Driving near the rural town of Lebanon, Indiana late on a summer night, far off in the distance we saw a huge horizon of bright light. Getting closer, we saw what it was: a huge, barren, land, devoid of grass and trees, with towering klieg lights and heavy trucks everywhere. It was a data center being built. What had been farmland was now wasteland. Like Port Washington, Wisconsin. Like Memphis, where constant loud noise brings stress and high blood pressure. Like northern Virginia, where people live in their basements to escape deafening, round-the-clock noise. Like all those places where data centers are.
Big Tech, and their aliases, such as "Monarch Energy", are planning massive data centers along our waterways: in Rockford, Cherry Valley, Belvidere, and Beloit, Wisconsin.
In an October 2025 promotional video, Monarch Energy said the proposed data center would use about three million gallons of water per day. Rockford now uses 16.7 million gallons of water per day, meaning that this data center would pollute and deplete our water, increasing Rockford’s total water use by 17%.
Data center boosters will say that special "new technologies" like "closed-loop cooling systems" make things better. In reality, closed loop cooling uses backup diesel generators with noise like jet engines and which release toxic chemicals into the air.
Overall, 70% of Americans oppose data centers, and top issues are
water use, electricity use, rising electric bills, and lack of democratic process, with our lawmakers catering to big tech and forgetting about us.
This is not progress, but destruction and danger. Big Tech has no regard for guardrails, ordinances, regulations, or wish lists. The only way to stop data centers is to stop them BEFORE the construction ever begins, through public pressure. Say NO to data centers, and sign the petition you'll find at NoDataCentersRockford.org.Preserve our air, water, and Earth. Preserve the natural world for us and for the future of our planet.
I’m Susan Goldberg, and that’s my perspective.
