since nationally about 70% of Americans are against them, with Republicans, Democrats, and independents all on the same page on this issue.
I totally understand.
My wife and I belong to a Salon discussion group that has met monthly for many years. Last Saturday we talked quite a bit about data centers after Russ Beaton, a retired Willamette University economics professor, asked how members of the group felt about the Salem data center.
I said that I enjoyed using AI models, and love the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature of my Tesla, which runs on an AI foundation. However, there’s reason to be concerned about data center noise, electricity requirement, water use, and location — since in states with looser land use rules than we have here in Oregon, data centers are being built on agricultural land.
Russ went considerably beyond those reasons for opposing data centers. And I had to agree with him.
He said that AI is an existential threat to human civilization, with data centers powering the threat. We’ve already seen current AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok apparently acting autonomously, on their own, to achieve some goal. Which includes not being shut off or controlled by the people in charge of developing those AI models.
And we’re just in the early stages of AI. Imagine a super-intelligent AI that possesses abilities far beyond that of any human, including an unequaled capacity to convince people through eloquent words and speech that it can be trusted to serve humanity in lots of marvelous ways. Until it turns on its creators and acts to demote Homo sapiens to a subservient role.
This may sound like science fiction fantasy. But there’s plenty of AI experts who consider it a clear potential danger in the not-too-distant future.
So the many people testifying against the Salem data center tonight have good reasons for their opposition. Well, most of them. The Salem Reporter said:
Geovanny Tolentino, a Salem resident and member of the Salem chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America told the council that allowing a data center to go through is signing the “city’s death warrant”.
Wrong. Unless Tolentino was speaking about the data center contributing to the existential threat that I just described. Otherwise, Oakline at Mill Creek may turn out to be a considerably “kinder and gentler” data center than others being built in the United States. Which includes a grotesque data center in Louisiana that was featured in several New York Times stories today.
Here’s excerpts from “5 Things to Know About Meta’s Giant Data Center in Louisiana.”
Along the Mississippi Delta in the northeast corner of Louisiana, Meta is building one of the largest artificial intelligence data centers in the world. The tech giant’s project will cost $50 billion and cover roughly six square miles.
Behind the scenes, an extraordinary amount of secrecy was necessary to pull it off. Energy company executives, Louisiana’s governor, state and local officials and representatives of Meta worked on the deal over nine months before it was made public. The project’s speed and covertness have been trumpeted as a model for the entire tech industry.
…Local opposition has shuttered billions of dollars’ worth of data centers projects across the country. Meta’s project had no such issues with opposition — in part because the local community didn’t know about the deal until it was done.
…After the state secured its deal with Meta, Gov. Jeff Landry codified the process with an executive order called “Louisiana Lightning Speed” to attract other projects.
The order clears the way for the state to move with similar speed and secrecy for other projects. In the case of Meta’s data center, that included allowing the Louisiana power commission to skip submitting the project to a review by an independent administrative judge to determine whether the project was in the public’s best interest. The state also did not hold any public meetings about the project until it was announced as a done deal.
Fortunately, Oregon isn’t Louisiana. Governor Kotek would never allow data centers to be built here in total secrecy. Salem’s city manager, Krishna Namburi, has done her best to be transparent with citizens about our local data center proposal, ending the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with Verrus as soon as word about the project leaked out to the public and providing as much information as possible about the data center.
So while I admire the passion of those who oppose the Salem data center, I’m hoping opponents will critique Oakline at Mill Creek by using reason and facts rather than raw emotion and crazy claims. This won’t be one of the worst data centers in the United States. It may even turn out to be one of the best. Of course, opponents would argue that being the best of something bad doesn’t count for much.
Councilor Micki Varney has proposed that the city council adopt several resolutions regarding data centers. A Salem Reporter story says:
On Monday, Salem City Councilor Micki Varney will propose two separate motions, one to look into banning the city from entering into non-disclosure agreements with companies interested in building data centers in Salem, and the other to create a nine-person task force that would consider future data center projects before they move forward.
Sounds like a good idea. Practical. Specific. Doable.
I don’t believe that AI can be put back in a technological bottle, never to emerge again. AI is here to stay. As are data centers, at least until AI models can be run with hugely fewer computing resources that they require now. But we can implement wise regulations and laws intended to make AI in general, and data centers in particular, as safe and environmentally sound as possible.
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I submitted a written statement to the city council. I noted the usual concerns that have been well-documented – resource depletion, especially water, environmental degradation, and electricity needs that can drive up utility costs for everyone.
I also pointed out the 75 permanent jobs for a 75-acre complex is a yield of one job per acre, pathetic for any endeavor. In addition, the AI driven by data centers is taking away jobs in many sectors, so it will lead to a net loss of jobs in Salem and elsewhere.
Finally, I made the point that now is the time to stop this. Once built, no matter how bad the consequences end up being, you’re stuck with it. As an investigative journalist with 39-plus years of experience, I wrote a story in 1984 about a corporation near Yukon, Pennsylvania, that was causing major issues and violating regulations with impunity. We managed to slow down the approval of another permit, but the company remains to this day under a new name, but still polluting and violating with impunity. I read a newspaper story about it in 2025, and it’s almost verbatim the same as the one I wrote 42 years ago. Nothing had changed.
So yes, this is the time to oppose the data center. Post-build is far too late.
“Salem’s city manager, Krishna Namburi, has done her best to be transparent with citizens about our local data center proposal, ending the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with Verrus as soon as word about the project leaked out to the public and providing as much information as possible about the data center.”
Lets just repeat that sentence until everyone realizes the self-contradiction.
“Salem’s city manager has done her best to be transparent after the city and developer had tried and failed to hide information about the project with an NDA.”
I’m a super fan of ChatGPT & Codex and use it extensively. But, I also am concerned that data centers have problems: water and demand on electricity and possible noise. And I am extremely concerned when people subvert the public’s ability to participate in their government. I am also concerned the way high Tech money has become so involved in our government, e.g. Elon Musk and his DOGE massacre.
What has deeply affected me here is the secrecy and attempt to bypass the public on such a major project. I filed a public records request to learn how much the City of Salem has spent on resources furthering Verrus’ proposal. What I cannot understand is how the newly appointed City Manager felt she could enter a non-disclosure agreement (aka “NDA”) April 20, 2025, and then spend significant city resources without some sort of approval. 16 months of secrecy and it appears the come-to-Jesus confession arrives after Verrus obtains a required-to-be-public tax exemption from the County of Marion just before the Oregon moratorium on tax exemption takes effect. I think the Oregon moratorium is what precipitated the rushed filing for a tax exemption and the ensuing public disclosure. I think the granting of the tax exemption was the first hint of the project to public and the parties to the agreement realized the had to go public.
Also, I am very concerned about Mayor Juli Hoy’s involvement in that I understand she is a part of SEDCOR, the Strategic Economic Development Corporation of the Mid-Willamette Valley. “Julie Hoy, Mayor, City of Salem” is on the 2025-26 board of directors. https://www.sedcor.com/our-board/ SEDCOR played a very involved role in further the Verrus venture.
I just learned of Brian Hines and this blog. I wanted to learn more about the complaints filed with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission about city councilors in connection with Keith Stahley. Elliott Lapinel and Brian Hines’ names came up. Events around the departure of Keith Stahley happened in February 2025. The NDA is dated April 20, 2025. These major events are just too close in time to pretend there may not be a causal connection.
The fact that Juli Hoy was not physically present at the Monday, July 27th meeting where the public might see some hint of squirming when questions were raised about the secrecy of the activity is remarkable. There is a reason why meetings should be open and the decision makers observed in real life — visual cues, furtive glances among council members, winks, watching faces turn red or white, indications of body movement suggesting agitation because a topic is uncomfortable allow the public to evaluate their representatives.
I think the City of Salem should have a policy of not signing NDAs. Period. I do not agree with “done her best to be transparent”, I believe she did as instructed. You just don’t shepherd a $5 billion project (equivalent to 1/3 of of Salem’s $17 billion taxable infrastructure, or 40% of all the data centers in Hillboro) without some authority or knowledge someone is watching your back. And maybe Keith refused to go along with an NDA? We’ll never know.
But somebody knew Google wanted to invest $5 billion in Salem and play along with their NDA.