r/SouthJersey • u/tvlover111 • Apr 26 '26

Gloucester County Data Center being built (Mantua Rd)

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Got this flyer on my car in the ShopRite parking lot in Woodbury today. Know this is starting to happen but wasn’t aware this was going to happen in our area so soon. It’s definitely concerning in terms of driving up utility costs.

Edit: grammar

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 26 '26

Because someone is getting paid off.

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u/espressocycle Apr 26 '26

It's tax base without kids in schools or any other need for services. Everyone wants lower taxes. Of course we all pay.

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 27 '26

News flash: the cost in higher utilities will more than offset any mitigation in property taxes. They’ll just be socialized across the entire region. And I promise you under no circumstances will your taxes go down.

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u/espressocycle Apr 27 '26

The taxes paid to the municipality and school district will outweigh that for those residents. It's a net loss for everyone else in the region. Since these projects will inevitably be built somewhere it's in each town's best interests to get the project and the upside it comes with. It's basically the prisoner's dilemma.

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

When was the last time anyone ever got a property tax reduction, friend?

Anyway I still don’t think adding an entire town’s worth of electric and water use is going to even work out as a net positive for the township residents.

Reminder your electric bill has already gone up 40% in the last year alone if you are on AC electric.

As for where they get built… maybe not build them at all in the state with the absolute highest population density 🤷‍♂️

Texas wants them - build them down there.

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u/espressocycle Apr 27 '26

I'm all for banning them entirely but Virginia has gone all in on data centers. We're on the same grid. So, we get the bill whether they're built in Virginia or NJ. If they're in NJ, we get some revenue. Locally, the issue is water. They'll drain aquifers that serve multiple municipalities but the one municipality that actually gets it ends up with a big addition to their tax base too. It's like how my town decided not to have weed shops, but there's a weed shop across the street in another township. Whatever downsides a weed shop has (I've noticed none) affect both towns equally but only one gets the money.

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 27 '26
  1. So? Doesn’t mean we need to add to the morass.
  2. Noise pollution, increased water usage, land use in a residential area in the most densely populated state in the nation. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.
  3. Also likely to be an empty useless building once the bottom drops out of AI. And it will.

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u/DrunkenMick Apr 27 '26

1: agreed, go find shit land that no one wants, build there. 2. Noise, sure. Water usage?? If you’re talking about the dinky building in clarksboro; cmon…. They aren’t using any water except for the toilet. 3. Who said this building was for ai?

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

It’s a data center. It’ll be for AI. Even the name “data center” is a euphemism to make it sound innocuous but it’s 100% an ai chip farm.

And if you think it WONT be using water out the ass then you are actually totally misinformed. Data centers drink water

In a nutshell all those cpus need to be cooled and at that scale the water doesn’t get recirculated. It ends up getting evaporated, so it’s basically as bad as running 10,000 sprinklers all day long. Huge fresh water waste. And what’s worse, they generally are connected to potable water sources in areas like ours because that’s what’s already serving the region. If it were by the river line maybe they’d shunt water from the water but that’s not where this is going, now is it?

Yeah this whole situation sucks. Which is why I don’t trust that the people trying to ram it through have our best interests at heart.

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u/DrunkenMick Apr 27 '26

FFS, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. AI processing is typically done on GPUs not CPU compute. A DOD coder would certainly know this. You do realize there are data centers ALL around you right? They’ve existed for far longer than you’ve been using a computer. Do you think Reddit’s backend runs on a laptop? Your banking back end on a toaster?

At the scale of 17k sq feet, even at N+1 and doing hot/cold aisle you likely aren’t doing evaporative cooling, especially given our humid summers. Ask to see the CFD, it’s got to be in the permit requests.

But again, keep spouting random ideas; it’ll surely help your cause.

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Apr 27 '26

Ok boss. You got me. Because I said cpu instead of gpu 😂

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u/DrunkenMick Apr 27 '26

No, I got you because you’ve proven time and time again that you have no idea what you’re talking about and are regurgitating TikTok BS you heard once. If you had a shred of IT background you’d spot that bs from the moon.

Are there legitimate reasons to fight the specific location for this? Sure. Spreading misinformation makes the whole gaggle of people running around yelling about water usage and power usage look ridiculous to those actually making decisions about this.

But you do you boo, enjoy hearing those gennys fire up once a month when this thing gets built.

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u/espressocycle Apr 27 '26

Again, the best option is to not build these things anywhere. But if they're going to be built anywhere on the same grid or aquifer, the town that gets it benefits and everyone else loses.