Charlie Kratovil

My pleasure.

I'm a big fan of you guys.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, there's something really special and unique about this campaign.

You know, being a local journalist, I attend all the meetings.

And so I just happened to be at the New Brunswick Planning Board meeting the night that they revealed that this redevelopment plan included a

data center that would be right near homes and businesses.

You know, we didn't think of New Brunswick as a place where we might be having these types of proposals, but sure enough, this is the first time it's happened.

And we really only had nine days before the city council was supposed to

approve it and finalize the redevelopment plan and once it's in there i know from experience how hard it can be to fight the site plans because they'll just say it's a permitted use in the redevelopment plan it was a really sloppy redevelopment plan with no limits or controls on how big it is or how many there could be so yeah they said a single 27 000 square foot data center verbally at this one meeting

but there would be nothing stopping that private equity firm from coming back with a much larger or a more devastating proposal.

And so, yeah, I, you know, work at food and water watch where we have called for a nationwide moratorium on large scale AI data centers, along with 250 other groups.

And so I knew the right people to contact and I knew the right information to share and, and,

In those nine days, we were able to build a coalition with students at Rutgers University, environmental groups around the state, and the local people who were going to be most affected.

So, you know, one of those pictures, they're knocking on doors in the Lincoln Gardens neighborhood to warn people that this proposal is coming up and you need to call your council president and

show up at this meeting.

And, you know, I was expecting a big response, but certainly it exceeded my wildest expectations.

Well, I know how devastating they can be from some of my colleagues around the nation that have helped fight and in some cases have not been able to stop them.

So they can be devastating to ecosystems.

The noise and pollution can be harmful to humans.