Public comments at Tuesday night's White County board meeting focused on the county’s one-year moratorium on AI data centers. Alan Saunders questioned how the moratorium had been decided. He asked about feasibility/impact studies and the process to making the decision. He worried it could limit property rights and economic opportunity, comparing it to past resource booms (oil, gas, coal). He urged the board to be proactive and informed, not simply restrictive.
"The reason, I'm not lobbying for or against, but living in this community, and we're all part of it. I'm just so thankful that in the 1940s, the county entity or the government at that point in time didn't put a moratorium on drilling for gas. I'm so thankful that in 1980, the county board did not put a moratorium for my county coal," Saunders stated.
"For years, it's been despised upon, by, not this community, so to speak, but America in general. But everybody uses it. Everybody use AI is going to be the same thing. We can either take, as a community, as a board, take a position we don't want it, or we can take the position, try to educate ourselves, to try to bring opportunity here because opportunities are going by the wayside. I just think, as a landowner. I don't appreciate the county board basically winning my property rights, and I think it's imperative that the county board leads in this direction. So we don't have issues with yielding here to get some protocol, to get some studies, get maybe a panel put together to research this because it's coming. We potentially could capitalize on that...I hate to see us limit ourselves and not seek opportunity because they knocked before and we capitalized on it. It worked out pretty good.
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