By Burt Mummolo, FOX23.com News Staff
TULSA, Okla. — Ask AI any question and it’ll spit out an answer within milliseconds, that’s thanks in part to the abundance of data centers. Ironically a Tulsa woman is having one heck of time getting answers to her questions about the construction of a data center.
“I’ve been concerned about the data center for over a year now,”
Cheyenna Morgan lives just a couple miles away from Project Anthem, and Wednesday she’ll be speaking before the Tulsa council asking for action.
“I want them to inform the neighborhoods about what the actual impacts of Project Anthem will be.
Two weeks ago she sent a Meta official who’s been interacting with the community about the project a series of questions, including, “Will you assume financial responsibility when this facility makes housing values lower in the proximity to this data center?”
And did they ever respond? “No,” she said. Never? “Never,” she said. I mean what does that say? “It says that they don’t care about informing the community that they’re going to be in, they don’t care about meaningful community relationships,” she said.
Also out near the site, firing up his drone…
“They’re just popping up everywhere, all at once, with little to no regulation,” said Joe Cash. He lives in Coweta where plans for Project Atlas were recently scrapped.
“These data centers could probably get a lot more traction if they weren’t so secret squirrel. You know everything’s a secret with them, they don’t want you to know who they are,” he said.
It’s now known of course that Meta is behind Project Anthem, but Joe being the curious sort…
“I figured I would come by on my way home and fly my drone over the area because I know those data centers, they really hate photography,” he laughed.
His images show remarkable progress and illustrate the dichotomy of the data center age.
There is that pull between economic development, but at what price? “Exactly. We need money in our community, we need these fundings however, like you said the cost of it, it just sounds like it outweighs the good in it,” he said.
For Cheyenna meanwhile, she’s hoping city leaders will create what’s called a cumulative impact ordinance.
“Which would give residents and concerned community members more oversight over the zoning process,” she said.
We reached out to Meta to ask them about Cheyenna’s questions. We have yet to her back but will post any response if and when they do.
