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Stop the AI data centers in Gilroy
The Gilroy community is rallying against a major Data Center in the Gilroy area.
We, the undersigned, demand the City of Gilroy immediately rescind their approval of the Amazon Data Center, promptly ceasing any/all construction, while also adopting a resolution that commits the city will never approve development of a data center within city limits.
Recognizing Gilroy's rich agricultural history, beautiful parks, and California's fragile ecosystem it is our responsibility to ensure that the town we love can be enjoyed for generations to come without risks of environmental pollution that would degrade the quality of life.
On Thursday, July 3, 2025, outside of a public City Council meeting and while neighbors were gearing up for Independence Day weekend, Gilroy's Community Development Director Sharon Goei approved the proposal made by Noel Yetter, a Senior Technical Infrastructure Program Manager located in Seattle, WA, for Amazon Web Services to build an Amazon Data Center to be located at 8050 Camino Arroyo. In Ms. Goei's correspondence with Yetter, it is stated that the permit application request was initially received on November 13, 2020, revised on February 16, 2021 and April 11, 2022, with a final version designed in collaboration with "City of Gilroy staff" submitted on February, 24, 2023.
The fifty-six acre plot of land at 8050 Camino Arroyo, directly east of US-101, is in close proximity to active farmland, Gilroy's outdoor outlet shopping mall, and health centers, including Valley Health and Kaiser Permanente medical offices.
The proposed center includes 3 buildings, 2 for the data center itself and 1 as a security building, totaling 438,500 square feet.
While Gilroy has continued to progress pass our agricultural roots, becoming a bedroom community for the hard workers that have made Silicon Valley successful, there is continued concern from citizens about the long term impacts of this project, including:
Job sustainability
Environmental impacts
Quality of life impacts
On Tuesday, December 30, in the Gilroy CA Community Page on Facebook, a discussion began once again expressing worry for the center, initially drawing participation from 20+ citizens. Council Member Terence Fugazzi participated in the thread, dismissing his constituent's valid concerns in a jeering manner.
Today, January 1, 2026, 40+ users are actively engaged in the conversation, adding their own thoughts paired with articles from traditional news outlets, scholarly journals, and testimony from individuals in other areas who live near data centers. At this time no representatives of Gilroy government have responded to calls for comments**.
Members of the community of Gilroy are concerned about the impacts of the proposed Amazon data center, and are calling for the project to be terminated immediately. We are also demanding that there shall not be any data centers established in our community—Amazon or otherwise—now or ever.
References:
https://www.cityofgilroy.org/1019/Amazon-Data-Center
| City of Gilroy Community Development/Planning Project
https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/16514/AS-20-23-Architectural-Site-Approval7325
| E-mail correspondence/approval, July 3, 2025
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai-data-center-job-creation-48038b67
| The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2025
https://www.iaff.org/news/data-centers-are-booming-and-fire-fighters-must-adapt-to-new-challenges/
| International Association of Firefighters, March 13, 2025
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
| Environmental and Energy Study Institute, June 25, 2025
https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/sites/stpp/files/2025-07/stpp-data-centers-2025.pdf
| University of Michigan, July 2025
https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/land-water-impacts-data-centers/
| Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, October 17, 2025
https://hbr.org/2025/11/mitigating-the-public-health-impacts-of-ai-data-centers
| Harvard Business Institute, November 5, 2025
*Minor adjustments for grammar and clarity have been made to this petition since originally posting, including references for City of Gilroy activity and references cited for points of concern.
**Initial calls to comment are specific to social media forums where some but not all of Gilroy City Council are members. On 1/1/2026 all City Council representatives were automatically notified of the petition by Change.org
Britt Smith
Petition Starter
UCSC Alum | GHS Class of 2011
Recognizing Gilroy's rich agricultural history, beautiful parks, and California's fragile ecosystem it is our responsibility to ensure that the town we love can be enjoyed for generations to come without risks of environmental pollution that would degrade the quality of life.
On Thursday, July 3, 2025, outside of a public City Council meeting and while neighbors were gearing up for Independence Day weekend, Gilroy's Community Development Director Sharon Goei approved the proposal made by Noel Yetter, a Senior Technical Infrastructure Program Manager located in Seattle, WA, for Amazon Web Services to build an Amazon Data Center to be located at 8050 Camino Arroyo. In Ms. Goei's correspondence with Yetter, it is stated that the permit application request was initially received on November 13, 2020, revised on February 16, 2021 and April 11, 2022, with a final version designed in collaboration with "City of Gilroy staff" submitted on February, 24, 2023.
The fifty-six acre plot of land at 8050 Camino Arroyo, directly east of US-101, is in close proximity to active farmland, Gilroy's outdoor outlet shopping mall, and health centers, including Valley Health and Kaiser Permanente medical offices.
The proposed center includes 3 buildings, 2 for the data center itself and 1 as a security building, totaling 438,500 square feet.
While Gilroy has continued to progress pass our agricultural roots, becoming a bedroom community for the hard workers that have made Silicon Valley successful, there is continued concern from citizens about the long term impacts of this project, including:
Job sustainability
Environmental impacts
Quality of life impacts
On Tuesday, December 30, in the Gilroy CA Community Page on Facebook, a discussion began once again expressing worry for the center, initially drawing participation from 20+ citizens. Council Member Terence Fugazzi participated in the thread, dismissing his constituent's valid concerns in a jeering manner.
Today, January 1, 2026, 40+ users are actively engaged in the conversation, adding their own thoughts paired with articles from traditional news outlets, scholarly journals, and testimony from individuals in other areas who live near data centers. At this time no representatives of Gilroy government have responded to calls for comments**.
Members of the community of Gilroy are concerned about the impacts of the proposed Amazon data center, and are calling for the project to be terminated immediately. We are also demanding that there shall not be any data centers established in our community—Amazon or otherwise—now or ever.
References:
https://www.cityofgilroy.org/1019/Amazon-Data-Center
| City of Gilroy Community Development/Planning Project
https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/16514/AS-20-23-Architectural-Site-Approval7325
| E-mail correspondence/approval, July 3, 2025
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai-data-center-job-creation-48038b67
| The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2025
https://www.iaff.org/news/data-centers-are-booming-and-fire-fighters-must-adapt-to-new-challenges/
| International Association of Firefighters, March 13, 2025
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
| Environmental and Energy Study Institute, June 25, 2025
https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/sites/stpp/files/2025-07/stpp-data-centers-2025.pdf
| University of Michigan, July 2025
https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/land-water-impacts-data-centers/
| Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, October 17, 2025
https://hbr.org/2025/11/mitigating-the-public-health-impacts-of-ai-data-centers
| Harvard Business Institute, November 5, 2025
*Minor adjustments for grammar and clarity have been made to this petition since originally posting, including references for City of Gilroy activity and references cited for points of concern.
**Initial calls to comment are specific to social media forums where some but not all of Gilroy City Council are members. On 1/1/2026 all City Council representatives were automatically notified of the petition by Change.org
Britt Smith
Petition Starter
UCSC Alum | GHS Class of 2011
For more information:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-ai-data-...
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IMC Network
As someone who lives in Salinas, a neighboring constituency, I would like to express my enormous upset with your plan to use 56 acres in Camino Arroyo to build a data center for Amazon.
AWS bought the site in 2020, and you, Sharon, as Gilroy's community development director approved that first phase July 3, 2023.
City documents said no public hearing was required, and the parcel's longstanding industrial zoning allowed staff to approve the project without a vote by elected officials. I can appreciate the technicality here but personally I am outraged that no public comment, vote, or involvement was available to us as citizens.
For such an enormous, landmark decision with enormous and longstanding implications, to actively exclude residents seems like a huge democratic oversight. This is not just.
In regard to water usage, this piece of land previously grew peppers and tomatoes, using 70-100 AFY of potable water. The data center will use 23 AFY and once the pipeline from Gilroy’s wastewater treatment plant to the site is complete (expected in 2030), all water used will be completely recyclable.
I would rather have peppers and tomatoes. I would always rather have a necessary good before unnecessary artificial intelligence.
If the wastewater treatment plant site is not to be completed until 2030, and planning for the dats center begins in 2023, what happens with the water in the interim?
We are in the middle of climate collapse. Food is crucial to our daily survival. Artificial intelligence is a boondoggle in such urgent times. Globally, this year is tracking as one of the warmest years in record.
Gilroy already struggles with drought, wildfires. Electrical costs rise generally when data centres are in a community. For the blue collar population of Gilroy, this itself presents a huge issue. Cost of living is already enormous, and Gilroy relies heavily on immigrant communities who often bear the financial burden of providing cheap labour to California’s crucial agricultural industry.
There is a direct clash here between the ability to grow food, a necessary good, and to provide cooling water to Data Centers for Amazon, which hardly constitutes a necessity. One of these is essential, and the other is not. Even more basically, A single large hyperscale data center can consume between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water per day.
This is shortsighted. This is an enormous mistake, with far reaching and long lasting consequences that we cannot foresee. Gilroy is fundamentally an agricultural community. California has been in major drought through out my entire life. There are already water restrictions on general use in Gilroy.
Please, please reverse this decision. Please please do not proceed with other such decisions. Please do not green light such projects without even the possibility for participation or influence from your constituents. I genuinely think this is the wrong thing to do, and we cannot possibly understand yet what all of the enormous negative outcomes will be.
Thanks,
Julia Reichard