The people of Lowell Demand:1) Stop the Markley Data Center Expansion- Markley Group has continued to buy up properties in Lowell with the intention to cause more destruction to our community.
- City government recently failed to act to reject requests for construction from Markley that violated the moratorium, allowing Markley to successfully sue the city and continue expansion. The city must act to revoke construction permits and deny new requests.
2) Permanently repeal the tax exempt status for Markley Group- Our city receives no financial benefits from this monstrosity while Markley Group generates billions. Our community deserves reparations for the harm this corporation has done.
3) Enforce the 12 month moratorium on new construction- Our city government needs to expand the moratorium. There must be severe consequences for Markley’s daily violations.
4) Zone out new data centers- We need to ensure future protections against corporations who seek to exploit us.
- Zone out all projects that surpass a reasonable MW limit.
The Markley Data Center was initially billed as a storage facility in 2015, with little warning of its real impact. In truth, it is a massive data center filled with constantly humming computer servers that consume vast amounts of freshwater for the facility’s evaporative cooling systems. These cooling systems are powered 24/7 by offsite fossil fuels and dozens of onsite backup diesel generators. A facility this size with a power demand of 50 megawatts often uses hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every day. The health and environmental effects as a result of it’s rampant freshwater consumption, power demands, carbon emissions, and noise pollution are untold. While we risk losing all progress on saving the Merrimack River from this deepening crisis, we continue paying for this data center through its tax exempt status.
The Markley data center hits us directly at home; we’ve become inundated with rising water bills, electrical bills, and taxes to keep up with the strain on our limited utility resources, with little to no benefit from Markley to offset these burdens.
The 20 year property tax exemption that the city council gave Markley offers residents nothing useful in return. At every turn, Markley has proven that they are not invested in Lowell. The city government has not acknowledged the overwhelming opposition to this data center voiced by the community, and will continue to dismiss us until we become impossible to ignore.
To fight back against this corporate overreach the working people of Lowell must stand against the Markley Group and demand solutions and accountability from our elected city officials. No one is coming to save us, we must do it ourselves!
