Furious residents packing city-council meetings have become a familiar scene as proposals for data centers spark backlash in towns across America. But in Gilroy, Calif., known as the world’s garlic capital, there’s a twist: The $2 billion facility that residents are railing against is already being built.
“Many if not most residents first learned about this project after construction had already begun,” Coleen Crew, an elementary-school teacher, told the council at a recent meeting.
There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
I’m really starting to hate this technique in making titles. Tf does the age of the particular loophole they used matter? It implies that the problem is in using rules that have been around for more than 5 minutes rather than in the action of circumventing the rights of the citizens.