LETTER: Supervisors’ data center vote
offers twist on ‘Let them eat cake’
December 29, 2022
When 18th century French peasants were starving for want of bread, Marie-Antoinette purportedly quipped: “Let them eat cake”. Our similarly detached Board of County Supervisors has updated this condescension to: “Let them drink salt”.
The city of The Dalles, Oregon recently abandoned its 13-month Google-funded lawsuit against Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, to keep a Google data center’s water consumption secret from its citizens. It was since revealed that Google’s water use nearly tripled in the past five years, now consuming 29 percent all water used in the city in the midst of a multi-year drought. Two more data centers are planned.
How different is that from what is happening right here in Prince William County? Your government signed non-disclosure agreements with multi-billion-dollar corporations to suppress inconvenient truths about the ill effects of runaway data center development. Supervisors deliberately avoided studying environmental impacts on the fragile Occoquan watershed in their irresponsible pursuit of expedience.
The County’s intransigence has necessitated that taxpayers sue them to compel the minimal due diligence expected of public servants. Your government’s dismissive response asserts its citizens have no right to challenge their egregiously negligent conduct - basically claiming it’s our tough luck for putting them in charge.
Big tech companies are the robber barons of the 21st century and the intoxicating lure of their wealth and power has turned our own government against us. Our only defense is a new citizen-centric government, less susceptible to corporate temptations.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
Comments
Post a Comment