SUNBURY — The first of three special Sunbury City Council meetings on a proposed Amazon data center answered some residents’ questions about water and electricity, but left many with lingering concerns.
City Administrator Daryl Hennessy invited Brian Coghlan, chief operating officer of Del-Co Water and president of the Ohio chapter of the WateReuse Association, and John Seryak, managing partner of the consulting firm Go Sustainable Energy, to present information and answer audience questions.
The first of three special city council meetings focused on the project’s potential impact on utility infrastructure, specifically power generation, transmission and water resources.
“I think they’re basically trying to get us to swallow the poison pill still,” resident Patty Shipley said after the meeting.
“I thought it was interesting how the energy guy said energy hikes are not from data centers, but then proceeded to tell you all the ways they could hike your energy costs.”
The crowd was noticeably smaller in comparison to previous council and planning and zoning commission meetings. However, attendees turned in dozens of questions on sheets of paper, with the city answering a handful after the speakers fielded questions from council.
The city said it would publish responses to all of the public’s questions at a later date.
“I think people get exhausted,” Shipley said.
“They think there’s a moratorium on it, and they’re like, ‘Well, nothing is moving forward right now anyway.’ I almost didn’t come because I’m not going to believe anything they say; I’m going to take it all with a grain of salt.”
A data center ‘will be a challenge’ for Del-Co
Coghlan began by explaining Del-Co Water’s existing system and the resources available to serve future growth.
Del-Co serves around 250,000 users from 58,000 accounts across Delaware, Morrow, Marion, Union, Knox, Franklin, Licking and Crawford Counties. The utility provider can produce about 40 million gallons of water per day from three plants, but peaks in the summer around 28 million.
Its largest facility, the Olentangy Water Treatment Plant, draws from the Olentangy River and can produce about 28 million gallons of water per day. Del-Co also draws water from the Scioto River, Alum Creek Reservoir, Doutt Reservoir and four groundwater wells in Knox County.
Because the proposed Amazon data center sits near the Knox County line, Coghlan said the project could potentially receive water from Del-Co’s Knox County wells in addition to its other sources.
Despite those multiple sources, Coghlan emphasized that Delaware County sits at the headwaters of the Ohio River, meaning the region’s available water supply is ultimately finite.
“For Del-Co Water, here in Sunbury, serving a data center — a hyperscaler in particular — will be a challenge,” Coghlan said.
“It will be a challenge, whether it’s from a potable water source or a water supply, or whether it’s from recycled wastewater.”
Coghlan said Del-Co would likely take a phased approach if the project moves forward, including reviewing hydrologic and surface water impacts, monitoring nearby wells and conducting fenceline monitoring around those wells.
He compared the well monitoring processes to steps taken when fracking activity came through Knox County and posed a possible concern to the Knox County wells.
Most importantly, Coghlan said in case of a drought or other act of God, households would have priority over the data center.
“We also recommend looking at the water quality and environmental impacts,” Coghlan said. “Whether it’s mussel and aquatic species surveys, PFAS surveys … on the regulatory government side, communicate with the Ohio EPA.”
Coghlan also recommended a water user agreement, which could take 12-24 months to achieve, due to the significant amount of water the data center would require.
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is currently Del-Co’s largest water customer, accounting for about 1% of the utility’s total usage.
If built, the proposed Amazon data center would become Del-Co’s largest customer by a wide margin, using an estimated 7% to 8% of the system’s capacity.
Coghlan also said Amazon would only require water for cooling purposes, an estimated 86 days per year, another challenge due to a lack of infrastructure for such a need.
In other words, Del-Co would still need the capacity to serve those peak cooling days, even if the data center does not need that level of water service most of the year.
Data centers’ power and how it could affect electric bills
Seryak said the proposed data center could require between 100 and 300 megawatts of power, depending on its final size and design.
By comparison, he said the city of Sunbury currently uses about 10 megawatts, and the city of Columbus uses about 100 megawatts.
That means the data center could require roughly 10 to 30 times more electricity than the city of Sunbury.
Seryak said data centers are typically powered through high-voltage transmission lines, not the smaller distribution lines that carry electricity directly to homes and businesses.
That distinction matters because the costs show up differently on electric bills.
Seryak said local distribution upgrades are paid for by customers in the affected AEP Ohio service area. But transmission costs are spread across the broader AEP Transmission footprint, which covers Ohio and parts of 11 other states.
When a data center connects to the transmission system, the cost of that connection is shared by all ratepayers across the broader AEP Transmission footprint, Seryak said.
In other words, Sunbury residents would not pay that cost alone. But they could still see transmission-related costs on their electric bills, just as they could from other data center projects anywhere in AEP’s transmission territory.
“If a data center comes to Sunbury, it will affect your transmission bill, but in the same way another data center in the [AEP Transmission] footprint would,” he said.
Transmission and capacity forecasts also play a role in determining rates. Companies use forecasts to speculate on how many transmission lines or power plants they may need to build.
“Similar to transmission, data centers being built and [data centers] in this forecast that we’re not sure are going to be built, impact capacity prices,” Seryak said.
Additionally, he pointed out how energy prices have been rising before data centers, but nationwide concerns around them have made them easy scapegoats.
Seryak said that data centers have exposed how the country regulates power.
