Newark Mayor Polly Sierer and City Council presented a report on the potential environmental impact of the proposed data center and its adjoining power plant on the University of Delaware’s STAR campus during a special meeting on Monday night.
The report, produced by Liberty Environmental, concludes The Data Centers’ project is relatively clean, but its use of combustion engines and non-renewable fossil fuels in a 279 megawatt, gas-turbine power plant does not make it green.
Liberty Environmental principal partner Gavin Biebuyck added that some of TDC’s projections on the plant’s impact on air quality are “questionable” or “misleading,” including TDC's claims that it’s own power generators would produce fewer emissions than if it used power from the grid, saying that the grid is far too complex to retrieve accurate information.
City Councilman Mark Morehead is also concerned TDC doesn’t have guaranteed limits on many project elements including the power plant's turbines, gas engines, and catalysts.
“Without those limits, you don’t know where you are going to be," said Morehead. "You can kind of do some average type things but you can’t guarantee anything and these are hard guaranteed numbers. They are federal limits in... most cases. So you’ve gotta meet them.”
One of the recommendations the report suggests is that TDC collects a year’s worth of data for three kinds of air contaminants at the proposed site before starting construction to get a more accurate model of the STAR campus' environment.
Newark Mayor Polly Sierer says TDC could use some of the recommendations from this report and others in their final modeling for their air pollution permit submission.
“The University of Delaware is also doing an environmental study with a consultant so we’re waiting to see what their results are from that study as well," said Sierer "Really it’s a lot of patience and making sure that all parties involved doing all that they can to make sure this project is or is not right for this community.”
The Data Centers LLC released a statement before the meeting Monday night saying it was not invited to participate, nor had it been "asked to answer even the most basic questions by anyone from Liberty Environmental, Inc. for their document."
"The Data Centers, LLC has consistently provided the city of Newark with answers to the many questions it has presented over the past year and is willing to continue answering questions about this project," read the statement. "The Data Centers, LLC is happy to address questions raised by the Liberty document that City Council might have." (Some of The Data Centers' response to the Liberty Environmental report was previously reported by Delaware Public Media last week.)
Last week, the Joint Finance Committee put $3 million of UD’s operating budget into a contingency fund in order to rekindle dialogue between the university and TDC which have reportedly been stagnant.
Currently, Newark is asking for pilot funding from the JFC for payment in lieu of taxes since much of the city is owned by non-profits. However, the JFC's recent decision has left Councilman Morehead concerned.
"You have to wonder, if the JFC is going to do something like that, why would we want anything to do with their pilot funding," said Morehead.
During speaking tours around the state last year Gov. Jack Markell defended the project, telling audiences they’ve got to stop saying no to economic development. The company says it’ll generate 290 full time jobs in addition to an estimated 5,000 construction jobs sourced from union workers.
