Ocasio-Cortez: “If Anyone Wants to Live Right Next to One of These Data Centers Here on this Committee, Please Raise Your Hand”

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Washington, D.C. - Today, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) highlighted the need to address the real harms and public health impacts of data centers during an Energy and Commerce Full Committee Markup.

Find Representative Ocasio-Cortez's remarks as delivered below:

"Thank you.

You know, just as an alternative point of consideration here in terms of New York State's recent moratorium. You know, the kind of thought that, well, you know, if you don't want to build in your backyard, then maybe you shouldn't have access to compute- we can say the same thing about Silicon Valley. We could say the same thing about Silicon Valley billionaires that are constructing and pushing and imposing these data centers on communities that are overwhelmingly rural, disenfranchised, poor, and whose own elected officials are not being transparent about how the land use is happening in their own backyard.

Because I would reckon you look around, ask Peter Thiel, ask Elon Musk, ask Mark Zuckerberg if they want one of these data centers in their own backyard.

Ask any one of us here on this committee. If anyone wants to live right next to one of these data centers here on this committee, please raise your hand, because I've been going to- I visited Georgia.

I was just in Memphis on Friday. There was an xAI gray water treatment plant on one street corner, across the street from methane turbines. Another, all within one block, methane turbines, coal ash, wastewater facilities. And everyone in that area is getting poisoned.

I think that so many of us, at the end of the day, this conversation is not just about technology. It's about people's ability to live without getting cancer. People's ability to have a home that doesn't get cracked up in their foundations because this construction is going on, that their city council is not informing them of, that their county commissioners are not being transparent about, and that people aren't voting on.

And the idea that that's all just kind of a foreign operation, I think that if you actually talk to these people in these communities, they would disagree.

And on top of that, in New York, it's not just the electricity bills, it's the water. We have one of the precious, most precious and sacred water supplies in the United States. Once you compromise that, it's done.

Ask people in Flint, ask people across the country, when their critical water supplies are compromised it takes years, if not decades, to clean up again.

So I think what people are asking for in their basic protections is not too much to ask. They want to make sure that their water isn't going to be poisoned, which these data centers come in, they say it's not going to be a problem, and then, you all saw, we brought the well water right here.

So we need to have protections in place for people. And when we talk about increased worker productivity, that's because millions of people stand to lose their jobs.

And so you have people where we're seeing some of the output of AI, increased productivity per role, and we're seeing lots of companies talk about how many people you can lay off with this technology.

What is the plan? And I think it's not unreasonable for the working class people that we are elected to respond to, to ask questions and to deserve and feel entitled to a response from their elected officials.

That's all.

And with that, I yield back. "

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