The Data Center Isn’t the Big Bad Wolf. But It’s Not a Golden Goose Either.
The Bryan Times ran a piece last week about county officials sitting down with the Regional Growth Partnership to talk data centers. No one’s proposed one for Williams County yet. But Matt Davis from RGP said the quiet part out loud: now is the time to decide. Not after the trucks show up. Not after somebody’s already bought 800 acres outside Archbold and nobody can get a straight answer about what’s going there.
Now.
I’m a coder. I’ve spent most of my adult life inside the thing these buildings are built to hold up. Every app I’ve ever shipped, every line of code I’ve ever pushed, every late-night deploy — it all lives somewhere. And “somewhere” is a concrete box in a field, humming, pulling power, drinking water, making the internet feel like magic when it’s really just physics and a very large electric bill.
So when people around here ask me what I think about a data center coming to Williams County, I lean yes. Cautiously. With my eyes open. And with a pretty specific list of conditions.
Let me tell you why — and then let me tell you what I’m watching for.
The Facebook Comments Are Doing What Facebook Comments Do
If you scrolled the local threads this week you saw it. Absolutely not. No. Bad. Respectfully, f** data centers.* One guy said it won’t affect us in our lifetime so who cares. Somebody else fired back asking if he cared about his grandkids. That’s the range. From “burn it down” to “YOLO.”
I get the instinct. I really do. Nobody in this county grew up dreaming about a windowless server farm going up across from the bean field. When the outside world shows up in rural Ohio it usually shows up to take something — topsoil, water, young people, a Main Street storefront — and leave a parking lot behind.
But “no” without a plan is the same as “yes” without a plan. You just find out later.
Commissioner Bart Westfall said something in that meeting that stuck with me: “It’s not the big bad wolf that we’ve been told it is. It’s different than what it started out being. By getting in front of them, and if you want them, controlling how you want them in your community — now’s the time to do that.”
That’s the whole thing right there. Get in front of it. Or get run over by it.
What a Data Center Actually Is
Before we argue about it, let’s be honest about what we’re arguing about.
A hyperscale data center — the kind Meta is building on 800 acres down by Bowling Green, the kind Google’s sniffing around Lima for — is a building full of servers that run the services you already use. Instagram. Gmail. ChatGPT. Your bank app. The security camera on your porch. Your kid’s Xbox. The tractor that phones home to John Deere.
It needs three things:
- A lot of power. Like, small-city amounts of power.
- A lot of water. For cooling. Though newer designs are using less, and some are going closed-loop.
- Cheap land with fiber access. That’s us. That’s why they’re looking.
The jobs picture is honest too. Construction jobs while it’s being built — good ones, a lot of them, for a couple years. Then a smaller permanent staff once the lights come on. Not a factory. Not 400 people clocking in. More like 50 to 150 technicians and engineers keeping the thing alive.
The real money for the community isn’t jobs. It’s the tax base. A building like that pays property taxes for decades on land that used to pay farm rates. That money funds schools. Roads. The fire department that shows up when your barn is on fire at 2am.
That’s not nothing. That’s actually a lot.
Why I’m Leaning Yes
Here’s my honest read, as a guy who writes software for a living in a county where most of my neighbors don’t:
The internet isn’t going away. Every app on your phone runs on servers somewhere. Right now “somewhere” mostly means Virginia, Oregon, and Texas. The compute is getting built whether we like it or not. The only question is whether rural Ohio gets any of the tax revenue, or whether we just keep sending our data — and our kids who want to work in tech — somewhere else.
My kids might actually want these jobs. I have two sons. One of them already builds things on a computer for fun. If a Google or a Meta or even a mid-size colocation provider parks a facility within 40 minutes of here, that’s a door. A door that doesn’t currently exist in Williams County. Right now if Luke wants to work in tech, he leaves. Full stop.
The tax money is real. Ohio’s data centers have been pumping hundreds of millions into local school districts and county budgets. That’s not a pitch deck. That’s a line item.
Farmland loss is real too — and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t. This is where I sit and get quiet. I love this land. I love driving past corn in July. I’m not some carpetbagger who wants to pave it all. But farmland is already being lost, every year, to things that pay a lot less and give a lot less back. If we’re going to lose acres, let’s lose them to something that funds a school levy instead of another subdivision nobody asked for.
What I’d Actually Demand
If I were sitting at that table as a commissioner — I’m not, but if I were — here’s what I’d want in writing before anybody signed anything.
Power. They bring their own generation, or they pay a premium that doesn’t get passed through to my neighbors’ electric bills. One of the Facebook commenters said it plain: “Data centers want to set up shop here because electricity and water is cheap. If they set up shop, both of those will surely increase exponentially.” That person is not wrong. That has happened in other places. Write the rate protections into the deal or walk away.
Water. Closed-loop cooling. Not negotiable. The days of cooking off millions of gallons of Ohio groundwater are done. The tech exists. Make them use it.
Zoning first, buildings second. Matt Davis said it himself — a lot of the townships in Williams County don’t have any zoning at all. That’s the scariest sentence in the whole article. You can’t negotiate from a position of strength if you don’t even have a map of what’s allowed where. The commissioners and Todd Roth are already working on a master plan. Finish it. Fast.
A community benefits agreement. Not vibes. Not a ribbon cutting. An actual contract. Scholarships for local kids studying computer science or electrical engineering. A set-aside for local contractors during the build. A guaranteed annual payment to the school district. Put it on paper. Sign it. Mean it.
A decommissioning clause. What happens in 20 years when the building is obsolete? Who tears it down? Who pays? I’ve watched enough old factories rust into the horizon to know the answer to that question needs to exist before the first shovel hits the dirt.
The Part Nobody Wants to Say
Here’s the thing that bugs me about how this conversation usually goes. The people yelling “NO” the loudest often haven’t read a word about it. And the people selling it the hardest are usually getting paid to sell it.
Neither one of those people lives here the way you and I live here.
We do. We’re the ones who have to drive past it every day for the next 30 years. We’re the ones whose kids will either get a job there or not. We’re the ones whose water bill either spikes or doesn’t. We’re the ones whose school district either gets a new roof or not.
So we ought to be the loudest voice in that room. Not the angriest. The loudest. There’s a difference.
Proverbs 18:13 — “To answer before listening — that is folly and shame.” That cuts both ways. It cuts against the “absolutely not” crowd who hasn’t read the article, and it cuts against the “bring ’em in” crowd who never asks what it costs.
Listen. Ask. Then decide.
Where I Land
I’m leaning yes. With a list. A long one.
Yes, if the water is closed-loop. Yes, if the power grid is protected. Yes, if the zoning is written before the deal is signed. Yes, if there’s a community benefits agreement with actual signatures on it. Yes, if my kids get a shot at the jobs inside.
No, if any of those are missing.
Westfall got it right. It’s not the big bad wolf. But it’s not a golden goose either. It’s a building. A very big, very expensive, very power-hungry building that can either pay for your grandkid’s school district or drain your aquifer, depending on who wrote the contract.
We still have time to be the ones writing it.
Let’s not waste it arguing in the comments.