Gilroy: Gardens vs. Gigabytes

Recently, my Gilroy neighbors and I received a letter notifying us that El Fogon Taqueria was requesting to sell beer and wine. I thought notifying us was a very neighborly thing to do, but I also thought that our town staff made this small business jump through a lot of hoops simply so they could offer a beer with their tacos.

Contrast this with the approval process for the Amazon Data Center. The data center, spanning over 438,500 square feet on a 56-acre campus with unknown environmental and public health impacts, was not exactly a secret, but many of us didn’t hear much about it until the sound of bulldozers interrupted our morning coffee.

City officials are eager to note the land is not zoned agriculture. This is true. The City of Gilroy changed the zoning in 1981 from Prime Farmland to M2 General Industrial. This is not to say the land was no longer Prime Farmland; it is. City officials had simply decided to call it something else. The reason for changing the zoning is simple: it is more profitable to build on it than to farm it. The assessed market value of this farmland in 2020 when Amazon bought it was $7.3 million. Amazon paid $31.3 million.

This zoning also allowed our Community Development Director, Sharon Goei, to bypass the town council and Planning Commission, approving the project without a public vote, town hall meeting, or neighborly notice. It allowed town staff to decide for themselves that the prime farmland, power, and water use issues were negligible.

We, as townspeople, should take note of this. Gilroy has some of the most productive farmland in the world. Our planet is losing healthy, productive land the size of California, Nevada, and Arizona combined every year. If you think we can just make more of it, we can’t. It takes about 500 years to create one inch of topsoil. Before we paved over most of Santa Clara County, we once produced 90% of California’s fruits and vegetables. Gilroy, as many know, is the Garlic Capital of the World, and we produce 5% of the nation’s mushrooms. Most importantly, agriculture supports one out of seven jobs in South County. The Amazon Data Center is supposed to employ only 30 to 50 people.

The data center is estimated to use 98 megawatts of electrical power, roughly equivalent to the power needed for 98,000 homes. This concerns me because a few years ago, I remodeled my 1865 Pioneer house in Gilroy. When finished, I asked PG&E to turn on my power. They told me to wait three months, then six, then one year. After a year of correspondence—explaining, but never apologizing for the delay—they ghosted me. For two years, I lived without any electricity at all. Some of the businesses in downtown also went without power during this time. The reality was that PG&E didn’t give a damn, and our local officials, whom I asked for help, were powerless.

Three years ago, PG&E couldn’t even give me 100 amps for my house. Does PG&E have an extra 98,000 homes' worth of power floating around? Will this mean rolling blackouts for the rest of us?

There is also the water issue. The center is projected to use 10,960 gallons of potable (clean drinking) water per day. If they stick to their long-term plan to switch the facility over to recycled municipal wastewater, this would reduce their demand for clean drinking water significantly and maybe not be much of a problem. But who is going to enforce this? Our city officials?

Lastly, I am curious how Amazon was able to obtain building permits for a project this size within five years? I’ve been trying to get permits for an ADU for three—but that’s another story.

Mayor Bozzo explained that Amazon donated a million dollars toward a new fire truck, sponsored the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and donated to unspecified nonprofits. Clearly, I need to up my game if I want permits for my ADU. Maybe I could buy a tire for the new fire truck?

I also need to stock up on candles for the rolling PG&E blackouts and start digging a well in my backyard. I’m also wondering where we are going to get food when all of the prime farmland is gone. As Charlie Olson, the legendary third-generation orchardist said when he watched his orchard being plowed under: “It was the crime of a century: paving over the best soil in the world.”