Esteemed Supervisors,

Please vote in favor of the urgency ordinance to put a temporary moratorium of at least 45 days on permitting of data centers in Mendocino County. During that period you can together with County staff develop a public policy establishing conditions and requirements for any data center development.

Please adopt the resolution.

As vast as the demand for computing power is now, it will grow at an exponential rate, and local zoning is on the front lines. AI draws enormous amounts of electricity, and requires robust infrastructure to keep it cool and operational. These needs are shaping land use decisions in ways many communities have never dealt with before. Some of these AI centers will need hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day for cooling alone. This precious water is also very much needed to water our increasing deserts and increasing wildfires. The cumulative carbon emissions from AI models could reach 3.66 to 8.72 million tons in the U.S. alone—the equivalent of driving an average gasoline-powered car nine to 22 billion miles. The solar and wind generators should help people, and not AI centers. The AI equipment generates heat and noise. Every State has different laws or agreements, or none so far. Most are limping behind the times and are just now waking up. There are no clear rules and regulations. What are the cumulative effects? It is scary to think that decommissioned nuclear plants are being brought online to serve AI plants. Many of these AI plants grow like mushrooms and need to be curtailed from the get go. What are the effects on the environment? We don’t know until it is too late.

Anthropic and Amazon are buying up books, feeding them to AI, then destroying the originals. This mass book destruction is a disgraceful corporate scheme to increase profits, and it could violate antimonopoly laws.

Please vote in favor of the urgency ordinance to put a temporary moratorium of at least 45 days on permitting of data centers in Mendocino County.