A REPOST ✓ ...READ AGAIN ✓✓ Data Centers: Technology + Environment-Harmful Practices = Inseparable

East Valley Data Centers > One word: TECHSPLOITATION . . . this isn't just a word for readers of this blog to blow off.
Cameron Foster, a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in journalism and media studies, explains in easy-to-understand what the environmental consequences are when the City of Mesa makes deals with tech giants who are getting increasing attention they don't like: click/tap here

"We tend to see the internet as metaphysical, existing outside of any degree of influence upon the earth and its natural resources. But the information that is stored on the internet needs to live somewhere, such as in one of hundreds of thousands of data centers across the globe. Each one houses a technology company’s computer systems and information technology operations. They need to be kept running 24 hours a day, which means they eat up a lot of electricity.

In fact, data centers alone consume approximately 3 percent of the global electricity supplied annually and account for 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, giving it around the same carbon footprint as the entire airline industry, according to an Independent Report.
HOLD ON > It down't stop there!
"The majority of data centers use batteries made of lead-acid. This acid mine excavation and draining has led to “ecological destruction in watersheds and the contamination of human water sources by sulfuric acid and heavy metals, including arsenic, copper and lead,” said biologist Dr. David Coil.

The high levels of acidity and toxins produced by this process sterilize nearby water supplies, kill fish and can continue to produce drainage hundreds of years into the future.
Furthermore, companies like Google are building these data centers on huge swathes of land, often in rural areas, and are getting massive tax breaks for doing so.

The city of Mesa, Arizona, offered Google a property tax break of $16 million over the course of 25 years in a development agreement for one such data center, . . "
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RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG

29 October 2019

After All These Years The Time Is (Almost) Right To Hit Pay-Dirt: City Planner Tom Ellsworth + The 4-in-One Zoning Case

< Here's one picture that's worth more than just a few thousandwords, two hours of your time watching a video-on-demand, and history going back to a bygone era in the 1880's. It's the next step in the development process after passing through the Mesa Planning & Zoning Board. It's been years in the making - Rogue Columnist Jon Talton called it The Real Estate Industrial Complex
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What's on the Line?
Millions of dollars in acreage that was previously zoned as agricultural land - The Boyle Family 860-acre Dairy Farm - and a parcel of state-owned land all around The Hawes Interchange close to Mesa's Elliot Road Tech Corridor, where water lines were expanded from Ellsworth Road to Signal Butte and the Signal Butte Water Treatment Plant got built.
(There's more background and history from previous posts on this blog from October 2017 farther down)
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Here's City Staff Planner Tom Ellsworth making a presentation on Water Asset Management in front of a public Mesa City Council Study Session earlier this month on October 7, 2019.

There's $800,000,000 on-the-table and on the agenda for Capital Improvement Project for discussion.
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Here's City Staff Planner Tom Ellsworth appearing again last week 5 days ago

24 October 2019

Planning & Zoning Meeting - 10/23/2019

Views at time of upload to this blog = 7 Note: 4 items were asked to be removed from the Consent Agenda for individual consideration - Items 8a - 8d.

City Planner Tom Ellsworth has put them all together since they are related

Comments are asked to be withheld until conclusion of the staff presentation just to keep things on track . . and there's some people from the airport

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Let's fast-forward to now in the first decade of the 21st century, to see and read some "nice stories" how this wealth-creation rolls out
Blogger Note: Any number of stories published in mainstream media can be adapted to tell the story

Story #1 Sympathy for a Bygone-Era ... but here's the plan

East Valley's last dairy farmers look to develop 860 acres, leave area

This is from October 2017 by Lily Altavena

"As he looks out at acre after acre of his dairy farm, Jim Boyle Jr. is not wistful at the idea of leaving the land his family has farmed for 40 years. He's hopeful.

"The East Valley had a large number of dairies, and they’ve all been replaced by development," he said. "Which, you know, is good in a lot of ways, most of those guys were able to sell their land and build bigger dairies."

Boyle Jr.'s dairy is one of five in the neighborhood near southeast Mesa involved in a massive, 860-acre zoning request. . . " How massive is it?

Their decision hinges on Mesa annexing and zoning the land to increase its value for sale to a developer.

If the dairymen are successful in zoning the primarily-agriculture land to housing, commercial and other uses, it's likely they'll pack up and sell . .

The neighborhood borders Gilbert.

Christened the "inner loop" by those in the planning effort, it's the area near Loop 202 around Elliot and Hawes Road.

The Hawes Interchange
Much of the land falls outside Maricopa County and will require annexation into Mesa before development could take off. . .

The group of dairy farmers plan to take their zoning application to Mesa later this year, according to Jordan Rose, the attorney representing the farmers.
The group wants to work with city officials to refine the plan for approval by the City Council next year. The proposed land-use plan so far includes residential, urban mixed-use, commercial and office space areas. . .

Here's the history-angle to the story: A long history in dairy farming

". . . Boyle Jr.'s family has been dairy farming in Arizona since the 1880s, and in the Phoenix area since the 1920s. His grandfather milked cows. His father milked cows. In the 1970s, the family's dairy landed in the Mesa area.

It was a popular spot for dairies: Dutch dairy farmers, too, settled in the vast expanse of agricultural land around the same time . . .

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Blogger Note: remember the word "Dutch" --- it's part an even BIGGER STORY involving over 11,000 acres in Pinal County that started off by the City of Mesa selling off lands.

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c.

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KEEP IN MIND: Who paid millions of taxpayer dollars to build these "Capital Improvement Projects" that benefit most the Commercial & Residential Real Estate-Industrial Complex?

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MesaZona > Table of Contents : Here's The Menu. Enjoy

18 February 2020

A REPOST ✓ ...READ AGAIN ✓✓ Data Centers: Technology + Environment-Harmful Practices = Inseparable

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