Even with a proposed data center virtually off the agenda, the project drew a stream of opposition when the Joliet Plan Commission met Thursday.

The show of opposition may have been a sample of the growing distrust of data centers, viewed by opponents as operations that suck up electricity and community water supplies to foster a future guided by artificial intelligence.

“It’s clear that AI will displace far more jobs than are created by a data center,” Noah Martinez of Crest Hill told the Plan Commission. “This vision of society is being created for us by the ultra-wealthy.”

City staff had given notice in advance of the meeting that they wanted the Plan Commission to postpone “indefinitely” any vote on the data center until staff could get a better grasp of the plan.

That’s what the Plan Commission did, but not before hearing from 19 people who spoke out against the plan to develop a 795-acre data center on the south end of the city.

“This is a really big one,” Andrea Baumhardt of Manhattan Township said.

Baumhardt said that a much smaller data center is creating problems in Aurora.

”A lot of residents have been complaining about it, complaining about the noise," she said.

Aurora resident Guillermo Rodriguez came to the Joliet meeting to give his own recommendation against the proposed data center.

“I live in Aurora, and I have seen the impact of what a data center has done in our community,” Rodriguez said.

He described the sound coming out of the Aurora data center as the kind of noise “used as weapons of war.”

A few of the speakers commented that any jobs created at the data center would not be worth the impact of the project.

“If it’s AI, we’re giving jobs to AI,” Julio Villegas of Joliet said. “We’re taking people’s jobs away.”

Texas-based HW Technology Park Development, which wants to build the data center, did not appear to have anyone at the meeting.

The data center plan initially was to go to the Plan Commission for consideration in October. City staff then asked that it be tabled until November to deal with the complexities of the project.

City Community Development Director Dustin Anderson this week said he now wants the plan postponed until HW Technology Park Development addresses questions raised by the community.

Anderson was at the Plan Commission meeting at which residents continued to raise questions.

Several of those who spoke said the impact of a 795-acre data center would go beyond Joliet.

“This is not just a Joliet problem,” said Laura Heindrich of Manhattan, who lives near the land proposed for the project. “This is a Will County problem.”