Yessenia Reyes is the sort of teenager who loves giving small gifts. On a warm fall evening, she’s screwing a bedazzled license plate cover on her grandma’s SUV outside of their apartment building.
" I bought them off of Shein. They were just like, they were only $20."
Mitzki Reyes, Yessenia’s grandma, supervises over her shoulder. They live in Vina Apartments — an affordable housing project in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. Across the street is a construction site for a massive, new data center.
"Tight quarters, huh? I don’t know why they would do that, but it’s beyond our control, right?"
It’s a major investment for CoreSite, a Denver-based data center firm. It’ll eventually include three buildings packed with servers—computing power for cloud-based software or new AI tools. But Yessenia isn’t sure it belongs in her neighborhood.
"I wouldn't think it would be here. Maybe somewhere else… somewhere with more open land."
…and less industry. The largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood is surrounded by highways, an oil and gas refinery and a notoriously stinky dog food factory. That’s why some residents are concerned about a giant new data center — and not just because it’ll eat up a massive amount of electricity and water. They’re worried it’ll make the air quality even worse.
"Especially when this community has over and over and over in the past, for lack of a better word, been taken advantage of."
Dr. Pam Valenza is the medical director for Tepeyac Community Health Center, a low-income health clinic just a block from the construction site. She only realized it would be a data center a few months ago.
"I think I found out through a social media post. It wasn’t even through our organization."
Since then, she’s pored through articles about data centers and public health. That’s how she realized the many facilities have back-up diesel generators, to continue operating during blackouts. And the CoreSite project will have 14 of them. And diesel exhaust is dirty — packed with soot and other dangerous gases.
"We really don't know what the full impact of having a data center next to the clinic or in a highly dense area has on the community."
And some researchers think there’s cause for concern. A recent study estimates the air quality impact of the AI boom. It found pollution linked to data centers — meaning backup generators and power plants — could exacerbate conditions like asthma and cancer -- leading to as many as thirteen hundred more premature deaths per year by 2030. CoreSite agreed to answer questions – but only over email. A spokesperson said the company chose the location since it was zoned for industrial use, and it's close future AI users in Denver. She also said that it would rarely run its diesel backup generators. Meanwhile, the company promises the project will create 75 permanent jobs and hundreds of millions in property taxes.
But that doesn’t do much for people living nearby, says Ana Varela, an organizer with the GES Coalition, a neighborhood advocacy group.
"This community deserves so much more. We deserve to be treated like any other gorgeous historic neighborhood in Denver."
Varela says there should have been more outreach before the project was approved. Since it's now under construction, she hopes the company at least installs air quality monitors outside…
"so that our neighborhoods can know exactly what toxins and pollutants they are emitting."
And so other communities get an idea of what it means to have a data center next door. For the Mountain West News Bureau I'm Sam Brasch.