Ohio House and Senate Select Committees on Data Centers - 6-1-2026

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Yes.

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Representative Workman.

Representative Glassburn.

Thank you. My name is Stephen Petty. I wish to thank the committee and Stephanie Stock for the opportunity to address issues related to data centers. My review will be a quick review of my qualifications and overview of data centers, issues related to water and wastewater and chemical biological emissions, and then some closing remarks. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees with honors in chemical engineering, an MBA where I finished first in my class. I was a senior research scientist at Patel and then at Columbia Gas, each for 10 years. The founder and president of EES Group for the last 30 years, so I've been practicing 50 years. I'm a certified industrial hygienist, a health and safety expert, professional engineer in six states, certified safety professional, and OSHA expert. I have nine patents and served as an adjunct professor at Franklin teaching geology and environmental. I've sampled for Legionella, mold, bacteria, nerve agents, biotoxin, asbestos, and dozens of organic chemicals. I even sampled the Blue Jacket's locker room to figure out why they were getting sick. I wrote a textbook on forensics engineering based on 10,000 projects, and I've served as an exposure, warnings, and standard of care expert in nearly 400 cases nationally, including benzene, PFAS, C8, silica, and most recently, East Palestine. Recently, I was named a voting member of the ASHRAE Committee on Infectious Diseases. Let's talk a little bit about data centers in Ohio. In 2024, best I can tell, there were around 150. In 2026, we're up to about 191. That's an increase of 41 or 27 percent in two years. While it's undisputed that these data centers will bring increased tax revenue in some jobs to communities, What is often lost is the downstream cost to these communities with regard to electricity, water, wastewater, and potential damage to the environment. And I'll give some examples in a second. In terms of water consumption, using 3,000 as a lower bound for data centers in North America, total water consumption is 21 billion gallons of water, the discharge of around 6 billion to wastewater treatment systems. A medium-sized data center will use on the order of 100 million gallons of water a year. That's equivalent of about 1,000 U.S. households. The larger hyperscale centers using 5 million gallons a day would use the water equivalent of 30,000 to 50,000 homes. The elephant in the room is really the water quality and wastewater issues from my perspective. While everybody talks about how many gallons, few talk about how much water is involved in terms of treatment and where that stuff goes. The potential contaminations include biocides, anti-corrosion agents, mineral scale, and even metals, as well as forever chemicals, named forever chemicals because the half-life is one million years. In other words, if you have 100 pounds of it in one million years, you have 50 pounds. I'm not going to go through all the categories of the concentrations that are in my handout, but I'll give some examples of some of the issues. One of the areas that I worked on a lot is not only just the chemicals but biologics particularly Legionella from cooling towers I working on the New York recent outbreak And then we also have the potential that these facilities can discharge hot water 86 to 104 degrees most into streams, lakes, waters, and other waterways. A lot of the critters don't like that. The good news is that the Ohio EPA would require permits to install and permits to operate based on federal standards for both water and air emissions. The bad news is for pollutants not regulated, they won't be regulated. That would be Legionella, phosphates, liquidates, glycols, biocides, and thermal discharges, along with PFAS. Let me give you an example on PFAS. PFAS is going to be regulated beginning in 2029 to 2031 for municipalities that have to treat PFAS down to 4 to 10 parts per trillion. This is a million times lower than most constituents that are at parts per million. I worked on a Middlesex, New Jersey case and did the cost estimates for facilities for three different technologies, the cost to that community was $30 to $40 million. So here's the problem. If you allow without, if the Ohio EPA doesn't regulate PFAS, and that is discharged to the environment, and then the municipality has to pick up that cost in 2029 to 2031, that's a huge cost. So the real issue on the regulatory side is what isn't regulated, and that's where the legislature has to fill in that hole. Potential solutions. Minimize community costs by requiring data centers to sell power, recycle water, and have their own wastewater treatment facilities. Use closed-loop cycles. You need two in a data center and one for the power plant. Use air-to-air heat exchangers rather than evaporated cooling because evaporated cooling uses 70% to 80% of that water that goes into the air as steam or vapor. Use technologies such as activated carbon ion exchange and reverse osmosis for tertiary treatment to clean out some of these long-lived chemicals. And use continuous monitoring technologies so that we don't find out years or months later that we've got a problem. I have attached a presentation with many more details. Feel free to look at that. I appreciate the time to speak. Please consider this common sense legislation because I think it's really important that we take the time to not burden our municipalities with downstream costs because things aren't regulated. And what generally happens with industry, and I'm pro-industry, is they're going to take advantage of pushing that cost off to municipalities if they can. If you write the legislation so that they have to incur more of those costs themselves, they will. With that, I'll open up to any questions, but I appreciate the time to speak to you guys.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. You said legislation. What legislation are you referring to? And what should we be legislating?

Follow? Just in trying to keep with our mission statement and making sure we understand what the facts are, the EPA testified the other day that they have permits to install, they have indirect discharge permits. Why aren't those effective?

Senator Blackshear.

We are. I'll just give you the example on PFAS again. I've been involved in all four major litigations. I was the exposure expert, standard care expert. And the problem was there weren't regulations. Now the communities are stuck with these standards at parts per trillion, which are incredibly low. And the technologies to clean these out is very complex. And so what I'm just saying is based on that experience for that one component alone, and I could go through other components as well, what you're going to see ultimately is that the municipalities are going to be stuck with the costs for addressing these issues downstream. And if, in fact, there isn't laws put in place that address chemicals that aren't regulated.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You just said that municipalities will get stuck with the cost. Where are they getting this money from?

No, I'm sorry, just through the chair. Chair. Chair, I'm sorry. Yes, it's good. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So you provided a list of solutions. So let's just say if we don't act on some of the things that you listed, would that then turn you into being an opponent of data centers, or would you still just be sort of neutral in the midst of it?

Senator Wilkin. I'm sorry, Mr. Petty, I'm sorry. I'll go up and down and make sure everyone gets it. My apologies, Chair. Sir Wilkin.

Is that correct? Right. Yes, sir. Well, there's where some confusion lies. This is the engineer in me. On the data centers, you have an internal loop that cools the chips, and then that heat is then extracted by an external loop. and then the power plants themselves, if they sell power, have another cooling loop. So when we talk about these closed loops, almost all of them use open loops for ultimately dumping the heat. And a lot of the water that's lost is lost from evaporative cooling. So what I'm suggesting, if you use air-to-air cooling, then you don't have that loss of water. I'm not saying there isn't a single data center that doesn't have a closed loop all the way, but it's rare.

closed loop in all three loops, but it's rare. Okay.

Or is there a system? Well, my advice would be ultimately not to have them tied to the grid. So there would be some additional power associated with the fans. But on the other hand, you're not pumping as much water either. So there's a reduction in pumping power there. So it's complicated to answer that question as an engineer.

Chairman, two thoughts. One, the quantities of materials we're talking about or water are much higher. We're talking about relative to, say, individual residents, they're thousands of times higher. Secondly, those discharge permits only address chemicals that are regulated. This is always the problem. It's been my experience, and unfortunately I've been now in litigation for 25 years. I'm probably one of the top exposure experts in the United States. You don't know me because I keep quiet. And my experience in almost all of those is that EPA is always in catch-up mode. The science trails the regulations. So what I'm trying to tell you folks is there are some things here that aren't regulated. They're coming. We know they're coming for the municipalities on PFAS, but not necessarily on the data center side. So the data centers would be technically able to discharge PFAS. But eventually, by 2029, there's an exemption that can go two more years, 2031. the municipalities who provide drinking water are gonna have to meet these very rigorous standards So meanwhile we have that water that they gotta clean up having materials continuously dumped into it This seems to me we should try to avoid the problem before having to clean it up. Thank you, Chairman. If I have one last one, I'll let someone else go.

Chairman, yeah, I wrote a textbook and possibility means any probability above zero. I like probable, which means above 50%. I think that the possibility is there. I think the probability is less so.

Any questions? All right. Co-chair, Mr. Chavez.

I spent half my time in Florida and half in Ohio, but I lived 40 years in Ohio before I moved to Florida. Okay.

No.

Why would they use that in the cooling system? It comes from the closed loop cooling systems. It's part of the refrigerant, typically, and it also comes off of the Teflon coated parts.

No, the literature shows there is leakage from that system. So leaks can happen.

The most common source, PFAS is a surfactant, which is not consumed in generation of products. It's used to make Teflon. the easiest way that I can explain it is people have seen on their windshield, they'll see the raindrops are kind of droplets. And if you add like a rain exit, it makes it smooth. Right? It's a surfactant. Well, PFASs are in general surfactants that are used in a different way, but they're used to make Teflon smooth. Otherwise it would be very lumpy. That's traditionally where it came from. It was used by DuPont in 3M.

surfactant meaning soap, basically. Surfactant is a soap, a lubricant of sort.

No, that's, Chairman, with all due respect, that's not true. In fact, I've testified 12 days in federal court on C8 about that. And soaps are surfactants, but they are, surfactants is a broad category, but when you, and I know you're a chemical engineer, But by all means, a PFAS is a completely different animal than soap with respect to surfactants.

Ubiquitous I not sure how to answer that question PFAS comes from sources far more likely than data centers Is that correct? I don't know the answer to that question.

The issue is not just the concentration, it's the volume of material involved. And like I said, you can focus on PFAS, and I just gave examples of why that's an issue, but you've got many other unregulated substances, including Legionella.

Sure.

I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm just trying to drill down to what we're actually, the information that we're getting.

Well, I agree, but I would respect if the OEPA said that data centers are not a source of PFAS, then I would respectfully disagree.

Thank you, Chairman.

good afternoon committee members thank you for the opportunity to speak in front of you today I'm not as educated or qualified as the man who just spoke before me I do want to tell you about Ohio's greatest outdoor treasure and that is the Buckeye Trail perhaps because one can cross over Ohio's oldest bedrock layer at Ohio Brush Creek, meander over the edge of Appalachian nature preserve, and into the ancient hills of the Little Smokies of Ohio. Once you get elevated in Shawnee State Forest, one can witness visible fault lines where worlds collide at Davis Memorial and experience the Royal Appalachian charm in the trail town of Peebles. After enjoying the southern hospitality of the small timber town, you trek through a complex impact structure and get a view of the Serpent Mound, the world's largest effigy mound. This is where you come to be wild at heart. This is Adams County, Ohio, and that's the place I call home. The Buckeye Trail changed my life as it allowed me to find the magic in the foothills that led to the formation of the 10th and final chapter of the Buckeye Trail, the Appalachian Foothills Chapter, in 2022. Adams County serves as one of the state's critical strongholds for rare, endangered, and climate-resilient life, the crown jewel of ecological diversity in Ohio, where bald eagles fly and beavers are beavering on the creek. I stand here before you today because that resilience is being threatened, not just the ecological resilience, but the Appalachian resilience, and even worse, by the ones who took an oath to protect and serve the state of Ohio and the people in it. Biodiversity comes to mind when thinking of Adams County, which echoes that of Appalachia, but the magic in the foothills consists of its rural heritage community and in the case of Adams County the Ohio River way of life Another national trail a livelihood under threat That was just named a national trail last year, by the way, the Ohio River was. A livelihood under threat by what is beginning to feel like a failing democracy due to the core democratic principles seemingly null and void, especially when Dan DiOrio dubbed it the Silicon Valley, not once, but twice in his testimony Wednesday. and those words don't sit well in the Ohio River Valley. On May 27, 2026, this joint legislative committee heard testimony from State Department heads of Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Mary Martz, and Ohio Consumer Counsel, Maureen Willis. Each gave this committee enough reason for concern for you to call on Governor DeWine to push pause with further development and have Ohio lead the way in responsible development. Instead, the end of sessions that day concluded with him pausing on tax abatements, and I'm here to tell you money isn't the issue life for another 250 years is. It's the same failed pleas that have been happening at the local level all over our great state that caused six individuals, myself being one of them, to unite along the Ohio River and start this bluegrass roots movement to conserve Ohio. It has become the burden of the people to do the research, inform the public, and in the case of Adams at County, even inform our own commissioners of the potential environmental, financial, and societal impacts that proposed large hyperscale facilities bring to our communities. So can I ask, who is leading the way? And the questions we have and concerns we have are the very same ones that led to this committee forming. So why are they still moving forward with development? Because as a state, we have already established there are too many unanswered questions, and that's why we are all here today. What really brings me here to stand before you, though, is my son. He's going to be 20 in August, and this is the part where all the rest of the words come together. Biodiversity, rural heritage, community, and Ohio River Way. Adams County sits along the Ohio River, and the county, our primary aquifers are those which sit along the same as the Great Lakes region, sand and gravel aquifers. The sand and gravel aquifers are not only the weakest aquifers in the state, they also have the lowest recharge rate in the state as well. Our water department has signed NDAs. Our commissioners are ignoring us. Our soil and water conservation and others are scared to speak up to me for fear of losing their jobs. I get it. I won't want to lose a pension and things associated with long-term government positions either. But out in the grounds of the statehouse, it says if you could change one life, you could change the world. it says a whole lot more than that and it's really nice i finished that on my way in today but i'm asking you to please push pause with a statewide moratorium because there are too many unanswered questions and that's why we're here these signatures we're all gathering with conserve ohio which i'm a volunteer i'm not being paid and these signatures will mean nothing if a pause isn't in place because they are targeting our rural unzoned areas we all have formed our zoning commissions in two townships in Adams County. We've had the village of Winchester sign a moratorium and put it in place. Our village of Peebles is completely blocking them, and our county commissioners are doing nothing to listen to us. But again, even with forming the zoning commissions, everything will be built or grandfathered in by November when we actually have the chance to make our voices heard. And when Dan spoke of co-location in his speech, the power plants of Killen and DPNL come to mind and other speculated locations further east towards Portsmouth. Where does that leave our communities in Manchester and Rome? I've seen New Albany. I've been kicked out a couple times now. Ha ha. As I rode the Ohio River scenic byway to Maysville the other day, I did notice a sign I never noticed before, and it said drinking water protection area to report spills, call this number. But the funny thing is on the other side of that road is exactly where Buck Canyons proposed to be. With this man's gentleman saying that we're not even regulating PFAs and biocides, which biocides coat the bottom of the river, and they are, I've heard, allowed to directly withdraw into our streams, that kills the bottom feeding organisms along the creek and waterways and there's a whole lot to that too but anyway as I rode the Ohio River Scenic Byway to Maysville the other day I noticed the sign it said drinking water protection area report spills with the phone number and right there sits the proposed Buck Canyon project we all know that the nationwide permit does and eliminates the necessity of the wastewater treatment facilities directly impacting our drinking water please push pause and find a way to see the water consumption as Mary Mertz said. We can't allow her team to come down and assess our aquifers because to date no aquifer drawdown studies have been done or hydrological impact studies have been done. Our water department or board of health can't answer our questions. Our commissioners can't and right now you can't either. So it's only fair to call for development to stop until these important questions are answered. That's not saying Ohio is closing the door for business. But as Maureen Willis said, we will be leading the way responsibly, especially on America's 250th anniversary. It's your job to make sure there's life for another 250 years. You guys have the power to do that right here in front of us. And the core democratic principle for the people, by the people, and we are asking you on the 250th anniversary, don't give up the ship. That's all I have. Any questions for you guys? Thank you for the opportunity today.

Representative Workman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Gerber, for your passionate testimony and advocacy on this issue. I remember you came in to the House Technology and Innovation Committee, so thank you for coming back and voicing your concerns. I noticed that you speak of responsible development, and specifically as it relates to our water supply. Are there other issues as well that we need to be considering?

Are those wells going to go dry? That's their source of life. Cows can't drink bottled water. Crops can't grow off of bottled water. And with them clearly saying that they can't tell us, I mean, water is the number one source of life, even for the data centers. You know what I mean Like they need it as much as we do I mean I would just make sure if I had the power to make sure the people could have the water I would make sure the people had water before we were supplying it to the data centers And all this stuff that's going on, they're going to be built before we could do anything about it. And we are all actively doing stuff in our communities as far as form and zoning commission, as far as getting villages to sign ordinances. And nobody's, they're laughing at us. Watch my videos. Our commissioners walk away from us in meetings. And it's not right. So I don't know. And you should have came down on that. I invited you back down after that. I could show you around. Follow up. Follow up. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So if the issue were addressed related to the aquifers and the water supply, if ODNR were requested to come and do an assessment, as you've requested, what would be the solution if we found there was a vulnerability in the area? Would it be, as we heard in the previous testimony, the data centers being required to create their own water treatment facilities? What would that look like for you? Whatever your guys' team says it would look like, because I don't know, you know what I mean? But that would look like that it's working, you know what I mean? And that would look like that we want to care about life, and we're going to do what we can to protect it and make sure the people are okay. Right now, the way it works, we have the nationwide permit. I've already objected that permit. they're not even following through on special conditions on their nationwide permit right now. What makes everybody think they're going to follow through on stuff that's put in place, especially when nothing's regulated? You know what I mean? Like, there's no protections in place for PFAs, for biocides, for any of it. And I just feel like there should be, especially when Mary Mertz is telling you guys that, too, you know?

Again, Senator Chavez, I don't know. but that's what ODNR's website says. It's at a zero to two net recharge rate. I don't know much about what that means either, but it's not as fast as the ones along. It's not a high 10 plus one like the ones along Little Miami and Cyoto River. You know what I mean? Even though it's along, and look at the Great Lakes. You have a big massive lake there too, and you have water pulling from it, but they don't have a high recharge rate either because of the fact that it is sand and gravel. So, I mean, again, I'm not sure. and that has been the burden of the people. We've been doing this research myself. Jessica Adams Baker has been on it with the NDAs. If I want to see her videos, I wouldn't have ever known. You know what I mean? So it's been the burden of us and that's why we call on you guys because you do have the power to change that and you have the power to make sure that we're protected. You took an oath to protect this great state of Ohio, its natural resources and the people in it. All of you did and you're the only ones with the power to change it. Thank you.

Again, Senator Chavez, I'm just a citizen who's been given the burden of doing this research. I have no idea. From what I've read, it does, and it kills the bottom feeding organisms, which is the freshwater mussels, which we do have a lot of them endangered in Adams County. That's why we have the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge, two of them right there in the village of Manchester. And that's why dredging had to stop there when the whole stuff happened in the 70s now to protect the freshwater mussels. because we used to make buttons out of them at our paints factory, and they had to stop that because they were the natural filters of the river. But, again, I'm not. I run canoes and kayak livery, you know what I mean? And I hike, and I enjoy the Buckeye Trail, and I love Adams County, and it is a very, very, very special place. Not saying that everybody else's community isn't, but they've seen enough there. And it took, I don't know if any other questions. I can ramble forever, and I don't want to. Thank you. Just one question for me. For everyone else listening in, could you give us an update on the exact development that's going on in Adams County? Like, what's the issue? What company's there, and what's the debate? It's supposed to be Amazon is what we hear. I mean, there's a lot of other rumors that go around that, who the end user might actually be. I'm not quite sure. but they say Amazon. We're supposed to have our meeting with Amazon on June 18th. They're supposed to be coming to Manchester School Board. And even our school board, even Manchester School Board, put something in place to block a tax abatement so that they wouldn't get tax abatements so the school would actually get something. You know what I mean? Like, there's been a lot happening all over where normal people have been fighting and standing up for their communities because our community needs to say they listen. You guys, it comes from the state. It comes from the state. It comes from the state. And the Great Lakes, I think it was ORC code, maybe 1512, that research is what led to that code and the Great Lakes Basin Alliance, if I'm pretty sure. Don't quote me, though. Okay, so thank you. So just one, because a lot of counties have multiple, but there's one, and Amazon's going to come. So we're going to have Amazon come on Thursday. What questions do we need to ask them? Why aren't you doing the appropriate water studies? Okay. Why aren't the impacts to the local residential wells being tested and the aquifers to ensure that people aren't going to be drained? Okay. We'll do that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We'd now like to call Stephanie Stock. Welcome to committee. Thank you so much. Chair Chavez, Chair Holmes, and members of the Joint Data Center Study Committee, thank you for hearing my testimony today.

Thank you for your testimony. Committee, any questions?

The 70% polling rate is regarding data centers specifically. So I'm suggesting that data centers specifically be required to be a measure, like a levy or anything else for a community, for a data center located within five miles of that city, village, or township. So the radiance would be within five miles, and it would be for any data center. So we're not being fair to the industries. We're just saying data centers alone. Through the chair. The citizens are going to continue working to ban them. If the legislative body doesn't take action to give them a voice, this gives them a voice. And you can say it's put unfairly, but data centers are a different animal than some of the regular facilities that are not operating 24-7 or they're operating under different standards and they're more regulated than data centers. So we're talking about data centers. That's the concern of 70% of American citizens right now.

Okay, we don't... One question I wanted to ask was... Right, one question I wanted to ask was, do you have the source for that acoustic data? We'd appreciate having that.

Thank you, Chair. Thanks for being here and for your testimony.

A village, city, or township. Yes, sorry. Did I say municipality? I'm sorry. Okay, that's fine.

A lot of them are asking to be out in very open areas. So if they have a water source, I don't know why they would have to be near a city if they had a water source. And I was looking, and they are able to drill their own wells on their property, so that could be an option. Okay. One more.

So through the Chair, so we have 191 data centers operating in the state of Ohio. Is the Ohio EPA saying that only one data center in this entire state is operating on a partially closed loop evaporation system that needs to use discharge? Because I think maybe you could start by asking every single currently operating data center, what type of loop system are they using and how often do they discharge? I don't know how the EPA does the permitting. I think if there's one permit for 191 locations, that's interesting. That could be that the other 190 are dumping directly into our drinking water facilities, which are not currently removing those products, and so the citizenry are drinking that water. I would ask the EPA if they feel comfortable drinking the discharge water. If they do, I mean, maybe everything's a go. Thank you.

All right, we'll try to... Chair Chavez. I just want to make sure folks are hearing the right, and please keep your reactions. Let's have some decorum in here, okay? I just want to make sure folks are not being scared unnecessarily. There's no... To Senator Wilkins' question, there's only one that's not discharging into a wastewater treatment facility. They're not discharging into drinking facilities. People are not drinking discharge water. These are going into wastewater treatment facilities, 190 out of 191 or whatever numbers you're using. Okay, so let's just make sure that we're not saying things that are inaccurate.

Follow up.

Through the chair, I agree. Do you guys have that relevant and accurate information available to you? Have you asked for that yet?

Good afternoon, committee. Thanks for the chance to speak. My name is Austin. I'm a volunteer with Conserve Ohio. I'm also a committee member and a co-drafter of the statewide data center petition. I'm going to tell you why I decided to do these things. I am a man of privilege in this country. I believe I was also lucky enough to be born with a special gift of intelligence. I understand certain things well. I got straight A's in school. I was a national merit scholar. I got academic scholarships, and I became well-educated. And when I was 15 and a half, I started working. I worked at a Mexican restaurant, a vitamin shop, a bookstore, an adult go-kart track, an amusement park, a coffee shop, a children's home, a university, a law firm. I worked my way through Knight Law School and became an attorney. My wife, Carly, and I raised our kids during that time and are raising them still. But for her, I would not be here today. We've struggled to make ends meet. And while struggling, we've had to make difficult choices with no good options. And even then, ends sometimes still didn't meet. I've also struggled as a father, as a husband, and as a man in this country. I struggle to this day. Yet, I continue to hold on to a dream of a peaceful life with happiness and freedom. One that depends on the functioning of a system of neighbors, benevolent to each other to form into something greater than any one person, a society. I have worked myself to the bone, buying into the hope that such a dream is not just a dream, and so have all these people around me here today. And now we are all here so you can find out facts about data centers. You should have found out about them years ago, before they descended on us en masse. That was your job, but you didn't. Instead, we had to find out about them, on top of working ourselves to the bone just to make ends meet. We had to find out and speak out, only for you to now form your committee at the 11th hour. I have now seen firsthand how elected officials across the state lie, backchannel, misdirect, and gaslight their communities when people raise concerns about what is happening around them. I am not at all surprised by the greed of corporations operated on principles adverse to the human condition, but I am surprised by those who took an oath to represent us, the people, and to advance our interests, our hopes and dreams, who are now advancing the interests of those adverse to us by allowing hundreds of data centers or approximately into our state before you decided to see, quote, what reality is about them. Mr. Chavez, those are your words. Those whose speech you listen to is ours, not theirs. That is your duty. But by the very fact that you have invited them into this house, which is our house, in a fact-finding effort without even first pausing the developments, like we've all been asking, you have failed to observe that duty, even if you do take it seriously. And my heart is broken for that failure. And in that failure I see people in terror and pain and an aching uncertainty for the future All those things are in me too But if history is taught one thing it is that the recourse does not lie in the terror the pain, or the aching uncertainty. The recourse lies in action. And that is why we have invoked Ohio's Constitution, the highest law of the people here, and the instrument which our founders gave us as a tool to help ourselves. We are not radicals backed by foreign interests. I think in your hearts you know that. We are your neighbors. All the choices of your lives have led you precisely to the seats you are sitting in right now. And you have choices to make yet. After all the developers and the firms and the companies have come and gone, and whatever is going to happen with all of us has happened, and we've all lived our lives, all we'll have in the end, is each other. And the memories and the stories that we pass down to each other. What stories should we tell about you? I hope that they are about how it wasn't too late and about how you made the choice with the power that we have vested in you to stand up and stand with your neighbors. We are standing up and acting for us, for each other, and for a dream of society which was never just a dream. Thank you.

Thank you. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Jessica Baker. I'm from Williamsburg, Ohio. I've lived in rural Ohio my whole life because this is where I want to be. I'm also a realtor, not a lobbyist, not a political operative, and definitely not somebody funded by foreign billionaires. The reality is much less dramatic than some people are trying to portray. This movement is made up of ordinary Ohioans printing petitions at home, using coupon codes to purchase banners at Walgreens so we can afford them, driving county to county on their own dime and standing outside in every kind of Ohio weather because they care about their communities. That's who Conserve Ohio is. What's been most surprising is who is standing beside each other now. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, farmers, environmentalists, small business owners, parents, grandparents, people who normally would never agree on anything are suddenly working together because they started seeing the same things happening all over Ohio. It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. As a realtor, I also have to ask, if we have a housing crisis,

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for coming. I know it's a long way and an inconvenience to do this in the middle of the day on a Monday. I can tell you my colleagues appreciate that you came. One of my colleagues, Representative Sims, is in the audience today, and we've had other senators and representatives here listening as we've been doing this. One of the aspects of this are NDAs, non-disclosure agreements. Could you speak to if public officials in your area have taken public actions, either approving projects going forward or other official actions, not just planning, not just talking, but actually taken votes and allowed things to go forward with key information not available to the public? Could you discuss that?

Follow up. So when was the information public? Was that after the public action the vote was taken or before? And if so, how much before? Do you have a sense for?

Follow-up? One more follow-up. So let me ask the other half of the coin. I'll say I find it hard to stomach the idea of taking official action without the information being public first and insufficient time for the public to react. But let me ask the other side of it. We've heard instances of bad actors. We've also seen instances of good actors in this. Our mission is to protect rate payers, to protect jobs, protect our environment, and be transparent. Why should we take a one-size-fits-all of blocking the good projects as well as the projects that are not acting in good faith with a full moratorium? or do you not agree that there should be a moratorium?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Baker, for being here and taking the drive to come and talk with us today. You said you had a number of NDAs that have been signed in your community. Of those, how many are from local officials?

Thank you, Chairman. Thanks for being here. You're just a little south of me from where I live.

Just a quick question in regards to the NDAs. Do you see any situation where at some point, if it's not through the elected, but people that may work for the entity that those are appropriate?

Follow up? Follow up? So, for example, what about the person that's hired to do economic development in any county around? Do you think they can or do you think they should not?

Follow up? No, no thanks. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. To committee. Chair Chavez, Chair Holmes, members of the select committee, my name is Mark Gavin Sr., and I'm a lifelong Ohioan. I want to start with a number, $1.6 billion. That's what Ohio's data center tax exemption cost taxpayers last year alone. That is nearly ten times what the state originally projected. That money did not go to schools, it did not fix roads, it did not lower anyone's electric bill. It went to some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, and Ohio has got nothing in return. House Bill 15 allows data centers to fast-track approval for gas plants with no public notice, public hearing, nor input from local officials. And it's already being used. the state approved the largest fracked gas fuel cell in North America to power an Amazon data center in Hilliard. This is next to home, schools, and even an animal shelter. The community had no say, but the state said, we're open for business. This increase in data centers has also led to the direct increase in fracking in our state parks and public lands. Over 16,000 acres of Egypt Valley wildlife area has been fast-tracked for fracking alongside the expansion of behind-the-meter fuel cells like the one in Hilliard. I do not believe that this is a coincidence. On Wednesday, an industry lobbyist who was here downplayed AI as a leading cause of data center expansion and did not address cryptocurrency's role at all. But if we look at cities like Niles, Ohio, minutes away from where I grew up in Warren, BitDeer, a company that runs AI and Bitcoin mining data centers specifically, is attempting to move into their community. What does Niles get out of that? Maybe some construction jobs, but those are going to disappear when the building is complete. After that, they're left with a massive facility that pools enormous amounts of power and water. it only serves global tech elites and it answers to no one in Trumbull County I from Trumbull County originally I here in Columbus now But I was in Niles yesterday actually And I can tell you there no crypto billionaires in Niles I call on this committee to follow Governor DeWine's lead and end the tax giveaway permanently and to give communities control over what gets built in their neighborhoods and to end fracking on our public lands. And thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thanks so much for having me. Chairman Holmes, Chairman Chavez, and esteemed members of the Select Committee on Data Centers, my name is Helena Volzer, and I'm the Senior Source Water Policy Manager at the Alliance for the Great Lakes. On behalf of the Alliance, thank you for the opportunity to provide subject matter testimony today on data center freshwater and community impacts. I am also a lifelong Ohioan. I hold a bachelor's degree in political science and international studies from Wright State, as well as a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. As senior source water policy manager at AGL, I bring a depth of knowledge and legal expertise to AGL's water resources policy work. I previously spent over a decade at the Legislative Services Commission, providing drafting research and bill analysis to you fine folks at the Ohio General Assembly on matters of environment, natural resources, agriculture, transportation, and public safety related matters. Most recently, I authored AGL's Finite Resource Report, which I've provided the committee, examining how demand for water is increasing across the Great Lakes region and the need for serious planning, policy, and regulatory actions now to ensure water is available for today and future generations. AGL is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that's been working for over 50 years throughout the Great Lakes region to protect our most precious resource, the fresh, clean, natural waters of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are a globally significant, finite, and precious resource. They hold 22% of the world's fresh surface water and provide drinking water to over 40 million people in the United States and Canada. Perhaps less well known is the lake's essential connection to groundwater. Between 20 and 40% of the water flowing in and out of the Great Lakes system originates as groundwater, and in Ohio about 42% of residents are relying on groundwater for their drinking water. Yet as I speak, groundwater is becoming increasingly vulnerable to overextraction, especially during peak summer months that are are growing hotter and drier due to climate change. For example, Ohio experienced such significant drought in the spring and summer of 2024 that the state authorized $10 million in drought relief for farmers. That connection between groundwater and surface water means that our surface water resources can become stressed if groundwater becomes depleted. With simultaneously competing demand for water from agriculture, industry, data centers, and residential use, Ohio communities are facing complex tradeoffs in managing their finite water supplies. Nevertheless, large water users such as data centers are being proposed and cited before there's been any comprehensive evaluation of whether or not that watershed can handle it. Currently, factors such as groundwater recharge rates, whether existing supplies can sustainably meet future demand, including the data center's water use at peak capacity, potential impacts of water and wastewater impacts on rate payers, and the cumulative effects of increasing water withdrawal is not being factored into decision-making process in the siting process, and they should be. You have here a list of different factors that can occur when water supplies aren't sustainably managed responsibly, increased conflict, increased scarcity creates potential for an increased conflict that Ohio groundwater law is currently ill-equipped to resolve. Ecosystem impacts, right, when groundwater is pumped out faster than it can recharge, our waters are impacted, can reduce flows, impact our streams and degrade wetlands. Increased costs. Increased water scarcity means increased costs, bottom line. If well owners or water systems have to drill deeper, they incur not only additional expenses in doing that, it risks contaminating those aquifers with salty brine water below. Drilling deeper may not even be an option if it's a completely depleted, then you have to connect to a public supply, also further increasing costs. Finally, if water systems are prepared to handle data centers at their peak capacity, it can cause drops in water pressure for customers, leading to water main breaks, and that can introduce additional contamination. All of that can trickle down to rate payers, and you can see how that might occur if communities are not negotiating for that. Unsafe polluted water, you heard earlier today, Ohio regulations are not designed to sufficiently monitor and regulate pollutants and data center wastewater discharge, and then increase pressure around the Great Lakes system. When groundwater levels decline, so does the natural flow to our lakes, rivers, and streams, and over time that cumulative pressure increases, causing communities to look elsewhere for water. You can see an example of that in Juliet in Illinois turning to Lake Michigan for water. A framework for more sustainable and transparent water use is urgently needed. Over 97% of data centers are connecting to public water supplies, meaning that the registration and consumptive use permit requirements we do have do not apply. As you heard from Director Mertz last week, ODNR is seeing a noticeable increase in public water supply withdrawal, However, because those reporting requirements fall to the water system, DNR can't determine how much of that is attributable to large water-using facilities like data centers. Moreover, when they're powered by fossil fuels or nuclear power, that drives additional water use and consumption at those power plants. And as Director Mertz also noted, they're not required to obtain consumptive use permits, and that's a gap that the state should seek to close. Transparent water use reporting, a comprehensive system to manage water resources sustainably and accountably to reduce the potential for groundwater conflicts, and consumer protection requirements to ensure data centers pay their fair share of water and wastewater infrastructure can be among the solutions. Our technology changes quickly. Just a few years ago, we had no AI, we had no hyperscale data centers, but now we host in the Great Lakes region nearly one-fifth of all U.S. data centers with growth expected to exceed national averages through the end of the decade. The speed with which this is going means Ohio urgently needs a framework to adapt to the times and provide a comprehensive way to ensure water is available now and for future generations. Comprehensive monitoring, ensuring transparency, preventing pollution is necessary to equip the state with the tools it needs to make sure the fresh clean water is available for all because if there is no clean safe water then there won't be any water. Thank you ma'am that's five

Welcome to committee. Thank you. I had put in the testimony that I had some evidence. Okay. May I approach?

Yeah, thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. I come from the Appalachian foothills of rural Adams County, Ohio, to stand before this committee about the data centers. I come to you as a result of my own commissioner's responses to the citizens' concerns about the data center, the very ones who were voted in to represent the needs of us, our families, our community, and our county as a whole. I am here because our closest government allies showed almost zero concern for such a major decision and acted as if it was no big deal. On this journey, I am continuously learning more and more about data centers. The more I learn, the deeper my concerns grow. Quality of life and natural resources being contaminated in our area is a real concern for all of our community. Our aquifer is bountiful and exceptionally clean Our forest is truly the last wild frontier of Ohio Pristine Our independence and self also seems increasingly threatened Will we run out of water? Will we have resources to water our livestock and crops? The last few years we've experienced drought and it did affect our crops. What happens during a severe drought? Will I have water in my own well? What about our natural springs? So many of us rely on for water source amongst our community members. Most importantly, what about the quality afterwards for years to come? More than half of Adams County is forested. The rest is agricultural farmlands. We are also one of the most impoverished counties in all of Ohio. We contain a portion of the largest state forest in all of Ohio. Shawnee State Forest is over 64,000 acres of backcountry and forest roads. A part of that is designated wilderness area. It is essentially our backyard. There is the Edge of Appalachia, the Arc of Appalachia, Highlands Nature Sanctuary, ODNR Parks and Preserves, and world-renowned Serpent Mound. Adams County is like a vacuum that has thus far nurtured rare endangered plant and animal species of Ohio. Our deer hunting brings people from all over America to experience our world-class bucks. Naturalists for birds, wildflowers, insects, moths, butterflies, fish. The list is endless. Ecologically, we are globally significant. As a state park naturalist, I was all too familiar with the people who came to Adams County to experience our rarities. Synchronized fireflies, timber rattlesnakes, green salamanders, cave salamanders, mud salamanders, eastern halbenders, eastern spadefoot toads, black bears, bobcats, bald eagles, allegheny wood rats, state-listed endangered and threatened trees, lichens, medicinal roots, wildflowers, asters, ferns, among other plants, rare and endangered stream fish, river fish, river mussels, bat species, truly a concentration of rarities in every direction. We are a destination for bird enthusiasts as our forests and fields call warblers home every spring from the tropics to do their migratory breeding like the indigo bunning that uses the stars to navigate across the Gulf of Mexico up through the United States to Adams County. Adams County also boasts dark night skies. We have one of the very few telescopic observatories on this side of the Mississippi River, the Mueller Observatory. You can look up on any given clear evening and see the Milky Way painted across the night sky visible with the naked eye. To have these many things wrapped into one place it should remain intact at all costs. That value and worth is something that can be inherited for generations to come, truly priceless. People say that data centers are like garbage dumps. Everyone needs them and no one wants to lend next to one. If you believe we need more to put them here in Adams County would be a dangerous decision and potentially catastrophic. With all that have destroyed and threatened our species and resources statewide it should be a no-brainer that a data center doesn't go into a place like ours in Adams County. We are a hidden gem. Do everything to preserve it like Lucy and Annette Brown, the conservationists responsible for our natural parks and preserves. There is a documentary that plays in this very state house in the video exhibit in the basement. The uncertainty and track record of large industrial operations compromise fresh water even when they say it will be just fine. Once the damage is done, it could be too late. I'm worried these companies will likely use the age-old philosophy that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to beg for permission. As an Appalachian, I have freedom, independence, self-reliance, land, water, community, and human rights. Being Appalachian means knowing your neighbor and lending a helping hand at a moment's notice. America Appalachian areas have had a bad history of resource grabbing from these sorts of extractive industries Thank you ma That five minutes and we do have the rest of the testimony Also some impressive pictures of Appalachian flora and fauna

Thank you. Welcome to committee. Thank you so much. Co-Chair Combs, Co-Chair Chavez, and members of the Select Committee on Data Centers, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today regarding data centers in Ohio. My name is Kathy Becker. I'm the board president of Save Ohio Parks, a volunteer citizens group concerned about fracking Ohio state parks and public lands. We're closely monitoring the expansion of data centers across Ohio because this is directly impacting our efforts to protect these public lands from oil and gas extraction. For the past three years, we've helped Ohioans file more than 10,000 comments opposed to fracking Ohio's state parks and wildlife areas. The comments on these nominations run 98 to 100 percent opposed. Ohioans love their state parks and wildlife areas as some of the only natural spaces in a highly industrialized state. Unfortunately, since House Bill 15 was passed last year, allowing data centers to fast-track approval for gas plants to power behind the meter, we've seen a major uptick in nominations and approvals to frack public land. So in all of 2023, 2024, and 2025, a little over 6,000 acres of our state parks and wildlife areas were approved for fracking. But just in the first quarter of 2026, 15,319 acres of our state parks and wildlife areas were approved, and another 8,300 acres of Edrit Valley have been nominated. So if those are approved, that means in the first part of 2026, 26, almost four times as much of our public land will be leased for fracking as in the previous three years combined. And we believe that is for gas-to-power data centers. Fracking for gas has a number of enormous costs to communities. I'm not going to read through this. It's in my testimony, but costs to health, to our climate, the number of accidents that happen, a great deal of our water, billions of gallons of fresh water converted into toxic and radioactive waste that has to be injected into injection wells, and some of them have leaked into other orphan wells and production wells, and they threaten drinking water. So while Ohio's public lands in Appalachia are being extracted for gas to power data centers, major gas plants are being fast-tracked into communities where data centers are with little to no public notification or consultation. During the House Bill 15 hearings last year, I testified at least four times that the way the bill was written would end up with major gas utilities sited next to residential areas without community consultation, and that's exactly what happened in my town of Hilliard. The largest frat gas fuel cell in North America was approved to power an Amazon data center on Scioto-Darby Creek Road. There was no public notice, no public hearing, no public information session, no consultation with local officials, and there wasn't even a formal vote at the PUCO. It was subject to automatic approval. It was approved and granted an air permit before anyone who lived there, directly affected, knew what was happening. It's going to emit 1.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide per day,

Yes, thank you, ma'am. Thank you for your testimony. Committee, are there any questions? Seeing none, thank you.

Is it okay to... I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. Representative Glassberg.

I haven't looked in detail of that bill, but public disclosure of water use and energy use is one of our recommendations, so I think we would be inclined to support that bill.

Oh, that's, yeah, I'd like to find out about that. The 5.3 is 3.3 megawatts of wind energy that was blocked by the 2014 wind setback law. The wind industry issued a report saying 3.3. And then the other two comes from solar projects that the OPSB denied or blocked, and they've denied several since then. So, you know, it's probably a lot more than 5.3, as you point out.

Any further questions? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Someone will get those from you.

We'd now like to call Emily Young. Emily Young and Nanette Fitzpatrick's on deck. Thank you, ma'am. Welcome to committee.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Committee, are there any questions? Thank you for your testimony, seeing none. We'd now like to call Ms. Nanette Fitzpatrick with Samuel Mangas on deck. I'm saying that right. Thank you, ma'am. Welcome to committee.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for your testimony. Committee, are there any questions?

And I understand all of that. I don't know if any of you have attended a local village council meeting. It is a much different animal than this. And that's not to say they're not good. They follow policy, they follow law, and they do it the way they should. One of the problems is when we run for council out in my area, you are getting a mixture of people from all walks of life. Mr. Popo is a retired school teacher. And I will tell you he spoke with such passion He had raised his family there They did not feel like they could say no to this project That one thing that when new technology meets older people or older towns you have to understand that there is a big difference. There is a pressure that you feel that is unseen by others sometimes because you don't want to say no to technology. You understand the ramifications of not letting it come into your area. But there's also the people in California do not understand our lives here, the way we live our daily existence. I listened to the gentleman last week talk about that, and I do understand the importance of it. Mr. Popo today is on the beach of Normandy. He called me on Saturday because I asked him for permission to use his name today. And he said this was a lifelong dream. So when they say the word security to you, I do understand the security behind this. People like this fought for our country and for our rights. And you have a hard job. You not only want to bring economic growth into this state, But you also want to protect the citizens. I just want full transparency. I would love a moratorium, to be honest with you, on any new building. And make sure that you have fact gatherers that can really make sure that every study, this gentleman here has so much knowledge, more knowledge than any of us put together, to be honest with you, when it comes to this. We just don't want to be the people 30 years that find out that what has been put into our systems, we didn't know about. It really is. We can all do our due diligence. We can work together and make this work. But sometimes two things don't go in the same place. And I don't think that the people in California understand the way this state is laid out. There are places for them, but let's use common sense and let's make sure if there's other technology out there just besides our water, we understand water. In Flint, Michigan, that was an aftermath what happened. All of those children that were poisoned with lead, we're supposed to learn from this. Everything that happens in the past, we learn that lesson and we do better. That's all I'm asking for is, Let's do better for the citizens of Ohio.

Representative Glassford. Just one brief question. To your knowledge and from your conversations with your friend who's the local official, did the State Department of Development or Jobs Ohio or ODNR or anybody come and help your community negotiate this?

They are a good neighbor.

Thank you again.

Senator Wilkin.

Through the chair, please. Through your chair? That is your right. And that's one of the things that I guess we have to look to you to help us figure that out. Because when I visited New Albany, and they, back on Beach Road and Morris Road, they took 85 acres of farmland. And it is, it's almost complete, and it's up and running. I just think, again, those two things don't go in the same area. I'm not saying they don't belong. I'm just saying that so much of this is common sense. we are chasing this new technology when we should either be in step or ahead. You know, that is a private owner's ability. He can do what he wants, but the people around him should have a voice, and there also should be common sense when you look at it. There is no one answer to all of this, because this is very layered, and I understand exactly how you feel. I've listened closely to your words, especially to you, Senator Chavez. We don't want to paint them to be the bad guy. This is new technology. We've had new technology really for the last hundred years that has just kept on going. But we also have been gifted with minds that know when something feels right and when something doesn't. And we cannot let money cloud our judgment. We have to make sure that we're putting the lives of the citizens of Ohio and our future generation. Follow-up?

So to steal a line from my colleague, Senator Chavez, then where do we draw the line? If everybody around me gets a say in what I do with my property, how much say do I get in what you do with yours?

Yes, ma'am. Follow up?

Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Samuel Sam Mangus. I am 12 years old and I live in Lorain County. I'm just a normal kid who goes to school, plays baseball, and is a 4-H member. A year ago, I didn't even know what data set it was or that they even existed. Last summer, I overheard our farmer friend talking to my dad about how the county is trying to put a mega site down the street from my house. They were saying how a large amount of farmland, about 1,000 acres, was going to be destroyed for industry development. This made me mad, because once farmland is destroyed, it can never be used for farming ever again. This is when I started attending local trustee and commissioner meetings, and how I started speaking out against unwanted development and relating infrastructure in my community. Through this process, I have learned quite a bit about data centers. A lot of data centers that have been built in Ohio have been built on prime farmland. I have learned that the state of Ohio has lost 1 million acres of farmland in the last 20 years, and we continue to lose more and more farmland each year to development. The first hyperscale data center in Ohio was built in 2016. This was only 10 years ago. The state of Ohio has almost 200 data centers. If Ohio keeps allowing data centers to be built, the remaining 13.5 million acres of farmland will soon be gone. If farmland is destroyed, this creates a loss of food for the future generations. God isn't making any more farmland, so it is important we take care of farmland we have left. While I have learned a lot about data centers, I am still confused on why we need so many of them. The U.S. has over 4,000 data centers. No other country in the world is even close to having that many. What is the plan for all these besides greed? In our American history, you can see examples of how new development have been rushed into and then many years later the future generations realize these developments have harmful effects on our health and environments. An example of this is the plastic industry. They started adding chemicals into plastics in the 1920s. Here we are 100 years later, and we now know that these chemicals are toxic to us. They are in everything we use, our clothes, water bottles, and food packaging. This is a hard problem to fix. Data centers might not seem a problem now, especially to the companies that want to build them. But what happens 50 years from now when the natural waterways have dried up, millions of acres of farmland have been destroyed, and the communities have health problems from contaminated water or other enforcing problems? Technology is changing every day. The way data is stored now will look much different in 50 years. The farmland will always be needed for food for the people and animals. In 50 years, I will be 62 years old. How old will you be? There are so many unknowns when it comes to data centers because they are relatively new. I definitely do not want to see any more farmland destroyed for data center development in Ohio I ask that you think about future generations and all the past generations of farmers who worked hard to farm these fields This is the kind of study that is going to take more than just six months or a year. I am worried about the destruction of farmland, and I am also worried about the health issues data centers could cause by polluting our water and air we breathe. I ask that we learn from our history and stop development of data centers in Ohio. Therefore, I ask you to enact a statewide moratorium on data center development in the state of Ohio. Thank you.

Okay, we'll start with Senator Blackshear. Yes, thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much for coming up and testifying. You didn't seem nervous at all, so you did a phenomenal job. Just a quick question. Are there others around your age group that may have some of the same concerns about data centers? Do you all talk about that?

Senator Wilkin. Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to compliment Samuel for being up here today and taking part of the process and as Senator Blackshear said, you're handling yourself very well. So my compliments to you.

thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today. My name is Molly Bryden, and I'm the climate and sustainability researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit research organization working to build a more vibrant, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable Ohio. We appreciate the committee's efforts to collect and disseminate accurate and transparent information about data centers' impacts on the electricity grid, utility rates, the environmental impacts, and the economic landscape for data center development at the state and local levels. These topics are critical for understanding how the rapid proliferation of data centers across Ohio impacts our communities. We now know that the data center sales tax exemption cost the state of Ohio more than $1.5 billion last year, more than 11 times what the taxation department had initially estimated much of which has gone to the richest companies in the world We salute Governor DeWine for pausing the approval of any new exemptions but the General Assembly needs to go a lot further. Besides making the pause permanent, either through separate legislation or overriding the governor's earlier veto, the legislature must find a way to eliminate or at least reduce the scope of this giveaway to existing data center operators. Amazon's agreement, which dates from 2014, will last until 2055. Policy Matters Ohio has been receiving requests for support from residents across the state who have expressed concern about planned data center projects coming to their communities. Leading concerns include data centers' impacts on water quality and availability, implications for energy affordability in the absence of adequate ratepayer protections, and air quality and public health impacts, among a litany of other concerns. Notably, the lack of transparency or accountability involved in local data center development decisions has emerged as a through line for communities, as we've heard today. Besides repealing the outlandishly expensive data center sales tax exemption, Ohio should adopt additional transparency requirements for data centers to improve Ohioans' understanding of data centers' operations and impacts while informing measured policy and regulatory guardrails. This should include public reporting on water and electricity use, air emissions, jobs, payroll, and capital investment, among others. We urge the committee to recommend the approval of House Bill 695, limiting nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, with a few changes so it doesn't undercut Home Rule authority, but is also extended to state officials and others who handle economic development deals. NDAs covering economic development have no place here and thwart good government, undercutting local democracy by excluding residents from providing input on economic development decisions. We urge you to reverse this move and repeal the paragraph that was added to Section 966 of the revised code, an amendment to House Bill 184 that criminalized the disclosure of information about local economic development assistance, a major source of information for residents' understanding of important economic development decisions being made in their communities. This new law would make any prohibition of NDAs far less meaningful. Data centers' economic and environmental impacts are not fully understood, and while these hearings are a step towards filling critical information gaps, the pace of their expansion warrants swift legislative action to establish strong guardrails for Ohio communities. Lawmakers should create a policy and regulatory framework to protect the long-term interests of Ohio communities rather than subsidizing the highly profitable and resource-intensive data center industry at Ohioans' expense. The committee should additionally recommend legislation requiring data centers to pay the full cost of infrastructure investment needed to meet soaring energy demand driven by the industry, like House Bill 706, which would prevent cost shifting onto other residential and small commercial rate payers. Data centers' reliance on fossil fuel generation sources further warrants consideration of policies to protect communities from harmful air emissions produced by gas-powered generation facilities, particularly in communities hosting a data center with on-site generation, which is largely powered by natural gas. To minimize data centers' climate impacts while accelerating the deployment of new in-state generation, lawmakers should incentivize their use of clean energy resources, stipulating that data centers bring new clean energy capacity, whether behind the meter or interconnected to the grid. Finally the committee should support legislation to increase regulatory oversight and transparency requirements for existing and planned facilities to improve community accountability measures while expanding opportunities for residents' participation in local economic development decision-making. Responsible and informed decision-making around data center development hinges on meaningful public engagement, especially when lack of regulation and non-disclosure agreements between local governments and data center companies have enabled these projects to materialize without the necessary transparency and accountability. Thank you very much.

Okay.

Yes, Representative Glasper. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for driving down from Cleveland to be with us.

I'd love to have asked this question to the Department of Development, or OBM, but they didn't show up. And you're here and you referenced it. So Amazon, you mentioned having a 40- or 50-year contract of the state of Ohio guaranteeing them that sales tax exemption. Is that common? Could you tell us more about that?

Paula? Thank you. Along a different line, I asked a guest earlier of what is it appropriate for the state to take a complete moratorium approach when we see some projects that are good and bringing benefits to the community in a responsible manner. Do you have any commentary on how you see the landscape of if there are projects that are meeting the standard that you would find sufficient?

So the bottom line would be that would you say either or both of it would be beneficial for the state to set some kind of floor or standard as well as to provide assistance, whether it's on the environmental or on the economic development side, to communities so that they can actually navigate these projects?

Thank you. Committee, any further questions? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

We'd now like to call Stephanie Giacovetti. Anna Canelongo is on deck. Thank you, ma'am. Welcome to committee.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for your testimony. Committee, any questions?

Do you have a follow-up?

Through the chair, please. Through the chair. I believe that in my own personal belief is that this is going to be another industry that isn going to last very long And the only way that it going to be lasting longer is by any type of the surveillance that being told that they going to be using I personally don't want a digital footprint or a digital file of my information held somewhere by somebody that I don't know. I think that's invasive and unfair. And I don't think that's something that anybody should agree to. And in building these data centers, that's what you're agreeing to, in my opinion. Thanks.

Thank you for your testimony.

Chair Holmes, Chair Chavez, and other members of the Select Committee on Data Centers, thank you for the opportunity to provide my interested party testimony today on data centers. My name is Anna Canalongo from Clean Air Hilliard, and I'm here because of the Scioto-Darby Creek Data Center and its on-site power plant being built adjacent to our neighborhood, local elementary school, and public park. I know that you value human life, especially of children. Many of you, like myself, are pro-life and are passionate about the right to life. And yet children in Ohio are being put in danger by data centers. Did you know that many of these data centers in central Ohio are built adjacent to neighborhoods, schools, and parks where children live, learn, and play? Several hundred feet, actually. This is exactly the situation in Hilliard, Ohio. Yet there are no safety precautions put in place to protect children. And the safety of the situation becomes magnified when behind-the-meter data center power plants are being fast-tracked through the Ohio Power Sighting Board without proper oversight. Currently, no independent studies ensuring the safety of these power plants are required. There are no appropriate setback limits for schools and for neighborhoods. There are no emergency evacuation plans in place in case of an explosion. Carbon dioxide from fuel cell power plants, which can be particularly harmful in large amounts to children, is not being monitored. Not to mention that exposure to CO2 emissions shows the highest correlation with overall asthma rates in children. These are just some of the concerns. We all know that the grid in its current state cannot handle the electrical demand that the data centers are adding. Behind the meter power plants on the surface may seem to be a perfect solution, and yet it is not the silver bullet it seems to be. For these power plants are being built next to neighborhoods, next to elementary schools, and next to playgrounds. Would you want your child or grandchild living or going to school next to a data center power plant? Additionally, as the grid becomes stressed, these emergency generators will be running more frequently, creating toxins for children. We know that this is already happening in Virginia as they change the definition of emergency to accommodate data centers. Again, there are significant health impacts for children near these generators. We have collected signatures via an online petition. We would have received more, except Facebook classified the petition as spam and prevented us from sharing it further. And since most of us have small children, we can't canvas the state in person. Despite our limitations, we collected 1,214 signatures across the state of Ohio. We have the following common sense requests. We're not trying to do the end-all, be-all of everything. We just have some specific desires to protect kids. Have PUCO pause their approval of case number 25-0649-EL-BLN until there is a proper investigation of the safety of the fuel cells that convert natural gas into electricity, approved for use at the Amazon Data Center on Sio-Darby Creek Road. And what is happening here is like a test case of what will happen in the rest of Ohio if this is approved Review the proposed administrative rules for the Ohio Power Selling Board to require the following before approving any project A site-specific study by an independent researcher who's non-biased, chosen by the locality, that quantifies, models, and maps how the levels of emissions, CO2, FPM, NOx, SOx, CO, and VOCs would behave under various atmospheric conditions, wind direction, temperature, humidity, and its impact on the surrounding neighborhoods and schools. Note, currently CO2 isn't part of the Ohio EPA numbers, and that's a big problem. We're looking for data, data to ensure the safety for students and safety for kids and safety for kids that are playing on the playground, living in the houses that are hundreds of feet from the center. We want a safety plan approved by the local fire department, including the radius of the impact of potential explosion. Norwich Township Fire Department has come out against this plan, but it doesn't matter because everything went through the Ohio Power Studying Board without local control and bypassed locality altogether. A model showing the effect of anticipated noise, decibels, etc. It's not just decibels though there's more to it as people were saying earlier. I don't have all the data on that so I can't speak intelligently to that. A list of any other safety concerns a safe setback distance for residents and schools to each type of power source determined by the state that must be adhered to I think the setback distances are like necessary to keep kids safe. You're putting power plants in people's neighborhoods at a longer, more appropriate comment window to the Ohio Power Siting Board with proper notification given to all affected parties within the potential impact radius for the emissions or possible explosion. I only found out it haphazardly. We should have been notified since we're in the area. Write a new bill or amend legislation to address the unintended consequences of House Bill 15. Limit the amount of time emergency generators can run near schools and neighborhoods. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide my testimony today. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Perfect for the 15th. I can talk fast if I need to. I was trying to slow it down.

Thank you. And just briefly, so it seems that even in Franklin County, we have two fairly strong different processes and outcomes between how the Hilliard projects went forward and how New Albany went forward. to your knowledge did Hilliard have any assistance from the state government whether it be for environmental economic development or otherwise I mean I can't say that so like from my perspective I'm just a neighbor

Yes, ma'am.

Through the chair, please. Through the chair. I can't speak to what's fair and not fair. I'm not them, so I don't know. I just know that you don't want elementary.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Susan Harmacek.

And first, I would like to thank the co-chairs, Representative Holmes and Senator Brian Chavez and members of the committee for allowing us, the citizens of Ohio, a chance to share our concerns regarding the massive impacts these hyperscale data centers will have on all of us. I am here as a constituent from the village of Commercial Point in Pickaway County and a lifelong resident of the Buckeye State. As you are all aware, communities not only in Ohio but across the country are joining together in opposition. And at the ballot box, we will remember who allowed this to happen. Now let me explain exactly why I'm against these heavily subsidized expansions of the hyperscale AI data centers and why I've been fighting this in my hometown for over the past two years. 1962, most of you were not around, Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, exposed the devastating ecological and health impacts of the widespread use of pesticides. She was ridiculed and received aggressive backlash. However, her book eventually led to the creation of the EPA and the banning of DDT. Who would have thought, 64 years later, I'm standing before you and we're once again facing new environmental, ecological, and health concerns? Not pesticides this time, but rather data centers. Once again, those of us who are drawing attention to the new concern are being ridiculed and facing backlash and are now being linked with anti-American groups, which is shameful. My flag waves proudly next to my no data center sign. A few months ago, Senator Bernie Marino posted on X, quote, Ohio should not compromise the integrity of our waterways to help data centers. Tammy Clark, an industrial hygienist, testified before the Michigan House Oversight Committee that there's no such thing as a closed-loop cooling system. New water needs to be cycled, and toxic forever chemicals are released into our aquifers and waterways. Our water treatment plants can't filter out these chemicals. They leach into our aquifers. Simply put, become a part of the water we drink. Our water and quality of life should take priority over data centers' uses and needs. Living close to hyperscale data centers raises numerous health concerns regarding noise pollution, air pollution, and stress. The American Health Association, in its 2026 State of Air Report, has identified the data centers as a newer, rapidly growing source of air pollution. The 24-7 low-frequency humming or buzzing sound is disruptive and no barrier can stop it. Many have compared this to the Havana Syndrome our U.S. Embassy staff experienced in 2016. Large data centers changed local habitats by turning these into industrial waste zones, according to the National Wildlife Federation. The massive footprint, as well as water, air, noise, and light pollution, lead to habitat destruction and loss, as well as major health concerns for all of us. We cannot afford to sacrifice our natural resources and public health in the interest of tech companies' large sale data centers. We're not against data centers. We know they serve a purpose. What we are against is the disregard for the health, welfare, and economic stability of those affected most by developers buying up farmland, billing on top of residential areas. They need to be regulated and held accountable. Developers need to accept responsibility for the health and welfare of the general population and not build these data centers next to homes and deny folks their right to the pursuit of happiness. Developers need to be held accountable and abide by a cradle-to-coffin zoning regulations. They need to pay their fair share, stop getting tax incentives. We need state-level stewardship to protect our resources and health. I'm asking for a pause on new developments, re-evaluation of tech incentives, and giving communities a voice in our land and resources. In conclusion, let's prioritize our environment and Ohio families' health over data center developers and tech companies.

Good afternoon. I'm Larry Falcon. I live in Cincinnati. And thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Anything can be done well or can be done poorly. The construction and operation of data centers is no exception. If done well data centers can be assets to the community improving the quality of life for residents If done poorly data centers are a liability worsening the quality of life of people in the host communities The core job of government is to enhance the lives of residents, and as the doctor's oath says, first do no harm. I'm here today to talk about what is necessary for data centers to be assets, not liabilities, and to help not harm Ohio residents. I call upon my government to adopt appropriate regulations to ensure that data centers are done in a way that makes them assets, not liabilities. There are several categories of concerns that I would discuss. The first is energy use. Data centers use a lot of electricity. When demand exceeds supply, prices go up, creating financial hardships. When energy comes from dirty fuels like coal and natural gas, air quality suffers, climate change accelerates, and the land is devastated by extraction activities. Data centers should be coupled with new sources of clean, renewable energy, such as solar and wind, so we can avoid energy shortages and the damage caused by fossil fuels. Backup power. Data centers need to function 24-7, 365. They are more impacted than most utility customers by the occasional grid failure. As a result, data centers typically have an on-site source of emergency power. Sometimes this takes the form of diesel generators. Diesel generators are noisy and dirty. They produce the same types of air pollution as diesel trucks, only more of it because the generator's diesel motor can be much larger than a truck motor. Some people think that emergency generators don't matter much because they hardly ever operate. The truth is that to make sure the diesel generator is always ready to go, they must be tested and exercised on a regular schedule, meaning at least several hours of operation every month. An alternative to diesel generators would be an on-site battery backup system. These batteries are not only clean and quiet, they also perform grid services when they are not needed for emergency power, leveling the real-time fluctuations in energy demand so that power plants don't have to cover demand spikes. Diesel generators should be prohibited. Battery backup should be required. Water use. Data centers use a lot of water, mostly for cooling systems. Ohio is fortunate to have abundant water resources, especially in the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. But those water resources are not evenly distributed. Many parts of Ohio experience periodic droughts. In those locations, the water demand of a data center can turn a routine drought into a crisis. Data centers should be located where abundant water is always available. Wastewater. Data centers that take in a lot of water also discharge a lot of water. Water used in cooling systems is often discharged at elevated temperatures. Streams and rivers are very sensitive to thermal pollution. In my hometown and many other Ohio communities, combined sewers receive both sewage and stormwater. During storms raw sewage overflows into rivers and streams If wastewater from data centers flow into sewers that are already oversubscribed more raw sewage overflows into the streams Data centers must be located in places that can accommodate their wastewater flows without overheating surface waters or worsening sewer overflows. Data centers can be assets or they can be liabilities. It's the function of government to make sure Ohio residents are protected. Right now, a petition is being circulated for a ballot issue that would prohibit all data centers in Ohio, and that effort seems very popular. If Ohio is to have any data centers, government will have to act quickly by adopting regulations that ensure that data centers in Ohio improve the quality of life of residents. If you can't get it done by November,

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon, Chair, Co-Chair, and Select Committee on Data Centers. My name is Eric Watson. I'm a lifelong Ohioan, a resident of Tiffin as well as Senator Reineke is, and someone who cares deeply about the future of our state. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today. Ohio has long been known for its agriculture, manufacturing, and natural resources. These industries have sustained families and communities for generations. As data center development continues to accelerate across the state, I believe Ohioans deserve a transparent and honest discussion about the long-term cost and consequences associated with all these projects. I'm going to read Article I, Section 1, Enable Rights. All men are by nature free and independent, have certain enable rights, among which are those enjoying and defending life, liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and seeking and obtaining happiness and safety. I do not hear much happiness from the people behind me today. I am an opponent to any more proliferation of data centers across the beautiful Ohio. Ohio has also been known as an agriculture and wildlife ever since I can remember being a kid. I'd hate to see it go away. However, with big tech influence, the future for Ohio seems to be different than what most Ohioans had in mind. Ohio is the number six in the nation for data center proliferation. All the farmers I've talked with do not want data centers. A matter of fact, the elected officials are very concerned in my hometown of Tiffin, so they went ahead and actually did a 12-month moratorium recently. A matter of fact, also, the Ohio Farm Bureau members at the county levels are completely against data centers. Also, the city of Tiffin is actually, oh, sorry, I read that. However, other cities and villages are not putting moratoriums in place, but instead take the dangled carrots and move on. The reality is that no public subdivision can begin to compete with the money and armies of attorneys that data center developers have. This is precisely why I'm here today. All of you representing your constituents at the state level were elected to be the voice for the people. And currently House Bill 116, enact the Ohio Blockchain Technology Act, sits in the Senate committee right now. It actually addresses data mining, taxation, and regulation of digital assets. but I going to skip a little bit and get to the good stuff here because I on time Data mining One of the ways that data mining is implemented is with what called proof of work Microsoft actually patented this and it measures a person's heat and brainwave activity to determine proof of work. It's actually in the patent for proof of work. So it's not Chinese hyperbole or anything. This is something that is used in Bitcoin mine operations and social credit scores, like the social credit system used in China. What is extremely interesting in the narrative I keep hearing is that we don't, if we don't build data centers in Ohio, then where are they going to go and be built? China? Well, come to find out, we already have Chinese operating data centers in Ohio. So jump to, actually, House Bill 116. On page 40, it actually states in paragraph B that any digital asset mining business may operate in any of the areas zoned for industrial use. This lays out a welcome map for data centers because digital asset mining businesses have been proven to be data centers. Co-founder of actually a data center spoke about this at one of the Monroeville public forum. Across Ohio, some elected officials are listening to their constituents and rezoning in a manner that prevents future data centers from forcing their way in. The massive facilities will actually ruin property values despite what people say. One minute. I'm actually going to jump forward here because you guys have this. Data centers are known for utilizing massive amounts of energy. most medium larger data centers require 25 gigawatts to one terawatt. To provide that sort of energy data centers I can imagine it becomes necessary to set up infrastructure where large high tension power lines would be required to sustain that amount of energy needed. This would allow eminent domain practices to be used. So just to put this in perspective, one gigawatt of power needed and is actually equivalent of 14,000 cell phone towers or 5G base stations, and then you multiply that by 25 gigawatts, because that's what each data center on average needs, or even more, you then have 342,000 cell phone towers that emit, actually in a centralized location, EMF radiation or EMR radiation. It's a serious problem that you guys need to address in Maha at the national level.

Thank you. My name is Brenda Dominguez-Stevens, and I live in Hilliard School District in Columbus, and I own a small house where I raise my children and taught them to turn out the lights when they leave a room, don't let the water run needlessly, reduce, reuse, and recycle, and my property tax bill is over $6,000 a year, of which most of that goes to the Hilliard schools. I wonder who specifically benefits economically from all the data centers. I wonder, did developers threaten city councils and trustees with lawsuits if they don't approve their zoning changes? Isn't this coercive power? Did the EPA lower quality standards for air and water discharge? Why is there a push in government to eliminate the Endangered Species Act? And at what level? What cost must the citizens of Ohio pay in their quality of life in order to give data center owners and billionaire corporations our resources and our data? What is the tradeoff? Did you consider the quality of the life of the people of Ohio? A plot of land on Soto-Darby Road always had my attention. In the early 80s, as a young adult, I would swim in Blatts Lake. I drive by it daily. And one day I was alarmed to see a very ugly structure being built, dystopian in appearance. And like my nearby neighbors, we were disappointed. This was going to be our daily view now. And we assumed it was for the growth in Hilliard for all of the homes. And I had trouble finding out exactly what was going on. I went to the auditor site. I found that it had been changed the zoning to data center. and I was frustrated because I never saw notice of a possible zoning change. I was never given an opportunity to go to a public hearing and voice my opinions and trouble finding out about it because it was all done secretly and the public was kept out. These hundreds of acres on Soto Darby Road are next to three neighborhoods and an elementary school, and no notice was given, important decisions made behind closed doors. and I found out that the power plant is not for the residential growth. It's for Amazon. Amazon's data center website states it's using it to train AI as well as their Internet business. And the other thing is the city of Hilliard gave the data center tax abatement. So many people in Hilliard schools struggle with the continuous increases in property taxes to support the schools, And yet we constantly hear there's not enough money to pay the teachers. So the only people I see benefiting from these data centers are the developers who own the facility, the power company, and Amazon. If this is economic development and the idea is to improve the economic lives of Ohioans, I do not see the benefit, nor do I feel any economic improvement. And if there was an economic benefit to the people who actually live here, I still wouldn't want it in my community. We have huge boxes of data center buildings transforming the land, power plants that we must look at every day. And at what cost is this economic improvement? The EPA has lowered standards. The generators in the Hilliard plant will be using fossil fuels. The sound of the turbines are loud. As the test, the neighbors heard it and said it is loud. And what about the right of us to have a quiet and peaceful enjoyment of our property? This is not to mention light pollution from the site turning the night sky into a dim glow. And we must suffer the loss of our rights so Amazon and developers benefit. The people of Ohio, I would just ask that we would pause and ask, what do the people who actually live here want? If we don't ask ourselves, what kind of world do we want to live in, it will be too late. And I would gladly give up using any Internet service to have a world where my grandchildren may never see again, but we know it's not Internet services that these hyperscale want. What about the meadows, the weeds, the bugs, the night sky? We've created a wide-open door in Ohio for data centers whose footprints can be measured by square miles, not just 1,300 acres. Of course, there's impact to wildlife. You've stated that you want the world to know that Ohio is open for business and you want to keep it that way. But I would like to say the people that have come here today they not paid they giving up their time and you all are being paid and I would just really ask that you consider the beauty of Ohio and don't despise the beauty of Ohio. Her woods, her lakes, her ravines, her farmland, Ohio is beautiful, and I appeal to you to keep it that way. There is tourism economy, paddlers travel to Mohican, boaters to Lake Erie, backpackers to southern Ohio, It's for the beauty of the landscape that I ask, why do you want this business of data centers in Ohio? Why pay the cost? It's such a national loss.

Thank you to the chairpersons and members of the select committee. I appreciate this opportunity to share my views on data centers and how we can approach them in a respectful and helpful way to the people of Ohio. I am speaking to you as a citizen of Ohio, coming to you from Bexley, so quite close by. I am a veterinarian, an avid gardener, and a lifelong lover of the outdoors. I am very concerned about the way we're currently handling data centers in Ohio, particularly their reliance on fossil fuels and their impact on our water supply. I do believe that data centers powered with renewable energy, sited thoughtfully with community input, and respectfully handled can benefit the people of Ohio. However, as we've heard today, a great number of these data centers have already been built without consideration for their impacts on our energy and water. It is no secret that data centers require large amounts of electricity to function. As an Ohio citizen, I care deeply about the immediate health impacts to my neighbors and the long-term consequences to the climate of meeting these energy demands with fossil fuels. I am particularly concerned about the on-site fossil fuel burning power plants being applied to these data centers currently, releasing air pollution, particularly into the communities in which the data centers are built. I am calling on you all to require that all data centers be powered exclusively with solar and wind energy, utilizing battery backup. I understand that there may not be enough space on the data center properties to generate this electricity, So I am asking, since the data centers will be the key beneficiaries of this power, that they be required to fund production of wind and solar energy to meet their needs. That will keep the increased cost away from Ohio citizens and prevent harms to our community and our environment. Additionally, I am asking the regulations to be put in place to minimize water use, utilizing closed systems as much as possible or recapturing water to heat adjacent plants or buildings, which I know are being tested in some areas. And additionally, as we've heard, that a lot of contaminants can be released, that that water should be filtered before it leaves the data center, that even if it's not being discharged directly into the environment, it is placing a large burden on municipal wastewater to process this large volume that they may not be equipped to have. So I'd like to, again, thank you all for considering these common sense measures to make sure that data centers can be utilized in a way that is thoughtful and considerate of the people of Ohio Thank you ma Thank you for your testimony Committee Senator Wilkin Thank you Chair Thank you for being here Thank you for your testimony

powered with wind and solar. Correct.

So I understand that space, obviously, is a priority for many reasons. I would disagree that there is not a lot of Ohio wind. So certainly many of our surrounding states are very successful in wind, and we have larger setback rules than other states. So if we are willing to reduce those setbacks in a practical way, we could generate certainly more wind. and also that there is certainly ways that farmland and solar can coexist, as well as utilizing more residential and urban solar, particularly things like large-scale parking lots, rooftops, that type. So I do think there is opportunity to generate that within our community.

Yeah, Jefferson, I don't know that I have a specific answer to that. I know that we need to obviously be mindful of balancing the needs of all of our citizens, but that fossil fuels are not helping anyone.

Hello, Chair. Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Angel Shelton. This is very personal for me. On a daily basis, I can see heavy equipment going up and down the road. I can see, and this, by the way, I live in Adams County. I live on Ginger Ridge Road. Also, the same road the data center wants to come to. I'm about 1.5 miles away from one area. The other side is about 3.5. I literally feel like we are getting surrounded. So I moved to Adams County when I got married to my husband. He is a 20-year veteran. He served the military. He's done a few tours. Anyways, he's paid his debt. It was our dream. I'm sorry. It's okay. to move to the country. And they literally stealing our dreams So the power plant DPNL was shut down It was a coal power plant. My grandfather worked there as well as my mom. They both died with COPD and lung cancer. And these data centers, they're not just like a solar field. They are detrimental to the environment. Any kind of pollution you can think of, I mean, they'll do it. I learned there was light pollution. anyways

Good afternoon, Chairman Holmes, Chairman Chavez, and members of the committee. My name is John Marr, Mayor of the Village of Timberlake in Lake County, Ohio. I come here today, though, personally, even though next week I'll be coming as an elected official. But many Ohioans are asking this simple question now. Why are we having this conversation now? Tax abatements have already been granted. The utility applications have already been filed. The infrastructure planning is already underway, and communities are already being told that these are inevitable. Quite frankly, this feels like we're conducting a safety inspection after the plane has already taken off. Most people inspect a parachute before jumping out of the plane. Ohio apparently prefers to discuss this parachute safety on the way down. We're told these projects represent progress. We're told they're essential. We're told they must move quickly or be left behind. Yet many of the most important questions remain unanswered. What are the long-term health impacts? How do these facilities affect water quality and air quality? Who really pays for the transmission upgrades? Who really pays for the substations? Who really pays for the new generation required to support these facilities? And most important, who really benefits and who really bears the burden? One of the biggest mistakes being made is treating all data centers as though they are the same. They are not. The traditional data centers used to support banking, healthcare, communications, and business operations and our cell phones are different data centers. Mega data centers now being proposed across Ohio are something entirely different. Some consume enough electricity to power entire cities. Many are being built to support advanced artificial intelligence and massive computer operations, governmental contractors, and also critical digital infrastructure. We're told America is in an IA race with China. Maybe that's true. But these facilities are truly matters of national importance. Why are they being treated as ordinary real estate developments? If they're strategic to the infrastructure, these strategic infrastructures should be held to a higher standard. I recently reviewed the data center coalition presentation provided to this committee. It was fascinating. According to the presentation, data centers create jobs, strengthen national security, grow the economy, support innovation, help the electrical grid, lower electrical costs, and apparently solve every problem known to mankind. It may be the first industrial development in history with only benefits and no tradeoffs, which is why exactly Ohioans are asking these questions. Because while the presentation spent dozens of slides discussing benefits, I noticed what was missing. No slide on noise, no slide on low frequency vibration or diesel generator emissions, no slide on property values, no slide on residential quality of life, no slide on what happens if the promised generation doesn't arrive on schedule. Apparently those concerns didn't fit into PowerPoint. I also reviewed PJM's testimony. Unlike the industry's presentation, PJM at least acknowledges there is a challenge. PJM is discussing reliability backups. PGM is discussing curtailment. They're discussing new generation. PGM is discussing new transmission. PGM is discussing demand response. Actually, they were calling out that when we get up to grid, because of the capacity, they're going to ask these data centers to get off the grid temporarily and go to their behind-the-power generation, which will be diesel generators because, again, well, I'll get into that. But everything is fine but why are we working so hard to fix it if everything fine We repeatedly assuring that these mega data centers will have little impact on the grid That's comforting. Apparently, there's a new law of physics that has been discovered. Mathematics has been optional. And what solution is being discussed? Demand response. Demand response for everyone. Families may be told when they can use their electricity. One minute? Residents may be used to expect their lifestyles, but their consumption must change. We're also told not to worry because new generation is coming. Natural gas turbine generators currently face manufacturing delays of approximately five to seven years. Small modular reactors are often discussed in the future, but they're about seven to ten years away, or ten years away at a minimum. So what fills the gap? Backup generators? So what we're looking at here is one way to look at it. I therefore respectfully ask the community for five actions. First, take a pause on new data centers. Second, establish a moratorium of at least a five-mile setback from all residential areas because that's where most of the complaints are coming when they're put too close to residential areas. And again, this demand response, what we can do is we can replace all our old refrigerators, stoves, air conditioned units with more efficient ones that run 50 to 75% more efficient. Can you imagine that would take direct demand right off of our grid. That's five minutes.

Thank you.

Through the chair, yes it is.

Through the chair to the representative, I did do investigating on that, and I guess Meta has a deal with Perry that they're going to be doing the upgrades, and they're going to be adding about 300 megawatt, which is great. They're about at 1.2 now. so to get them up to one and a half. However, part of the deal is that they're going to allocate about 600, about half of the 1.2 gig, which is between 600 and 700 megawatts, to META, first of all, so they'll be using that. And then once they upgrade, they'll be getting the other 300. So basically, out of the one and a half that we'll be generating and putting into the grid, which will be supplying PJM, the problem is that they're going to be allocated about one gigawatt when all is said and done, which means we're going to lose about 700 megawatts of power the way I do my back of the napkin math on that. So actually it doesn't help out a lot because they're consuming all that. And again, what I know is that Perry supplies the PJM grid. We don't even, Ohio doesn't even benefit from that because we're actually a net deficit in power generation. So therefore that goes and feeds PJM. Well, what happens when the other 12 states need that power and we're supplying it to them And then again, META's going to have that reserved, and that's going to really come off of our base load. So I'm glad you asked that. But yeah, I call that as actually a detriment because it's not going to add anything. I think the best way is any kilowatt that's saved is a kilowatt that doesn't have to be produced. And I think by energy savings, we need to get back to the energy savings mindset where we actually get these newer appliances and refrigerators and freezers that are not energy efficient at all. And I know myself just having new appliances in my home I save my energy costs 50 to 75 on each appliance So I mean it significant And if we can do that that definitely gives us base load It not like these solar or wind which is temporary You know, we need something sustainable, like basically either natural gas, but the problem is that uses fossil fuels. And unless we go to nuclear, which, again, is five to maybe ten years out, and most of the problems is not that we don't have the technology. We don't have the manufacturing to be able to build these things fast enough because these data centers are being built at lightning speed.

but I'll come back to you.

Where do you land on that question? Well, we have a power problem. I think behind the meter power generation is the way to go. The only problem is we do have a time lapse with these natural gas turbine generators, which are about five to seven years out, pretty much, because of the manufacturing of them. And then the nuclear modular generators, again, those are out. So the problem is they're going to have to go with the behind-the-meter, these backup generators, which run on natural gas. Those put out the pollutants, and that's where the other problem is the air quality comes out. And then touching back on someone had mentioned also about the waste, the discharge. You know, when they go to these waste facilities, I was a former contractor, and I know it gets discharged. Well, these forever chemicals that go to these treatment plants, these treatment plants aren't designed to handle these forever chemicals, and it does not remove them. All it does is it passes them right through, which get into our lake, which the EPA now wants to use as a dilution pond. So that's another concern that I have is even though they're discharging them into the treatment plants, those treatment plants cannot handle those contaminants that are coming out of those closed-loop systems that they have. And that's one thing, the one question that I question our commissioners of Lake County to look into that also, those permits that are being requested by these data centers on their discharge.

Senator Wilkin. Thank you, Chairman. Just a clarification. station, doesn't all of our generation go on to the PJM lines?

Okay. So I'm just, it's not really fair to say we don't get any benefit from the Perry station because it all goes on to PJM. All of our generation, then that's our regional transportation, our transmission organization.

And again, we get less allocation than coming to us because we have 12 other states to share it with. And again, when they need demand, what are they going to do? Give it to, you know, so that's where I'm at. I mean, just that there's only so much that go around. When I gathered from PGMs last week when they did their presentation, you know, once all these data centers are like 10 megs or 10 gigawatts coming online and another thing, three or four that are in process, when they put that on, we will have no more reserve, which means that when we hit those reserve numbers, we're going to have to have blackouts. or they're going to have to ask the data centers to go behind the meter with self-generation. Thank you, Chairman. I understand that but I just saying the statement that we not getting into generation if that plant didn exist we be having a bigger deficit So there definitely a benefit from that plant being online Through the chair to the center but yes it is operating now And again, I haven't seen any plans of it being shut down within the next 10 or 20 years prior to all this anyway. I mean, it's a good viable, and actually they never even opened up the second stack. So again, there's plenty of room for expansion at the Perry plant. So there might have been false rumors. I don't know, but then again, all I know is that the current deal that META has with them, it's not going to help us at all because we're going to have 700 megawatts less power going to PJM allocated to, you know, that's going to go to META. So that's what I see is the net difference. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Melissa Rexroth. I live in Springfield, and we currently have a hyperscale data center being constructed. It will use between 75 and 150 megawatts when it is fully functioning. Springfield has roughly 30,000 homes. If it runs at 150 megawatts, that will equal three times the amount of homes in Springfield. It will only bring 120 jobs. Springfield's median income is about $47,000 annually. Many people are struggling to keep their lights on and food on the table. Some have had to go without one or both of these, yet we are being asked to pay more taxes. This data center was given a tax abatement, and the citizens got an increase in property taxes, some of them doubling without having made any repairs. Those on fixed incomes cannot afford these increases, and foreclosures and homelessness have increased. Schools are struggling, and people are moving out of Springfield. Springfield's water already has PFOS, a forever chemical in it. At a recent city commission meeting, a citizen stated, our water is not for sale to Amazon, Meta, et cetera. The mayor's response was, Springfield's water is very much for sale. Our pleas fall on deaf ears. It is possible these centers will add more forever chemicals through their waste. Will there be a new forever chemical from these data centers that we aren't aware of yet? We will not know the ramifications of any of these actions for years to come, and by then it will be too late. Springfield says income taxes have flattened and they didn't receive the income they anticipated due to companies utilizing tax credits. Our police and fire departments have not been staffed appropriately for years, breaking the city charter. Fire is stated they aren't equipped to put out a fire if the data center catches fire. We have voted no on all these increases, and yet they continue with their plans and give abatements left and right when the money is desperately needed now. Our streets are in disarray, causing damage to vehicles. Citizens can't afford to have their cars repaired. We simply cannot afford any more increases on anything. Citizens like myself voice our concerns at commission meetings, and we are rarely acknowledged or answered. So I am coming here to voice my concerns about these data centers, their abatements, the price increases we will have as a result of them, health issues they may bring, privacy concerns, and pollution to our land, air, and water. Our electric grid is strained, and citizens cannot afford the recent electric increases as incomes are not increasing at the same rate of inflation. Many people in Springfield have to go outside, drive out of town for a job that even gives them enough money to survive. This is just not sustainable. As a former RN and now chronically ill, I am very concerned about health consequences. Springfield's data center will have roughly 50 generators, of which 30 of them will be running constantly using natural gas. These emit nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds or VOCs and particulate matter. These emissions can cause asthma, COPD, cancer, heart disease, and stroke. There are homes within 1,000 feet of this site. Imagine your children with their whole lives ahead of them breathing in this air. There is peer-reviewed research showing approximately 1,300 premature deaths and 600,000 asthma cases annually due to these emissions. Our data center will dispose of waste into the sewer that's going back into when someone had asked about Forever Chemicals getting into the water. It is treated in the wastewater system, but then put back into our water system and the water we drink. Our data center will be disposing of the water into the waste. It is a closed-loop system, but they do have a blow-down process where they do have to sometimes bleed the system. So that does go into our system. Our water treatment plant does not monitor for glycol right now, and we do monitor for six PFOS right now. The sound of these generators running constantly can cause sleep disturbances, stress and heart issues, and could cause cognitive development issues in children and reduce concentration in adults. Our private data is being stored in some of these data centers. It seems every month I'm getting letters about how mine or my children's information was compromised. One minute. As a victim of stalking, I'm also concerned about my whereabouts being stored in these data centers. It is very unnerving knowing you are being watched and recorded. If you've never been stalked, you wouldn't know the feeling. There have been incidents where police and others have accessed this information to stalk people. Private companies store this information. Who are they selling it to? We have a right to privacy. Please help us protect our health, privacy, land, air, water, and keep our water and electric rates from skyrocketing by enacting a statewide moratorium on data centers. And as I've been listening to people, I have noticed that I haven't heard someone here coming saying, yes, please keep bringing more of these to Ohio. Thank you.

Where do you source your information?

Through the chair, I actually have a packet here that has lots of data with sources noted. I could give that to you if you'd like it.

Sure. I mean, that's just through articles, sorry, through the chair, articles, things that I found online regarding this information. I've gone to city commission meetings and I haven't gotten real detailed information, so I've had to try to find it myself.

It is not. There are three companies in there at this point. None of them are Amazon.

It is a hyperscale.

Okay. Right. Crusoe is the one that's going to be having the 30 generators. They're AI. They'll be training AI.

Perfect.

representatives and senators, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. My name is Sherry Farringer. I live in Commercial Point in northern Pickaway County, about 20 minutes from here. It's beautiful, and I've met the most impressive people in the short time I've lived there. good, smart, hardworking people. It was several months after I moved into my new home that I first heard the phrase data center. A neighbor told me of the plans for the land directly north of our neighborhood. The home builder did not tell me or my husband what they had known for two years that was coming. Amazon was building a data center. In fact, homes are still being built to this day, and new homeowners are only finding out about the data center plans on Facebook. I have spoken to several families who feel duped and cannot get out of their contract for their new home. They have all said that they would not have built their dream home in that neighborhood had they known. I would not have either. When my neighbor first told me, I didn't know what a data center was. So when I heard of plans for a separate project six miles away in Asheville, I volunteered to help the community and learn as much as I could. I quickly realized the gravity of the situation and knew life would be irreparably altered after construction began. Then I began to learn that this was happening across the entire state. I'll not go into all that I've learned in the countless hours I've spent researching before and after work. You've heard most of it today anyway. I can only speak to what is happening in my life and the lives of the great people of Pigway County. The data center in Asheville comes with its own power plant behind the meter. 76 turbines will burn natural gas 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At least 40 of those massive engines, they're basically jet engines, are from a company that has never built engines for data centers before. These will all be located in close proximity to homes. The pipes carrying the gas will be situated very near our aquifer, the Tays aquifer, from which we get our drinking water and also supplies our wells. That aquifer is already very vulnerable to contamination, according to several of the state's own sources. Again, 20 minutes from here, in my home and commercial point, plans have now been submitted for an additional data center campus, even closer to my neighborhood, less than 1,000 feet from my front door. Many other houses will be closer. 15 buildings. Over 3 million square feet of data center will stand where crops once grew. Half of those buildings will be equipped with 182 diesel backup generators. The plans for the other buildings lack a lot of detail and the community's questions have still not been answered. Eight miles the other direction from my home in Grove City, yet another set of plans have been submitted. That's four hyperscale projects in a 14-mile radius, likely to be built at the same time. I have not found studies into the possible effects of such significant construction happening concurrently. I believe because this is new and extreme. Can our infrastructure handle this?

Thank you. Chairman Holmes, Chairman Chavez, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony regarding the placement of large AI data centers in residential communities. My name is Christina Camuendo, and I am a 23-year resident of Perry Township in Lake County. I am directly affected by a large data center proposal currently underway in my community. Perry is a close-knit rural community characterized by farmland, nurseries, parks, and neighborhoods along Lake Erie. Residents choose to live in Perry because of its small-town character, open space, natural resources, and quality of life. Today our community is facing a proposal for a large-scale data center campus on approximately 230 acres of the former Champion Farm property. According to public records, the project has been under discussion since 2024 and is proposed for land located adjacent to our Perry Library and in close proximity to our schools and houses. In 2025, Perry Village amended its zoning code to allow data center campuses as an industrial use. Public records subsequently confirmed the existence of a non-disclosure agreement between village officials and entities associated with the project's developer. These developments have generated significant concerns among residents who feel they have not received sufficient information about the long-term impacts of the project. Supporters emphasize potential economic benefits, including jobs and tax revenue. However, many residents are asking a simple question, at what cost? My testimony, I'm choosing to focus on the public health aspects of data centers in our community. So when it comes to noise and low-frequency sound, Large data centers rely on extensive cooling systems, HVAC equipment, backup generators, transformers, and other infrastructure that can operate continuously. Research and community reports from data center locations across the country have raised concerns regarding constant noise exposure, which results in sleep disruption, stress, annoyance, anxiety, headaches, and reduced quality of life. What benefit is there to revenue for the schools if the kids can't think straight or if there's cognitive impairment and anxiety? In addition to audible noise, researchers have begun examining the potential impacts of low-frequency and infrasonic sound generated by large industrial facilities, including data centers. While scientific understanding continues to evolve residents deserve assurance that projects located near homes schools libraries and parks will not negatively affect health and well These assurances cannot be made Air pollution. Data centers depend on large backup generators to maintain operations during outages and other grid events. These generators can emit particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants associated with respiratory and cardiovascular health risks. Researchers have increasingly examined the public health costs associated with rapid AI infrastructure expansion. Electromagnetic fields, or EMF. The electrical infrastructure required to power hyperscale data centers includes substations, transmission equipment, and high-capacity power systems. These systems generate extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields, ELF, EMF. Research continues regarding potential biological interactions involving neurological function, oxidative stress, immune response, and certain cancers. PERI is not an industrial corridor. It is a residential and agricultural community. The question before policymakers is not whether technology is important. It's whether industrial-scale AI infrastructure belongs in close proximity to homes, schools, libraries, parks, and family neighborhoods. They do not. As an Ohio citizen directly affected by a proposed data center project, I respectfully urge this committee to prohibit the construction of large AI data centers in residential areas. At a minimum, I ask the General Assembly to establish a moratorium on new hyperscale AI data center projects until comprehensive statewide siting standards, environmental review requirements, transparency measures, and enforceable, proven mitigation standards are adopted to protect citizens and resources.

Thank you. Good afternoon, co-chairs and members of the select committee on data centers. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Corey Parent. I'm a resident of Allen County and a software and platform engineer who builds cloud infrastructure for regulated industries, including health care, financial services, and commercial real estate in the past. I work daily with the platforms these facilities are built to serve and with the economics that govern how their capacity is bought and sold. When you see that these facilities do not employ many people, it is because I exist. I interact with these data centers through software. I request servers and queues, the things to run businesses via software, not in person. I'm here to make one argument and to make it plainly. Ohio extends substantial public benefits to data center developers without requiring them to disclose who they are. I can speak to this directly. In American Township in Allen County, a data center representing half a billion dollars in capital investment was negotiated for 15 months under an NDA. One of the items that I submitted is, in fact, a petition for writ of mandamus, which is actually what finally got me those records on Friday, or at least a production schedule to produce them. One key thing I haven't heard today is, what is a data center? No one is asking that question. No one is answering that question. Before we move forward on any legislation, I encourage the committee to encourage the assembly to come up with a centralized definition for a data center to simplify legislation and understand what we're getting. Disclosure also matters because nearly everything else that has been discussed today requires it. In my past experience with PropTech, you need to know ownership names to roll up who owns parcels. There's a reason that this is served by companies like Palantir and Reonomy. It's a complex problem. It need not be. Everyone's come here with real concerns from different seats, but we all need to do what's best for Ohio. And while I have heard a lot said about what is the cost of this potentially, what might this do, we need to actually assess both cost and value and understand whether that value is going to remain in the state. A key economic dimension to ownership that the public record cannot currently see and has not been discussed in the data center debate is Ohio's defense footprint. In my work, I deal with the difference between commercial cloud and government cloud very frequently. These environments are not a labeling difference. They are a completely different cost structure, a completely different addressable market. Government cloud capacity runs 20 to 30 percent above commercial rates because of isolation, person staffing requirements, and compliance overhead. Largely what drives these premiums is authorization level via FedRAMP and Department of Defense impact levels. The authorization posture also creates an effect on the economic impact of the community. I, as a software engineer or as a potential entrepreneur, me in service of my county's business people cannot use that data center if it is a FedRAMP compliant facility. I think we've seen what has happened with sales tax exemption. I've heard much misinformation today. and it's ultimately caused by the disclosure issues that we have. When I hear suggestions like, why don't we use air cooling? Well, that's because a B200 or an H100 graphics card that services these AI workloads must be liquid cooled. It is not a difference between data centers. Hyperscale has been around for 15 years. it's how I've held a job. However, we are not understanding the key growth in the actual property held within these data centers and the things they do. And as a result, we're seeing a huge expansion likely speculative hoping to get defense contract space on their servers. I've included six recommendations in my submission as well as sources, but I not the greatest speaker and I have about five seconds here Thank you for your testimony There is further

Representative Workman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Parent, for coming in today and for your testimony. It seems that you have an interest in potentially the defense space, and I'm noticing that your testimony is interested parties, so not necessarily for or against data centers at this point, mainly just information providing or seeking. So my question to you is, you know, obviously we have had an overwhelming amount of feedback against data centers, but just last week we heard from the data center coalition that it is a matter of national security. It's a national security imperative that the United States be an independent developer of the data services industry. Can you speak a little bit about that as it relates to maybe defense contracts or what we're looking at on a national scale related to national security?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your answer.

Through the chair, I do believe that some data center growth is necessary. I see this more directly as a sort of a payer. I'm the responsible party for paying AWS and GCP and all these instances at my company. I see the pressure on the price where we are definitely running out. Everything is leasing-based, and there's only so many servers at a time. Servers get more expensive during the Super Bowl, for example, because there's simply lots of people wanting to run ads. However, what I think may be this proliferation is specifically related to Executive Order 14265. What that did is basically tell defense primes that they have to shape up and modernize their procurement processes What that means practically on the ground is much more challenging to explain because it gets technical Google own platform for defense is actually it really a secured version of their standard platform That is the whole purpose. That is exactly what matches with the language of off-the-shelf solutions. Google's own data centers use a technology called Kubernetes to do that. Kubernetes has been employed within, to my understanding, some aerial vehicles and some ground vehicles. And so effectively what this is, is basically like a brain in your tank. it's the same way that your car's brain has gotten smarter over time. You now have a 6 inch touchscreen maybe a 10 inch touchscreen over time we've done something and this is very much related to the term edge is we've moved computers to the thing they do and this is particularly been one of my pushbacks around the surveillance argument you can just put a computer chip on a camera. You don't need to run that through a data center.

Co-Chair Chavez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, you're very technical, and you understand this at a very deep level. Can you distill your concern down to a layman comment?

Committee, any further questions? Thank you, sir. Thank you for your testimony. We'd now like to call Kim Georgetown. Carl Setzer is on deck. Welcome to committee.

Thank you for your testimony. That's five minutes. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Any questions? Committee, are there any questions?

I feel like there's definitely a concern of our privacy across the board that we want to protect, and it should be understood and we should understand what that is going to impact. Like I said, I do know that there are Bitcoin mining facilities here in Ohio already. So we're hosting foreign companies on our soil. Do we want to be hosting that here? Probably, but where? We need to identify what the regulations need to be so that they're not in people's neighborhoods, so that they're not destroying local habitats and all of the different concerns that you heard here today. So I think if there's some type of an energy corridor that can be identified where these are approved to go in, that might be one way to look at it. I'm offering that as a suggestion, not as an ultimate solution, but something needs to be done because we have 30,000 individuals who have signed the petition thus far, and they're telling us they don't want them.

It's a legitimate question, I believe. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to have regulations on privacy regarding all of our data, what companies are able to do, maybe extending the Fourth Amendment to commercial use of our private information.

Any further questions? Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. You're welcome. We'd now like to call. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we're at six more to go. Mr. Carl Setzer with Daniel Kinnelt on deck. Welcome to committee, sir.

Why? Because it's enough jobs to look beneficial, but not enough to break your school system. These are marketing approaches to get over a hurdle, to get tax abatements, zoning, and environmental so they can build it, and by the time there are trucks on site and raw materials in the flat and trade unions have their contracts verified, they will say, hey, that closed-loop system, yeah, that's going to be too expensive, now it needs to be open-loop, but you can't stop it because we've already broke ground. By the time we see whether or not there are 200 jobs to even be had, and by the time we get to a point where we know whether or not there will be any taxes paid after the abatements expire, the people that sign the contracts won't even exist anymore in terms of corporations. We don't even know if this industry will exist. When there's a minute, can you just go like this? I'm looking right at you. And so what we need to do is figure out a way to do a registered capital bond that is required statewide that's a collaborative between the state, the county, and whatever municipality is hosting these, where if you're going to tell us there are 200 jobs, what are those salaries total times 10 for 10 years? That money goes in a bond on day one. That way, if you collapse, at least the community and those municipalities have some form of capital to repair the blight that is left behind when this industry either collapses or shrinks the way all speculative bubbles do. If we have enough respect for our communities and for the next generation to say, we trust you, we're open to business, build here. But put your money where your mouth is. Put a bond in place and allow us the security and the guarantee that you're not just going to abscond once you've pumped the value out of your project, you've done your IPO, your founders and your Series A private equity got their cash out, and then the rest of America is left with your problem. You did it anyway. I was actually done and so I just want to also thank everybody for what you do I built a business in China for 16 years Being able to actually participate in a functional democracy is a gift that we should all be thankful for Please do not think the anxiety in this room is because we don't want a better Ohio. This is not a human being's fault, and Ohio residents are not in the way of progress. We're just anxious, and we're afraid that we're going to lose the little that we have left. to things that we never even asked for. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Please. It's all the audience that's watching right now. So, committee, any questions? Thank you for that testimony. Seeing none, thank you. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Representative Workman.

I think that when you look in the long history that we have with economic speculation, whether it's boat building or railroads or mortgage bonds or junk bonds or crypto or whatever in the world an NFT was. Everybody just talked about NFTs for a whole year in 2021. I don't remember what a non-fungible token did or how it was going to change my life, but it was in every PowerPoint presentation we saw. And now what is the thing that gets every director of a company to allocate budget? It's we need the AI. If we don't implement AI here, then you've got to beat the competition. And whether it's the national security risk of we're in a race against China, and if we govern ourselves to the point where we hold back our technological potential, somehow China is going to explode into the future with AI. And I will tell you from somebody that built real tangible assets in China, what they're good at is the theater. They want you to think that they're two seconds away from leaping over you. So you get so far ahead of your skis that you ruin the wondrous natural resources that we have here, but we also ruin the natural resources that we don't list, and that's our children and the next generation. And so this is a speculative bubble. You can't say it isn't, because everyone is racing to build a data center. 70% of Ohioans or Americans don't want it, but I would also say a large majority of them can't tell you what one is. And I don't know if anybody in here, other than Corey, can functionally say what a data center is. I can make a guess. It's a manufacturing facility. They take raw metadata, they process it, sometimes in lightning speed to answer queries through chat CPT and Claude and everything else, or more likely when it comes to Meta and when it comes to Amazon, they're building profiles on us so they can sell us more things that we didn't ask for. That means if it's a manufacturing facility and you build a brewery, you know you get barley, water, hops, and yeast, and then you make a finished product. All of those things have taxes paid on them. Why are we looking at data centers as if they are just computers in a building? They're not. They are processing data. They're processing interstate commerce. Most of the data that's being processed in Ohio doesn't originate in Ohio. It crossing state borders to be processed and then finished products are being sold internally or externally for profit Why are we made to stomach trillion net worth human beings that are about to IPO multi dollar companies And then we're supposed to believe that they can't afford to pay us a property tax and a sales tax on the things that they're using our natural resources to make. And so that's why. It's a race before the bubble bursts. Sorry, I didn't say to the chair. My bad.

Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Danielle Kinhalt. I live in Manchester, which is in Adams County. I'm a mother, a community advocate, and a lifelong river resident. You know, just because people didn't care before doesn't mean that we shouldn't care now. Progress doesn't start with being perfect. It starts with someone deciding that something matters. I'm thinking about my son, Henry. He'll be three this month. and the generations after him more than anything. Some people say we already have industry, power plants, pollution, data centers, so why should we worry now? If you asked me whether I would have protested some of those decisions back then, I would have. I would have demanded stricter regulations, accountability. And yeah, maybe our communities would have lost out on some money, but I'm sure many families wouldn't have lost loved ones as early as they did to cancer. And I know the word cancer has probably touched more people in this room than it hasn't. My first real experience with the word cancer came when I was 20, working as a certified nurse's assistant. I cared for a woman seven days a week for over two years straight, right up until hospice came in, and she passed away from a cancerous brain tumor. and that was hard, but that wasn't the last time that I would hear that word. Since then, I've lost my Nene to cancer. I've lost my best friend, Tommy, to cancer. I've lost my Uncle Neil to cancer. My late fiancé's dad, Jim, to cancer. My Aunt Peggy to cancer. To my Uncle Ronnie to cancer. My Papaw has had prostate and skin cancer. My Aunt Tanya has fought and beat breast cancer. One of my dear friends, Chelsea, is battling breast cancer right now. We recently lost a young boy to a rare brain tumor, cancerous. Multiple children in our community are fighting cancer. I even have had my own ovarian cancer scare. So when people tell you not to worry, I can't. My community already struggles with water quality concerns and health challenges when you see the organizations in place to protect us, lowering regulations and fast-tracking permits, hiding behind NDAs and unofficial proposals? Why would we willingly accept additional risk when there are still so many unanswered questions? America already leads the world in the data center infrastructure. The question isn't whether we can build more. The question is whether every community should be expected to sacrifice its worth water, its land, and quality of life for big tech. We need a statewide moratorium on new data center development until we truly study the impacts of what we've already built in Ohio. Before approving more projects, we should have clear, independent data on the water use, the energy demands, the environmental impacts, and long-term effects on the surrounding communities. Responsible planning requires understanding the consequences before expanding further. Because when I look at my son, I don't just see the next five, ten years, I see the next 100. And I believe that he deserves clean water, a healthy environment, and a community that chose to protect will one day be on his and his generation's shoulders. And I'm here being a voice for myself, for the people that can't be here, for my son. I know that you committee members hold the power to protect our communities, so please push pause and protect the small, unzoned, rural places that I call home and that a lot of people call home. Otherwise, we have no protections or say what our communities become. Conservation is conservative. Thank you for your time and for listening to my words, and I'm sorry for crying.

Members of the committee, I'm Aria Walls, a 15-year-old who shouldn't have to be here today in the Statehouse testifying. However, I've been given no other choice because I fear for the future I will have, or rather not have, if I do not speak my mind. I've lived in the Lucas County part of Ohio my whole life, and I'd like to stay there. But just minutes from my home, a 715,000 square foot AI data center is being built. I'm not against innovation or new technologies, but I am worried that we're not evaluating the harm these data centers will cause. I watched the meeting from Wednesday and found myself with even more unanswered questions. These companies do not care about me and they do not care about my community. All they want is to make people feel safe enough to not fight back. But it didn't work. That safety is false. They spoke about how they will strengthen community infrastructure as if that somehow benefits us when that's just what's required to be able to support the data center. They brought up how data centers have been around for over 20 years, but failed to mention how the ones they're making right now are different. A conventional data center takes 5 to 20 megawatts, but the hyperscale AI ones are 20 to 100 times that, depending on the specifics of the facility. The Meta AI data center being built near me will be powered by its own personal natural gas-fired simple cycle power plant. That may sound great. It won strain the electrical grid right except there a reason why this type of energy production fell out of favor They inefficient and produce significantly more pollution The reason why META is using this type of power plant is because despite the fuel expenses being higher due to the inefficiency the cost of building it is cheap enough to offset this. It doesn't matter to META how much more harmful this will be to my community. The pollutants produced include nitrogen oxides as well as greenhouse gases, which have been linked to respiratory illnesses and increased risk of childhood asthma. What are the data centers doing to protect the community from the air pollution they're creating? I cannot live where I cannot breathe. Those health effects will take time to begin to present themselves, but they will inevitably come, and once they do, it will be too late. While the EPA has an obligation to limit this pollution at the federal level, states can also impose even stronger standards to further protect the health of their residents. I strongly believe that data center development should be paused until better legislation that prevents air and water pollution is in place. What I haven't heard today is anybody telling you exactly what the policies are that they want. So I'd like to give you an example. Just a couple days ago in New Jersey, Governor Mikey Sherrill just proposed a four-part plan to regulate data centers. This includes them reporting on consumption and consulting members of the community. I believe that we should follow suit and form legislation based off of that. I'd also like to note that according to Stanford University, we are set to run out of natural gas by 2060. This isn't a set number. The more we use, the closer that day gets. That's within my lifetime. these data centers simply aren't sustainable. Please don't put the consequences of your decisions on the younger generations. The young man Samuel who spoke earlier stated most 12 year olds aren't concerned about this but I'd like to call attention to the fact that many 15, 16, and 17 year olds are. This is my future we're talking about and I deserve to have a say in it. I want clean air, drinkable water, and a stable electric grid for my generation and for everyone that will follow. Do not search for hope to give to me because hope can only come through change and I will accept it in no other form. And I have one final note. This testimony was 100% human made and research based because I don't need my intelligence to be artificial. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Good evening. Chair Holmes, Chair Chavez, and members of the Joint Legislative Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Dylan Lloyd. I'm a 16-year-old student from Adams County. I'm here because the devastating Amazon Data Center planned for Buck Canyon is a warning sign for the entire state. The promises are inflated, the risks are dangerous, and rural Ohio is being forced to carry an indescribable burden. The Buck Canyon project alone will use 31 times our county's annual electricity, clear a whopping 320 acres of forest, and affect 2,000 feet of stream. This is not an isolated issue. Ohio has 223 data centers either operating or in the pipeline multi dollar corporations are treating rural Ohio like a private battery breaking down into three major crises First, grid strain and rate hikes. Developers quote industry-sponsored studies to claim families won't see an increase on their bill, like it's fact. But it's already happening. Families, farmers, and small businesses absorb the use of the use of the use of the use of utility costs. While under Ohio Revised Code 122.175, these corporations can get a 100% tax exemption on their equipment. The state lets them bill tax-free, while some of the poorest people in our state and in the nation are forced to pay for giant tax utilities. Second, the destruction of our water. These projects consume millions of gallons of groundwater every single day. This water is either evaporated or pumped back into rivers as hot water known as thermal pollution killing wildlife. Our communities depend on aquifers. Once they're gone, they're gone forever as far as human time scales are concerned. Yet the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz recently admitted the state has quote no visibility end quote into actual water use on public systems. They are hiding behind public water systems to bypass the people. Ohio is flying blind, dangerously approving projects and asking questions later without the facts. Meanwhile, our quiet nights are traded for a constant 80 decibel hum. You cannot drink data. Third, the environmental crisis. Buck Canyon will pump out 9 to 10 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of adding two million cars to Ohio's roads. Now multiply that by 223 data centers. This is a climate disaster no amount of greenwashing can fix. And what do we get in return? Tens of permanent jobs, which are frequently outsourced. Developers blur temporary construction with permanent employment, but the economic promise is a lie. Growth should not mean sacrificing our land and water so outside interests can steal our resources, our resources, and leave the bill behind once it's gone. My generation, our generations, will live with the consequences of what you decide here. We are the youth. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, this is a republic if you can keep it. Please protect our resources. Thank you.

Thank you for hearing us and allowing everybody to speak today. I'm a local volunteer with Conserve Ohio here in Columbus. I'm not from Ohio. I am not from one particular state, as I come from a military family. I have called Mississippi, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, California, and now once again Ohio home. I am not from here, but I deeply care about the people here, the land here, and the future of this state. I am also not directly impacted by a data center being built in my backyard, but I have great empathy and concern for those who are. And I know that I and everyone in this state will be directly or indirectly impacted if we allow this rate of development to continue I could discuss facts statistics and studies on these data centers the projected and documented pollution to the soil, to the water, to the air, to the dark night sky, etc. But this has all already been shared by people here who are much more qualified and much more informed than me to discuss these facts. I'm here for the butterflies, the birds, the bees, the bats, the lightning bugs, the salamanders, the soil, the water, the children, and their future. I deeply believe in leaving places better than we found them. I believe in living in a reciprocal manner with nature and each other. I spend much of my free time working with the local land. My hands and feet are happily in the dirt about three to five days a week. I volunteer at Franklinton Farms and use my own backyard as a research space and garden. I've been avidly studying native and invasive plant and bug species in the last two and a half years I've lived here. I'm even working with an official from the city to properly identified invasive species in my yard and in my neighborhood so I can continue to effectively and cleanly get rid of them and replace them with native perennial and sometimes endangered plant species. I bring all of this up for a reason. In the plant kingdom, there are native, invasive, and also naturalized species. Naturalized species are ones that are not originally from the new place they are now growing, but do not harm or choke out native species. They grow alongside them and more often than not also have beneficial properties. They are welcomed. The term invasive is pretty self-explanatory. As I battle in the dirt with my hands in a shovel against invasive species on our lands, I also battle on the streets with a petition and a pen against invasive data centers that are choking out the very same lands. We are a state rich in soil, rich in farmland, rich in water and resources. I know this well coming from the contrast of California and the desert. However, this is now all being depleted and abused on a daily basis, not just by data centers, of course. There are many factors at play. However, data centers and the current intended and unchecked rapid expansion of them here will most certainly make a massive impact on the destruction, desecration, and violent depletion of our shared wealth, our natural and incredibly necessary resources. These data centers are not naturalized. They are largely not welcomed, and they are currently operating as an invasive species. Do they have the potential to be naturalized? People who are much more informed than me say yes, there are better ways to run them, but we can't do that if we do not stop now and reevaluate our approach. Scientists all over the globe have been persistently broadcasting that the living fabric of our ecosystems is unraveling. They all point toward globally interconnected causes, industrial agriculture, pesticides and pollution, habitat destruction, wetland loss, climate change. Scientists are also independently finding that butterflies are rapidly losing their color. That's heartbreaking. Pollinators, all of our bugs, our birds are becoming more muted and not just in color. The natural and again necessary parts of the world are becoming silenced because they are disappearing, because their numbers are dwindling, because we are rapidly and ignorantly taking over the very last of their homes and our precious wild spaces. There is a scarily significant global decline in diversity and the abundance of almost all living creatures and the kingdoms that make up our beautiful planet. We are replacing the natural songs and sounds and hums of the world with the incessant, malignant hum of machines and metal and data. We need to be investing more in and at the minimum protecting the data centers underneath our feet. The ecosystem that makes our food, that gives us the air that we breathe, the water that we drink. Water and soil aren't luxuries to be wasting, they are food security, they are life, they are a birthright. Freshwater and rich farm loomen are already endangered. Why are we prioritizing their use to house and cool computers as opposed to using them to continue to nurture each other? Our in our future? Why are we not pausing more and asking more questions like, is this rapid rate of our expansion mirroring the rapid decline of our ecosystems, our fragile ecosystems? And what is this expansion actually worth when considering that? Why are we investing in the willing destruction of our shared natural wealth for the financial benefit of these large companies? I am for a moratorium on more data centers being built in the state of Ohio. I am not ignorant to the needs and role of technology and development in our current societal structure or my own small role in it. But I know that there is always a better way and we must find it and we most importantly need to implement it when we do find it. Thank you.