County, Sabey provide more details about proposed data center in Butte

Butte-Silver Bow officials and a major data center company addressed numerous questions and concerns this week that citizens and watchdog groups raised over proposed data centers in Butte.

It’s too soon to tell if the answers quell anxieties and potential opposition to a proposed Sabey Data Centers facility near Butte, but some uncertainties were addressed and the company provided more details about its plans.

The information spoke to concerns about noise, light pollution, power and water consumption and potential hits on residential electricity rates, among other things.

Sabey also said final construction costs for a data center campus near Butte could reach $1.5 billion to $2 billion and new permanent jobs could range from “dozens on the low end” to hundreds over time.

Butte-Silver Bow commissioners agreed in April to sell 606 acres in the county’s Montana Connections Business Park to Sabey Data Centers, which wants to build a sprawling data center here. The company is based in Tukwila, Washington.

Sabey has until Feb. 11 to exercise an option and close the deal, and even then, commissioners would have to approve a final agreement to make the $1.21 million sale official, Karen Byrnes, Butte-Silver Bow’s community development director, told The Montana Standard on Friday.

“So the council gets another chance to review the property sale and vote on it,” she said.

Citizen and watchdog groups held a recent forum in Butte and waved caution flags about data centers. They said they consume massive amounts of water and electricity and could lead to much higher power bills for residents, among other things.

They also urged local officials to slow their consideration of data centers in Butte pending more answers and research, and they encouraged local residents to get involved in the issue and demand more information.

The groups asked commissioners this week to answer numerous questions and concerns stemming from the forum.

Butte-Silver Bow staff provided answers to many of them that Council Chairman John Morgan read into the record Wednesday night.

Morgan also said the board that oversees the Montana Connections Business Park and its special taxing district planned to discuss the issues Friday and Sabey planned to have a representative there.

The staff answers spoke to the pending land deal and listed local light and noise limits it would be subjected to, among other things.

But they essentially punted concerns about power consumption and potential rate hikes to the Montana Public Service Commission, which regulates NorthWestern Energy and other utilities.

The answers did reference a recent national report on data center energy usage by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory managed by the University of California. It also looked at drivers of electricity price changes.

“They show that increasing (electricity) loads at the state level has downward pressure on prices because more systems costs are spread over the demand,” Butte-Silver Bow staff said.

Sabey and NorthWestern Energy provided more answers during the Montana Connections board meeting Friday. Several Sabey executives attended by conference call, including Sabey CEO John Sabey.

They said they were still shoring up details on their proposed project needed to close the land deal and there are no engineering designs yet for the center they are contemplating for Butte.

But among other things, they said:

• The center would use a hybrid cooling system that “dramatically reduces water use compared to traditional evaporative systems.” When asked for specifics, they said the center would at most use 10 million to 15 million gallons of water a year. Butte-Silver Bow can supply up to 7 million gallons of water each day from Silver Lake to every industrial user in the business park, officials said recently, but it wasn’t clear Friday whether Silver Lake water would suffice for Sabey.
• Exterior lighting would be shielded and controlled with sensors and “we will coordinate with nearby users, including the drive-in (theater) during detailed design, so lighting plans meet or exceed code and Dark Sky practices.”
• On potential noise pollution, Sabey said, “There’s not very much noise that comes out of these facilities. I can tell you that, you know, the railroad track that is nearby is going to be a hell of a lot more noisy than our building.”
• Job numbers will depend on how many companies and other vendors utilize the data center but they will likely range from dozens to hundreds. A data center campus in Quincy, Washington has about 250 full-time employees.
• Wages for operations jobs would start at $25 to $30, the company said, while senior engineer positions would pay around $100,000.
• It said electricity service would be provided by NorthWestern Energy under filed tariffs or a Public Service Commission-approved contact and Sabey would pay all applicable charges and riders.

Northwestern Energy has signed letters of intent to supply 400 megawatts combined, by the year 2030, to Butte-based Atlas Power and Sabey for possible data centers in or near Butte.

Rick Edwards, director of community connections for NorthWestern Energy in Butte, also attended Friday’s meeting.

He said there will be tariff and contractual provisions to protect customers, data centers “will be responsible for their own costs,” and that must all be approved by the Public Service Commission.

A few residents, including Lewis Pesanti of Buxton, raised their own concerns at the beginning Wednesday night’s council meeting.

“The people of Buxton do not feel that they’ve been adequately notified about what is going on with the build of this building, the footprint of it, where it’s going to be located,” Pesanti said.

Residents are concerned about possible noise, lights, environmental impacts and whether a center will devalue their property, he said.