Martindale-Brightwood residents cite environmental concerns in suit against data center plan

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12 Comments

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  1. Environmental concerns 😂. They should have lived there anytime between 1912 and 1960 when coal fueled trains chugged in and out of the Big 4 rail yard’s roundhouse 24 hours a day. It was loud, it stunk and people took it with a grain of salt. 🚂. They also realized it put bread on the table for hundreds of Brightwood families.

    1. Perhaps you can explain how this specific data center “will put food on the table for hundreds of Brightwood families?” Also interested in why you feel this community shouldn’t expect their environmental concerns to be taken seriously after, as you say, “coal fueled trains” chugging in and out of their neighborhood 24/7 for about 50 years.

    2. @Michael….did these same families put as much fight in to that LONG vacant land that has MASSIVE environmental issues as it sits. Where was the outrage when it was just an empty lot with tons of ground contaminates?

    3. Michael, perhaps you or the remonstrators could cite facts that mitigate against this proposed development instead of “concerns” and questions and historical grievances.

    4. The Indianapolis Recorder posted a fabulous article in February documenting the industrial history of the neighborhood, how it was impacted by redlining, and what the community has been doing since to address the contamination left behind by defunct factories. The information is out there and easily accessible if you are actually curious, but I have my doubts about that. More likely, you are taking offense at a historically black and brown community standing up for itself.

      Chris, I’m genuinely not sure what you are asking for. The lawsuit will have plenty of details on the specific concerns of this community. We can look to places like Memphis for examples of how data centers can adversely affect communities. Is your argument that those concerns should be disregarded? Why does a community fighting for what they feel is best for it offend you so much? If a data center was going to be built across the street, would you not voice concern?

    5. Michael…simple. Prove that the proposed data center will do actual harm and show the vector of that harm.

      “I don’t want it there” or “I don’t want to look at it” or “historical discrimination” or “historical contamination” isn’t actual harm from this development. The property owner has gone through due process and now has a right to build what they propose until the plaintiffs meet a burden of proof that it’s harmful.

    6. “The lawsuit says the project doesn’t fit with the city-certified quality-of-life plan for the neighborhood, which cites environmental justice as a key tenet.”

    7. Is there more to the Memphis problem than the richest man in the world, who is CEO of a company running roughshod over evironmental laws, and the DOJ refusing to act? I think that’s part of it. So the City shouldn’t approve development based upon the assumption that the federal government won’t do its job?

    1. Nope. Just a property rights, due process, classical liberal. You know, like Franklin and the other non-slave-owning Founders.

      The property owner has agreed to buy and improve one of the worst long term eyesores in the City. He has made his case and followed the City’s rules to get approval.

      The burden of proof is on the plaintiffs/remonstrators and they have a weak case at best. Good luck to them in connecting the data center to “environmental injustice”; just because they say so doesn’t make it so.

      Short version: we need data centers. A long-vacant brownfield is a really good location for one.

    2. Quality of life! Brightwood used to look like downtown Beech Grove, it had stores, churches, bowling alley’s pizza joints, grocery stores, yes, about 10 bars….most of which on or near Station street. Take a drive down Station street today.

  2. Chris is absolutely right. Mike, nope. And this has nothing to do with “Memphis”. What happened in Naptown: In the complete (and baffling) absence of any groundwork by Metrobloks, their attorney, or Councilor Gibson, anti-Google AI hyperscale data center peeps from Franklin Township, plus the odd socialist I’m sure, went to M-B and told them that the Metrobloks project is exactly the same as Google’s. M-B peeps, anxious to fabricate grievances, swallowed that and regurgitated it against the inept Metroblokheads, all of them white. at a meeting one day after Google’s debacle was quashed by the Council. I was there, and it was vile. Hoosier Enviro Council, Citizens Action Coalition, etc are simply piling on the bandwagon because it makes them look good. Very sad to say, being a former supporter, and even a plaintiff a couple of times. Bottom line, it was a rail yard, then a drive-in. The west side, where the shops and whatnot were, was remediated years ago. Dug out, hauled off. Everything that’s ever happened to the entire neighborhood, or what color people are, has nothing to do with this specific project. The utter fantasy of this lawsuit is exemplified by the ongoing claim of “excessive water usage”, as if this is an AI hyperscale project in a rural location, pissing away groundwater, despite the fact of the verrry low-usage closed-loop cooling system. Any business buying water from a city utility and wantonly wasting it would be burning money, huh. As for emissions from a monthly test of backup generators, I’ll say it again: Hart’s Auto Center, the neighboring junkyard, probably puts out far more fumes per month than Metrobloks’ “hospital-grade, low-emissions generators” would in a year. Musk’s hyperscale in Memphis is legend among Black folks nationwide, who believe that every new data center of any size anywhere is going to be as bad as they’ve heard – facts would be nice – that the one in Memphis is.

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