I respectfully urge the Council to permanently prohibit the construction of data centers within the city of Fresno. Our infrastructure cannot absorb the strain a data center would impose.

Fresno residents already contend with poor air quality and recurring drought. We should not also have to worry about water scarcity and degraded water quality, both of which data centers are known to cause through their massive cooling demands.

Our electrical grid is similarly unprepared, we experience rolling blackouts every summer. Many residents already struggle to keep up with PG&E and utility bills — I’d invite the Council to review the city’s own past-due utility account numbers as evidence of this hardship. Adding a data center’s enormous power draw risks driving rates even higher for households already stretched thin.

Data centers create very few permanent local jobs relative to their resource footprint, while the companies behind them can relocate at will. Fresno families cannot. We would bear the environmental and financial costs long after any economic promises fail to materialize.

Please don’t let corporate interests outweigh the wellbeing of the people who actually live here. This is our home, we must protect it. There must a limit to corporate greed and political favors, let this be it. Thank you for your time.