6 days Ago
The blooms, the sunshine and the peaceful sight of a duo of swimming ducks were hard to miss this morning. It was just another day in the Rock Mountain Lakes community. “It's this quiet every day.
You'll hear ducks occasionally. There are some bald eagles out here. You'll hear them,” David Havron said.
Two and a half miles away, lives Janice Sanders and six of her siblings. Her family has resided in Red Mountain Heights for more than a century. “Our parents were friends.
Our grandparents were friends. So, we just we all know each other, and it's all peaceful and quiet,” Sanders said. However, over the last few weeks she found out about a proposed data center to be built up against what her family has called home for decades.
“It's going to be a block maybe two blocks away from my home, which we will be able to hear. The humming of the generators,” Sanders said. Havron claims one of the 250,000 buildings will be within sight of his dock.
“Noise, air, the lights, the water, the construction for seven years,” Havron said. That's why he and two neighbors hired attorney Reginald McDaniel to help stop the project. “This will be the third largest data center in the whole country,” McDaniel said.
It is a $14.5 billion project, with 18 data storage buildings, each the size of 2-3 super Wal-Marts. With a Bessemer City Council rezoning vote only hours away, McDaniel argued to a judge Monday that the city failed to give the community a proper heads up on the vote.
“The law requires you to at least give a 15-day notice, and the last notice that went out only gave them eleven days,” McDaniel said. So, a judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday night, forcing the City Council to postpone its rezoning vote Tuesday morning. “We're totally against it and we will fight.
We will not stop,” Sanders said. “We're going to give it all we got. That's for sure,” Havron said.
Bessemer has not yet filed its response to the complaint in court and a representative for the Mayor’s Office did reply to our call or text..
