Amazon plans to expand Montgomery County data center sites
MONTGOMERY CITY, (Mo). KMIZ
A representative from Amazon told Montgomery County commissioners Thursday that the company plans to expand its data center footprint there.
Brian Bolton, the Amazon representative, said the company plans to add up to 15 new data center buildings on up to 890 acres at a site separate from one where a data center is already being built.
Bolton opened the floor to questions during the commission meeting.
"My purpose here is just kind of out in the open form here, to introduce the potential expansion, if you have any questions, and really, this is more just the starting point," Bolton said during the meeting.
Amazon is purchasing private land for the new data center buildings, but has not closed yet. The plan would be to build closer to Danville, while the current project is closer to New Florence.
Montgomery County has two data centers under construction, one by Google and the other by Amazon.
The announcement came as news to the residents and the county commission.
"That's kinda where that stuff's supposed to go, you know, original planning and zoning, they wanted that growth going along the interstate, figured it was coming one day, and I guess here we are," Montgomery County Presiding Commissioner Ryan Poston said.
Poston said Thursday's meeting might be the first of several to discuss Amazon's plan.
Residents expressed concerns about Amazon's work on the initial data center. One resident said she has been run off the road by worker trucks due to the terrain of the roads, the speed of the drivers, and the size of the trucks.
Another said she has tried to reach out to express safety concerns but has a hard time finding a point of contact.
"As far as an individual trying to email someone and say, 'Hey, you know, this noise from this construction company is debilitating at my house," Brenda Buechele said. "Or all your construction workers are tearing up my farmland where I farm on my farm because they're turning around and creating huge ruts; there's nobody to contact."
Sharon and Bob Ridgley, local farmers who live behind the current Amazon data center site, said they only found out what it was through the local news.
"We found out that those were data centers coming in. We found that out because it was published in the local newspaper, and we had not a clue what we were going to deal with," Sharon Ridgley said. "This is just a mile from our home, and all of this construction has impacted our lives so much."
Sharon Ridgley said that their once-quiet roadway is now full of dust from trucks constantly driving through to build the center.
Ameren Missouri, the power supplier to the data centers, is asking the Ridgleys to add high-voltage power lines into their farms' backyards. Bob said his farm has been there since 1961, and he shouldn't have to change it.
"It's going to affect my grazing systems for my cattle and my crop fields, and we're going to have to try to fight that too," Bob Ridgley said. "People call this construction. I call it destruction."
Sharon Ridgley said that they found out about the power lines when they looked outside and saw workers in their yards putting up markers and taking scans with drones.
"We're just little people, and they come in and push their way around without any consideration for what it's going to do to us and our families," Sharon Ridgley said. "They shouldn't be allowed to take properties or to make you give up your property because they want to power data centers, which are trillion-dollar companies."
Bolton said Amazon has no set date for when the potential new data centers would start construction, but he believes it would happen sometime between 2027 and 2029.
