Kate Gibbs received a call from a childhood who now lives in Bergen County – the friend was alarmed to read about a proposed data center near where Kate lives now.
Gibbs, the Deputy Director of ELEC825, gave her childhood friend a fact she wasn’t prepared for; that her friend currently lives where eight data centers are within five miles of her house and have been there for years.
Her friend had no idea. Gibbs said that’s the problem in a nutshell.
A Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released earlier this month found 55% of New Jerseyans believe the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, and 72% oppose having one built in their town. ELEC825 — the Engineers Labor-Employer Cooperative, the labor-management partnership of Operating Engineers Local 825 and its contractors — says the poll shows how residents don’t have a complete look at the issue.
Gibbs feels much of the opposition is driven by misinformation that spreads quickly online.
“All of a sudden, it was like one day everybody on social media became an expert on data centers … and was uniformly opposed, while also spreading a lot of misinformation,” she said. “People should be making informed decisions, and it’s right that people have questions. But we need to make sure that they’re getting the right answers to those questions.”
Gibbs credits Gov. Mikie Sherrill for rejecting a statewide ban and letting towns decide. She also pushes back on the idea that labor only cares about jobs, saying her members have to live and pay taxes here, too.
And for proof of what a big ratable can do for a town, she points to the success story of the Bell Works transformation in Holmdel.
Since the old Bell Labs site reopened as Bell Works, she said, “property taxes in Holmdel have actually gone down. Not by huge leaps and bounds, but they have.” But now that there is a proposed small-scale data center for the site, there has been public outcry.
Here’s more of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
BINJE: Gov. Sherrill has said she prefers home rule over a statewide ban or moratorium. What’s your reaction?
Kate Gibbs: We applaud her decision. Instead of doing a statewide ban or moratorium like others have done, she recommends that we have home rule in the state. Each municipality is really diverse in terms of their interests and their geographic makeup, and so it makes the most sense to allow municipalities to make decisions on their own and what’s right for each municipality.
We know that data centers have been here for a decade or two, being good corporate citizens, paying a lot of state and local taxes and not requiring a lot of services. So, they can be really great benefits to a town — adding ratables without adding kids to the school district. There’s not a lot of traffic, because there’s not a huge full-time workforce.
But it should be up to each municipality to decide.
BINJE: Give us your thoughts on the two biggest concerns around data center: water use and impact on energy prices.
Kate Gibbs: The technology with these data centers has improved exponentially over the years. Most data centers today are using recycled water and closed-loop systems that recirculate the same water, or don’t use water and use other kinds of cooling technologies.
It’s been proven in other states that when you integrate data centers into the system, they can actually help grid reliability and bring down prices. New Jersey has existing policies to attract and retain large-load energy users of all kinds, because it helps the grid and benefits prices.
Data centers shouldn’t be looked at any differently just because they’re the social media du jour NIMBY thing right now.
BINJE: Some residents say these projects are being snuck through with special approvals. Do you think that’s true?
Kate Gibbs: Anybody who knows development in New Jersey knows that we have one of the most difficult pathways to develop anything in the country, and we have the most stringent environmental review processes at every level of government than any other state. It’s not like these are getting some special express pass. They still need to get the same permits through the Department of Environmental Protection, through their local approvals, that any other project would.
People can make informed decisions and still not want to have them in their communities. But it’s important to base those decisions from a place of having the correct information, not a bunch of stuff that’s being spread online.
BINJE: At the ON3 site in Nutley, the developer told BINJE that the previous tenant, Roche, was allocated 14 million gallons of water a day — and a data center there would use less than 1 million. Residents still call it a water waste. Why doesn’t that comparison land?
Kate Gibbs: Because of the amount of misinformation that has flooded social media feeds has been overwhelming and fear can be more powerful than logic in those examples. All things being equal the average person would say “Oh, that’s less. It’s a better outcome.” But I think the stoked fear has created a mania where common-sense and facts are being overwhelmed by the misinformation.
BINJE: It sounds like a familiar New Jersey story.
Kate Gibbs: This is a common thing in New Jersey — the NIMBYism that makes absolutely no sense. I want a gas stove, but I don’t want a natural gas pipeline. I don’t want a warehouse, but I want my delivery by 8 a.m. the next morning when I order something on Amazon. If you want your deliveries to get there first thing in the morning, you got to have local distribution centers.
Do you want to stream on your phone? Do you want to do any of the transactions we do today?
BINJE: For years, New Jersey celebrated Jersey City taking back-office jobs from New York. Those jobs came because of data centers. Do you think people miss that fact?
Kate Gibbs: 100%. Focus NJ did a report, and it shows in 2024 alone, data centers added over $31 billion of GDP to New Jersey, paid almost $3.5 billion in state and local taxes and have created 172,000 jobs.
I just think that people weren’t making the connection between why those financial services backups and jobs came here — because of the data centers.
BINJE: Skeptics will say ELEC is only speaking up because data centers mean work for your members. What do you say to that?
Kate Gibbs: For us in our organization, the thing that I’ve always really appreciated working here is that we don’t just support bad policy because it creates jobs. We support good public policy because our members and our contractors and their families have to live and work here, and we need an economy that doesn’t just work in the short term but works in the long term.
