It’s too soon to tell the fate of the proposed data center in an industrial park in La Pine, but if local action and national sentiment are any indication, approval of the project looks iffy.
According to Source reporting, a company called Boxminer, which “mines” bitcoin, is seeking to build a data center on a 19.5-acre plot. The project proposal says it will bring 100 construction jobs, “up to 200 full time hi tech value” jobs with salaries from $60,000 to $180,000, and about $1.2 million in property tax revenues for the City of La Pine. If the project goes well, project documents show, the company has interest in other sites in the industrial park.
Had this been a few years ago, those figures may have been enough to put stars in the eyes of the people of La Pine. But nowadays, Americans are getting more sophisticated in their knowledge of the promise and problems a data center can present. While there’s no talk of that yet here, these facilities typically angle for subsidies or tax breaks — even while the “good jobs” that continue long-term at a data center are few. We’ve seen that at the Prineville facilities, where after construction, relatively few jobs remain. Just this week, Meta made cuts in Prineville. When the tax breaks at those Prineville centers expire, we wouldn’t be shocked to see their operators leave town.
Americans, whose power bills have gone up astronomically in the last several years, are waking up to the fact that data centers that fuel the new demand for artificial intelligence are hogging massive amounts of power — and that the cost is often being passed onto consumers. In La Pine, the Boxminer project proposal states it plans to use 20 megawatts of power, and hopes for more if “future load allocations become available.” Twenty megawatts can power 16,000 homes. La Pine itself had roughly 1,070 households as of the 2020 Census — so the power needs for that 20-acre data center property would be roughly 15 times the current needs of the entire town. According to its website, the electric provider, Midstate Electric Cooperative, serves 21,000 “meters” in the region.)
The issue has become so front-and-center, that it’s bridging the bipartisan divide, with both Republicans and Democrats coming together to fight new data centers in their areas.
In Oregon, legislators not long ago set new limits on the rate increases that can be passed onto consumers, and this month, the Oregon Public Utility Commission created new rules that require large data centers to bear more of the costs they create. That legislation didn’t apply to co-ops.
Midstate states on its website that data centers will pay for their own expansion costs. Then again, in this scenario there’s no guaranteeing tbey won’t also be forced to raise rates, when demand at the co-op nearly doubles from one customer. Midstate doesn’t currently have any data centers in its profile, and there’s always the risk of unforeseen costs.
In terms of public sentiment, it seems the tide has turned. According to a poll released in March by the Pew Research Center, 43% of those polled believed that “data centers using more energy” was a major reason for the increase in home energy costs over the last few years. Some 39% viewed data centers as “mostly bad” for the environment. (In the same poll, 25% said the centers were “mostly good” for jobs.)
The issue has become so front-and-center, that it’s bridging the bipartisan divide, with both Republicans and Democrats coming together to fight new data centers in their areas. In a May 1 article in The New York Times, a Wisconsin comedian called data centers “the most bipartisan issue since beer.”
But even beyond that concern around electric rates, we see another potential reason for the vehement opposition to the proposal in La Pine: Gas prices. Many people in La Pine already spend a lot of money driving to work, with a 24.6-minute average commute time. With prices skyrocketing due to the Iran war, any notion of an increase in power rates is going to upset people. La Pine residents are clearly connecting the dots.
The opposition brewing in La Pine introduces a good lesson for local leaders across the region: In the current environment, any whiff of raising fees is not going to go down easy.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
