In this nine-minute audio excerpt (above) from the October 16 episode of Ask Catherine & the Solari Team, Catherine and Carolyn respond to a question about how citizens can investigate whether a data center is being planned for their community.

Various data center trackers are now available online (two are listed in the links below), but the speed at which data centers are going up is outstripping many sites’ ability to stay current. Still worse, some municipalities are lying to local residents about their data center development plans, claiming that a supermarket or shopping mall rather than a data center is in the works.

For these reasons, Catherine emphasizes Elze van Hamelen’s recommendation (in Elze’s report for Solari titled Take Back Your Town: A Handbook for Local Action) that community members crowdfund one or more people willing to “bird-dog” (that is, watch closely) what is happening locally. Catherine says:

“Just crowdfund [a bird-dog]. Find one person who’d like a job going to all those meetings [in your town] and checking on all this stuff. And everybody pays … $10, $20, $30 a month to have somebody bird-dog … and make sure [local officials] are not sliding something in under your nose. I can’t think of a better investment than doing that.”