Stop The T5 Data Centerin Grayslake, Illinois

The Grayslake Village Board approved a 472-acre AI data center on Peterson Road with virtually no notice to residents. At 10 million square feet of buildings, it would cover about 175 football fields and would be the second largest facility of its kind in Illinois — next to our homes, our schools and our parks.

A hyperscale data center like the one proposed for Grayslake is not a typical data center. Hyperscale data centers use massive amounts of electricity and water and have long-lasting and potentially dangerous environmental and public health impacts. Here are some potential issues with having a hyperscale data center nearby.

T5's CEO says that T5 Grayslake will "power the smartphones, computers, and technology that we all rely on everyday." That's true of data centers in general, but it doesn't describe this one.

The email and social media we've used for twenty years runs on server racks drawing 8 to 15 kilowatts. An AI rack consists of multi-core GPUs that draw ten times that. That's the actual difference. At 60% utilization of the full 1.2 gigawatt (GW) capacity T5 has stated it will have, The Grayslake data center would use over three times the electricity used by every home in Lake County combined.

Risks

Environmental

  • Groundwater pollution
  • Air pollution from diesel generators and evaporative cooling
  • Sound pollution, both audible and infrasound
  • Light pollution
  • Loss of wildlife habitat
  • Increased stormwater runoff
  • Urban heat island effect/microclimate changes

Economic

  • Increased consumer electricity rates
  • Increased consumer water rates
  • Decreased property values
  • Increased costs for emergency services
  • Increased costs for infrastructure maintenance
  • Increased costs for environmental remediation

Unknown Impacts

Unlike traditional data centers, hyperscale data centers have only been built recently. Long-term environmental, economic, and public health impacts are unknown. This is particularly true of the effect on local ecosystems and wildlife, which require long-term study to assess impacts.

Read the facts What you can do

Upcoming events

Sep16

Grayslake Village Board meeting

7:00 PM · Village Hall, 2nd floor. Board meets the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month.