Common Questions and Answers

  • By HMC’s own estimates, there are only a few specific benefits. However, these are not truly beneficial for MPK residents:

    • Tax revenue: Estimated to be $5 million annually, but this is only 3% of MPK’s current budget. (In comparison, SoCal Edison stands to earn $18 million annually from this project.)

    • Job creation: The data center will only have 26 permanent jobs after construction is complete. There are no long term local employment benefits from this project.

    • Modernization: While data centers are modern, they are more similar to heavy industrial facilities like manufacturing plants. They are not a community benefit.

  • There would be major consequences from this project that MPK residents will be left to deal with:

    Health effects: The data center operations will have a negative impact on air quality, potentially leading to a rise in respiratory conditions in local residents (children and elderly are particularly at risk); it will also create noise pollution that affects sleep and mental health due to its machinery running 24/7.

    Rising utility costs: Across the US, we are seeing consumer utility costs rise by 10-30% due to data centers’ massive power demands. Utility companies make consumers pay for grid updates and raise prices due to increasing demand.

    Property values: There could be a negative effect on MPK property values – after all, who wants to live near a data center? Realtors are concerned and say buyers looking at homes near data centers hesitate because they’re worried about noise, pollution, negative health effects, etc. Of note: MPK is different from data centers being built in rural and economically depressed areas, which are more likely to see an uplift in property values that are low to begin with.

    Strain on the utilities grid: The data center will demand high levels of electricity and water. MPK already has water shortages and electricity blackouts, and we are located in a region that faces this issue broadly (e.g., water shortages during the Eaton fire in Pasadena). 

  • There were alternative ideas for Saturn Park that were dismissed and not explored in favor of moving the data center project forward (e.g., parks, mixed use, etc.). 

  • No. While data centers are modern, they are more similar to heavy industrial facilities like manufacturing plants. However, unlike manufacturing plants, they provide very few long term employment opportunities.

  • Technically, yes. However, there are many issues with the SPARC sessions that call this into question. The city claims the SPARC sessions were not focused on the data center, but the sessions were only scheduled after HMC’s permit was already in motion; the sessions included a presentation focused on the 1977 Saturn data center proposal and HMC’s CEO attended. The committee was led by council member Thomas Wong, who has recently been recused by the city attorney due to a conflict of interest (he works for SoCal Edison, which stands to earn $18 million yearly from this project). In the end, only 40 residents “voted” on ideas, which is not enough people to be representative of the community. 

  • Yes, but that is only because the city council re-zoned it to allow data centers in 2024. Before that, data centers were not explicitly allowed – in fact, heavy industrial uses are banned in the Saturn Park area and a data center like this is arguably more similar to a heavy industrial site due to its energy consumption and pollution.

  • While they have made some modifications, those modifications haven’t fixed some of the biggest issues with the project: the amount of energy consumed or improving the levels of pollution. HMC is claiming these “improvements” meet regulatory standards; however, there are still many unaddressed issues (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, pollution from the construction, etc.).

  • No. Actually, the city has shown preferential treatment to HMC by lowering MPK’s standards and making it easier for HMC to get approval for the data center:

    • The city processed HMC’s permit application for the data center while the question of whether data centers are even allowed in Saturn Park was still unresolved. They used the SPARC sessions during this period to help HMC pitch the project to residents and get “community approval” for data centers.

    • The city decided that data centers are allowed to be built in Saturn Park with a Development Agreement in place, which should have extra requirements in place that protect the city and its residents. However, the Development Agreement for 1977 Saturn is shaped to fit what HMC has already proposed – meaning, it is not providing any additional protections or standards.

    • These are up for discussion in the next city council meeting on the data center, so we should express disapproval of these planned practices:

      • One of the bigger issues with this project is the level of greenhouse gas emissions, which HMC is claiming is acceptable because it’s “not significant.” They can make this claim because the city has adopted a vague qualitative significance threshold, rather than a quantitative one. The city has discretion to define a quantitative standard that would better protect its residents, but is choosing not to.

      • HMC is using questionable methods in their calculations; for example, they are spreading out the high pollution impacts from the data center construction over 30 years to minimize that number, even though construction is estimated to take 2 years. The pollution estimates alone should have triggered a full Environmental Impact Review already, but the city has not required it. If the city accepts these calculations, they will be failing MPK’s residents.

  • Yes, HMC commissioned a “study” in 2024, IS (Initial Study) and MND (Mitigated Negative Declaration). This document concludes the data center would not have a significant environmental impact, which is not believable given the scale of the project. Experts responded to the IS/MND with concern, calling for a full Environmental Impact Review – the city ignored these and only had HMC make small adjustments to their plan.

  • It is true that HMC has “optimized” this data center design to use relatively less water, but energy use is still extremely high – as a result, the project is not environmentally neutral. Ultimately, it is impossible today to create a data center design that is environmentally friendly, as either energy or water needs to be traded off.