ANTHONY VICTORIA: For KVCR News, I'm Anthony Victoria. This is IE Latino Voices, where we highlight the people, organizations and stories shaping Latino communities across the Inland Empire.
The city of Coachella is considering a permanent ban on new data centers as residents and advocates raise concerns about water use, extreme heat, air pollution, noise and electricity costs.
A new brief from the USC Center for Latino and Latin American Studies argues that data-center development could deepen existing environmental and health challenges in the Coachella Valley.
Joining us to discuss those concerns is Professor Juan de Lara, who wrote the brief. Thanks for joining us today, Professor.
JUAN DE LARA: Thank you for inviting me.
VICTORIA: What's at risk for Coachella residents if data centers are built there?
DE LARA: An entire way of life. I first learned about the data centers when I was contacted by my sister. She got a notice from somebody who was organizing around data-center development. The data centers that were proposed to be built in the city of Coachella are actually right across the street from where I grew up and where my mom continues to live.
And so, as I looked into the potential impacts of what a data-center campus would look like, it would essentially convert an existing agricultural community into a giant industrial center.
And as I looked further into it and started to investigate, 'what do we know about data centers? How do they, you know, affect communities? What are the consequences on multiple fronts, both social, economic, environmental?' I started to see a troubling pattern.
Data centers are huge resource hogs. They use large quantities of land, water and energy, and this can pose serious problems, you know, public health problems, environmental problems, socioeconomic problems. And so that's why I decided to write this brief, to sort of dig into what the literature says, what research has shown, and what existing data shows about the potential impacts of these kinds of developments in communities like Coachella.
VICTORIA: And to your point, how could data centers impact people's health? What are some of the things that we're hearing?
DE LARA: The data is pretty clear on this. You know, existing data centers have had negative effects on people's health. Anything from air pollution to noise pollution. And in a place like Coachella, which is in the middle of the desert, heat is a form of thermal pollution.
Nearly all of the electricity that's used for data centers leaves the data center as a form of heat, and the cooling systems that are used in these facilities run around the clock in order to get rid of the heat inside of the servers, and they vent all of this heat into surrounding neighborhoods anywhere from 14 to 25 degrees higher than the surrounding temperature. And this means oftentimes higher than 122 degrees Fahrenheit on a summer afternoon.
And all of this is vented into nearby homes, and so you're talking about a hot place needing to get cooler, meaning needing more energy and heat into local communities, and that causes a form of heat-island effect.
When you look at the city of Coachella, what this means is that the city already is vulnerable for these kinds of cardiovascular diseases, and so you're introducing a facility that would generate higher temperatures into surrounding communities that are already struggling with things like cardiovascular health problems. That's a recipe for disaster.
VICTORIA: Why is this an environmental justice issue…for listeners that maybe don't understand the meaning of environmental justice? Why the Coachella region…why this community is considered an environmental justice community?
DE LARA: That term comes from a long history in which vulnerable working-class communities of color are routinely disproportionately exposed to environmental harm, especially from industrial sources. And we see a pattern emerging in the state of California, in places like Coachella, in places like the Imperial Valley, where rural communities, former farmworker communities that are overwhelmingly Latino, overwhelmingly working class, are being targeted for data-center construction.
And these places, as I mentioned, tend to be predominantly poor and working class, and the city of Coachella is 98% Latino. Federal and state agencies have already recognized that Coachella is one of the most environmentally and socioeconomically vulnerable communities in the country. And these communities are now being asked to bear the burden of the social and environmental costs that are related to AI development.
So companies are coming in, extracting natural resources, contributing to environmental harm, taking their profits, and leaving already vulnerable communities to clean up the damage. That is what environmental justice means, and it means we need to pay attention to those consequences. We need to pay attention to the ramifications that this kind of development has on already vulnerable communities.
VICTORIA: Well, thank you so much, Professor, for your time. I really appreciate it.
DE LARA: Okay…
Juan de Lara is an associate professor at the University of Southern California and is the director of the USC Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies
