Data center developments stall in Wisconsin Rapids – A conversation with Mayor Zacher

You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 a.m.

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I'm Melissa K bringing you news in our community during this interview I'm talking with Wisconsin Rapids mayor Matt Zachar on Thursday, May 21st Thank you for joining me Matt to bring the community an update from the city of Wisconsin Rapids.

You're welcome.

Good to have good to be here.

Yeah, good to see you It's a beautiful day today and the lawnmowers are running out there.

Hopefully

because

it

is there is no no-mo-may and as I've been driving around the city I've seen a few signs that people have been putting up but they don't count this year right

yeah that was something that the council decided I think it was just getting

getting a little bit out of control in their opinion in terms of people doing it, doing it so long, and then doing it for so much longer than May.

So they decided to do away with that.

I think everybody, we encourage everybody, the reason it started was to create more pollen friendly environments for the insects that are out there that love pollen.

And I think the grass growing long doesn't necessarily help that, especially when it turns into a hay field.

I think

wildflower gardens like anything you want that you can just mow around and you know they look beautiful it's kind of exciting to be able to grow does a lot more for pollen in the insects again that's just my opinion I know people are going to differ on that but for the most part yes it is has not been approved this year and probably won't be in the future

okay so if you have those signs putting them up does not stop you from receiving a potential citation if your lawn is too

too long.

Yeah, we would like everybody to get back into the mode of cutting their grass from the gecko and keeping it under control, keeping our neighborhoods looking good.

Which is less

than seven inches by the city ordinance.

Is that

correct?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, another issue that we have to talk about is the data center proposal.

This

The public hearing was delayed and from what I'm hearing and have heard after your conversation with Mike, I'm gonna, sorry, Mike, I'm gonna mess up your last name, Leshner.

Leshner.

On WSAU for your Mayors Monday on May 18th.

It sounds like the delay was maybe a good thing for both the community and the company based on what you said.

Yeah, I think it was.

Again, I'm taking some heat analysis stuff.

I try to stay away from social media as much as possible, but it's finding its way back to me.

Rightly so.

I mean, it serves its purpose in the community.

I don't think it's a very constructive place for people to...

Tarnished people's reputations and the things that they can say that aren't true.

So much of everything that's being said out there is not true.

We've been hired and elected to do jobs and I think everybody's doing them to the most professional level that they can do them.

And so I think that everything is in order.

Unfortunately, we can just like as a community that's not involved in the day-to-day activities because we all can't be, I think things can be taken out of context and then blown up and then you just talk about them and create, create situations that aren't actually true.

Like most of what's going on out there is not true.

It was good.

Again, when I said people from around, you know,

other parts of the country and state like this is an this is an effort that's going on around the country in terms of trying to block data centers.

Rightly so because the information that's out there there's there's more bad than good as far as I can tell but at the same time most of the stuff that I see is not like I would rather the information that I'm getting is actually from the the data you know that

And again, it's going to be tricky because they're going to say, well, the data center, that information is going to be told from the people who own them.

So then you go back and forth in terms of, well, what is real then?

But in the end, what I've always said is, I'm not for or against data centers.

I don't have a dog in that fight.

I don't care.

So let me make that very clear again.

I don't care if a data center comes here or not.

What I do care about is we have an abundance of industrial land that's being cleared, and it's got an abundance of electricity that's being set idle that can help Quebco out, which has consolidated water and power, build a stronger company so they can invest more money in the dams that we depend greatly on staying safe and secure for the long haul, like hundreds of years down the road, not just today and tomorrow.

So all that being said is kind of bringing it to the table that it's been delayed because we had people come to the community and talk about it and I was there at those meetings.

I heard what they said.

We did decide to slow things down.

We don't have any connection to this database company as the government besides anything that we would have with

say Applebee's and IHOP come into town or Pizza Ranch or Metallco or any other company that's here or may want to come here.

We have a system that's set up in place and we have to file the paperwork and that's what we do in order to get them to the public hearings, the planning commission, the council to let them set up a business here.

I know I'm catching heat for this, but that's what I see our role as government is.

And they're trying to, you know, what people are saying is I as the mayor have the power to say yes to that person and no to that person or company.

And that's not the way it's set up.

And that's not the way I ever want it to be set up.

Again, we've come a long way from dictatorships and, and we don't want to necessarily go back there.

So again, there's a lot of.

things that are set up in place so that the mayor doesn't necessarily get the final say in really anything.

Typically it's going to be the council and the only time I'd get a vote is if it's a four to four tie.

And I don't even necessarily think that that's beneficial because I don't even have the power to do anything and I'm already catching heat for stuff that's out of my control.

So ultimately it's been good that it's

being delayed, we're learning about that company, you know, there's, you know, they're going to have to do their own due diligence to do PR to the community.

For our part, we're going to have a press release coming out soon that will kind of detail out how we got here and where we're at right now and why we're at this place and that we're not putting another planning commission meeting together right now because we don't have the paperwork and everything sufficient enough to do that.

So ultimately,

If there was a success in this, is it the community slowed down the process?

We heard them.

We said, let's get more information.

Let's slow it down.

So in the end, everything's working exactly the way it should.

But if anybody were to ask me, I'm going to say that a database

manufacturing would be great to go in the mill property because it would bring in new electricity, it would bring in a whole new transmission system, it would upgrade our entire infrastructure for Quebcov for that site.

There'll be plenty of land left for manufacturing after that, so I would be happy to be able to bring that in, especially with the excess power, so there's lots of positives that go along with it.

So I'm not just gonna, you know, kind of roll over and be like, well...

I'm not, I'm just gonna say, you know, I hate data centers because everybody's telling me I have to hate data centers.

Again, I don't really have any feelings about them one way or the other.

What I am concerned about is our infrastructure with the city and bringing industry, bringing power here so that we can bring industry and moving into the future, which is where we're all headed.

Anyways, no matter how much we fight it, we're going to be heading into the future, which means we're upgrading our power systems by threefold.

Like it's insane what we're talking about right now, but it is going to happen.

And we are, unfortunately, we're all going to pay for it.

Me as a rate payer, me as a taxpayer and all of us together are going to help pay for this build out of electricity that's coming down the pipeline.

So.

And one of the things you mentioned is the paperwork and they did submit a conditional use permit application,

which is

available.

You made that available to the public.

Um, and the.

Some of the things that were stated in there were the specifics of what is going to be happening with their plan as it is currently.

That

may change as time goes on here, but one of the things you mentioned is looking at other data center, build-outs in other places.

You also have to consider the specifics here,

like you

mentioned.

Some of the utility power infrastructure is already there that served the mill.

that would have to maybe be upgraded.

According to the paperwork of what I'm reading, they're saying that that will not be passed on to the right payers here for the changing of that, the build

out.

Okay, so I can go into some of the details, but these are not details.

Saying that I want the data center to come I'm just saying the details as to what services we have to provide to a data center or a Manufacturing company or anything else that might come along Especially if it would be something that would fit on this site with the 220 acres and the power So quagco consolidated water and power is the electric company in that area like they ran the mill I can go into the whole history of that.

I've done it before but I'll keep it short.

They've been the mill power

company for, I would say almost ever, but I'm sure it wasn't right away that they built it.

They're actually the ones who helped us set up WWLC back, you know, almost 100 years ago to get us our own power in the city and know how to run our own electric company.

They are the ones who have the power to provide for the anybody that comes in, manufacturing or database.

They were up to about 250 at one point in time when they were running the mills.

I think they're down to capacity of about 110.

They use megawatts.

They give out about 45 megawatts now, 30 from the dams, and then they buy 15 more from Alliant Energy.

And they can probably have capacity for somewhere between 50 and 70 more, something along those lines.

But if a database company comes in, they're going to say, well, we'll use the 50 megawatts, but we want another 100 more megawatts, which isn't really that big.

of a data facility as far as I understand in my reading and talking to people who've put these data centers up.

Did you know that there's over 150 data centers in Wisconsin already?

And the oldest one goes to about like 60, 68 years old.

So I understand that there's a difference between what we call a data center and then a hyperscale data center, which is.

bigger machinery, bigger buildings, bigger power.

But yet we've been doing these for a long time.

It's not like it's this new concept or anything like that.

It's just getting on a bigger scale.

So Kwebco will provide all this electricity 100% separate from WWLC, which is we pay our rates to.

Now, I'm not saying that.

The company that transmits these from Alliant is called American Transmission Company.

They own all the transmission lines.

Those are the big, you know, the high voltage wires that, that bring from the generating facility, the power company to the distribution company, which is WWLC or in this case, Quebco.

So Alliant is going to have to upgrade their systems.

And if the ATC is going to have to upgrade their systems and Alliant will have to upgrade their system.

And in the end.

If we're buying power from a lion and everybody else is buying power from a lion and a lion builds a big brand new shiny facility that is putting out a gigawatt of power in order to feed all this new electricity that's out there, we're going to pay for some of that.

We're going to somehow some way we're going to pay for that.

And unless unless the government's bigger than the municipal government says, hey, we're going to force you guys to build your own generation plants.

So you don't tap into the public system at all or it's not public because the public doesn't own the system.

It's it's all private.

That's the other thing we get kind of confused is most of the stuff is all happening on a private level, whereas we don't just get to say willy nilly just like I don't get to tell you how to run your household and and your family, you know, and stuff like that, which we shouldn't.

We should stay out of that and just make it fair across the playing field,

which is different state to state.

But in Wisconsin, they're they're privately owned.

Oh, the systems.

Yeah, in Wisconsin, they're privately owned.

I thought it was nationwide.

It's different state by state.

We're talking about generation.

Like, we own the distribution system as WWLC.

But

also the lines and the transfer.

We could get into

that

another time.

Yeah.

I mean, Marshfield, they're...

building a new system, 60 megawatt, uh, peaker unit.

They already have a 60 watt peaker unit.

So if that's within the system of Marshfield, but I know they're also part of glue.

So yeah, there's some, there's some gray area in the middle there in terms of how it all plays out.

Well, and according to the conditional use permit, what I read is it said the capital costs of any required upgrades will be born.

This is regarding power.

Uh, will be born by the project, not the city or by the existing rate.

and because the project's load is supported by incremental supply rather than by a reallocation of existing service, it's not expected to have any material adverse impact on the availability, reliability, or cost of electric service to Wisconsin Rapids residents or existing businesses.

And what you're

saying is that overall, as we have more and more of a need for more and more power, we're going to have to upgrade the systems.

I mean, that's just, again, this is just my take on it.

Right now, the way this stands, this is all born by Kwebko.

This has nothing to do with WWLC, which is what makes this a very unique situation.

That's all I've ever tried to tell people about.

And I know that this conversation will go sideways too, but I'm just trying to get it out to all the people who can...

Hopefully you know kind of piece through what I'm trying to say in terms of that power is not WWLC power But in the big big picture if the entire country is gonna increase our generation because our demand increases by threefold We're all gonna pay to that unless we can as a federal government say all database companies have to build their own generation It can't touch rate payer.

You can't touch the rate payer systems

That's a whole different conversation and it doesn't start and that's why I can start.

I guess I'm starting it right now.

I guess in the end, but, but in reality, like, you know, I don't have this kind of power to be able to say that.

But what I do know is this is a separate situation.

Right.

And the city, previous to hear what's coming soon, doesn't generate any of our own power.

Well, now

we've then been approved to put in this five megawatt solar panel.

project on a small parcel outside of this.

So the city soon will be generating a small amount of power,

but

otherwise we have to purchase it.

And that is behind the meter.

is something that will be in our distribution system.

So that won't go out to the outside world.

It'll stay within our system, which is on average, we generate through WWLC about 30 megawatts of power.

During peak hours, it's going to be 50, 55 megawatts.

And then at the lowest points, it's going to be 5, 10, 15 megawatts.

So on average, 30.

And on average, that solar array will be

producing five megawatts.

So it's one sixth of the power.

Granted, it doesn't equate one sixth of the cost because it's kind of shared costs through this whole glue, which is 13 communities municipalities that that share in purchasing power in order to buy power out of great lakes utility, great lakes, you thank you, great lakes utility.

They buy power on a on a larger contract.

So they get it for a cheaper price and then they can share in that savings buy and bulk, which is what they're doing.

So it's, again, I know people like to

say like bad multi electric companies and but I feel like everybody's doing their job to the best of their ability are the big companies making a lot of money most likely but they also have a you know hundreds of thousands of employees and the overhead is astronomical like there's all things that go into it it's not just like free money flowing through everything like they have to keep up this infrastructure and the generation and everything else that's coming so.

Well let's take a brief pause here to hear from our sponsors I'm Melissa K talking with Mayor Matt Zacker and you're listening to

perspective on 1320 a.m.

975 FM WFHR.

Welcome.

You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM 975 FM.

I'm Alyssa Kay bringing you news in our community.

I'm speaking with Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Sacker and where we left off we were talking about the data center proposal that may potentially be coming to Wisconsin Rapids.

The process has been slowed down and that is being viewed as a positive.

That is what the community asked for to

be

able to give more feedback.

Is there any

a meeting public hearing time set yet or is that still in the works?

No, we like I said we're gonna put out a press release hopefully by the end of this week just to get people a little bit more information as to

how we got to this point and try to separate us from this data company as much as possible.

So they understand that this is not us working with them and cahoots to create something.

In the end, it's we just want to make sure that everybody understands like I hope everybody knows that I'm here.

I'm listening like we slowed it down.

We don't really have any more information to give them besides kind of updates because this has always been in the company's hands in terms of how fast they want to move it.

Because the

city doesn't own that site anymore.

We don't own that.

That's all private entity to private entity.

I was surprised when people were saying, some people will tell me outright, no, you absolutely, we have the power to tell companies who can and can't do business in our community and what we want and all that stuff.

And I guess that's new to me.

It wasn't how I grew up.

It wasn't how I saw the world.

It wasn't, it's just not, and that's probably a big part of what makes us, you know, kind of diverse at this time as a country, maybe as a world in terms of some people grow up being taught one way and some people grow up being taught another way.

And my way was always, you know, like, I don't even necessarily know what the differences are, but my take on it is,

was always that government was supposed to make an even playing field, keep the rules to the best of our ability because the problem is everybody thinks we're all corrupt, right?

But I'm just a guy just like everybody else that has a family in town that works for a living.

You know, you pay your bills, you do everything according to the rules, ran for office to understand better how government worked inside so that I could better, you know, relay that not only to my own mind, but to everybody else if at all possible.

But then I learned this and I am learning fast, like how fast things can go kind of, I keep saying sideways in terms of like, no matter how much you are there and communicating, your phone is wide open, like come and give me a call anytime.

Emails are really hard because you'd be typing all day long.

So we try to answer them to the best of our ability and then say, give me a call.

We can talk more about this.

I think communication has always been important.

It's always been my platform.

I know Joe from WRCM works really hard at communicating, get information out there.

But again, things don't always go according to that.

But the process is there.

This company, separate from us, is working on their stuff now.

They see this as bigger than what it was before.

Keep in mind a year and a half ago when this company called...

DPO came along and they just sent out a press release on their own that said 200 million dollar investment coming to Wisconsin Rapids Everybody was so elated about that like we didn't and we had nothing to do with it So I had to run and figure out who they were and what was going on and they ended up working as private entity to private entity with you know with In with Quebco in the community to have five acres of land with five megawatts of power But they never signed a contract and then a year later.

They couldn't get any leasers to lease

the space if they built it so they didn't build the project.

And you

were again notified by

press release.

Yeah, and the press release says, nope, no longer coming.

So in the end, in my mind, I'm thinking.

Well, the community seems to be on board because everybody was really excited about it.

And, you know, hey, good job, Matt.

And I'm like, I didn't really have much to do with that on either side of it.

So again, people have to start understanding that business is separate from government.

And we're not filling our pockets full of money just because we're trying to let somebody in to do business here.

That's just not the way the system is designed.

And I don't want it to be that way.

I don't think anybody should want it to be that way.

And it's not that way.

But what local government can do is put some guidelines on what businesses are allowed.

to do,

you

know, fence heights, grass height.

There are

some ordinances that you

can

put in place to maybe not kind of guide what businesses are allowed to do and not do within the community.

Yeah, we went, we actually, in a short amount of time, when we realized that there was...

things were happening that you know were possibilities the council kind of got you know like said hey we should come together and talk about data centers and so they did and in a short amount of time we talked through all the different options and what could be done do we do we run the risk of being sued and saying you're not allowed in our community because that's not really a good

I don't know.

For me, again, it's not really a good way of doing business in a community is to say, we're not letting you in here.

We're not letting this industry in our community.

But you can take that risk or you can take the risk to say there's different ways you can do district overlay maps and you can do this, different things.

Or you could just do nothing, which is what it was.

So we basically they were private to private.

They didn't need any permission.

It was going into an industrial zone area.

They didn't need any permission.

So the simple fact that we even had a planning commission or a public hearing to do something like this is because they had to come and ask for a conditional use permit.

And that's what started this whole thing.

And that only happened because the council voted within a month earlier to put that in place so that we have some control measures from there.

I learned a lot from some of the people that came in town.

I didn't love the fact, I'm just saying.

I didn't love the fact that they didn't really come to this city and say, hey, we heard their throes talk about a data center.

What's going on?

So we could kind of share, well, we got this site over here.

That's part of a mill site.

And this is what's going on with the electricity and the water and the wastewater, how things would be handled if we're to get an industrial customer like this.

It was none of that.

It was just strictly, we hate data centers.

They're going to destroy your community.

They're going to, your river's going to dry up and all this fear mongering again, in my opinion.

Not all of it.

You know, some of it was

saying these are some protection options you

have for the people that said these are the protections and so we were able to take that into consideration.

So we are fighting hard for a community benefits agreement, which is one of the things I took away from not going to remember a name from the farmers.

Yeah,

and again, I appreciate everybody's willingness to come out and speak their peace again.

It would be nice if it wasn't us against them like in that sense.

because we are still the community.

Like we're elected by the community and it's fine if you don't like us doing the way we're doing our job by all means elect somebody else that's fine but in the meantime we have a job to do and again we're doing a good job doing that job so we are fighting for a community benefits agreement and putting that in place if

they come right now.

Everything's up in the air.

You know, so we're just kind of waiting to see how what this company does and where they want to go from here because they know it's not going to be as easy as maybe they thought it would be at one time.

This is not the first database company to come.

It's probably one of 15 that have been through the area and there's other ones that are looking and there's other

uh, manufacturing companies that are looking and they're, we're always trying to, um, promote that site and market that site all around the world to get somebody to come here.

My fear at this point in time is, are we going to have the same battles every time, every time there's manufacturing and which is okay too.

If that's how we want to conduct the business in the community, it's just going to be really hard to say we're open for business, but not really.

We're not really open for business.

Well, not for you guys and not for you guys, but for everybody else, we are like.

it does get a little bit confusing like what job are you electing us to do and if you don't want us to participate in economic development then that's a conversation to be had too because you figure that out and you know you adjust your government accordingly so.

Well and you say there's another press release coming from the city that will have as much information as your

you have at this time and then just more community conversations.

People can reach out to you.

Like you said by phone is a good way to get in touch with you.

715-315-2925 is my city cell.

Always open to conversations are the best way to kind of get to know each other and trust each other more than social media.

A lot of times you can just say things without any repercussions.

Well, let's move on to another topic here in our last few minutes.

Alexander Field was recently awarded a $2.7 million grant for modernization and upgrades at the field there.

I

bet everybody's excited about this.

Yeah, I think that was long.

I've been on there two and a half years, but it's been going on for longer than that.

But we've worked hard putting the right people together in the committees and getting enough grant proposals out there.

And where we go from here, I think we'd like to do a little bit.

you know, more if we can than just the 2.7 because that's a good start.

But to facelift what's there may not really be the best foot forward in terms of what we could do if we were able to fundraise some more money to really make that, you know, this is really our best foot forward for people.

And, you know, people have different emotions about people coming from around the world to go play golf at San Valley, but at the same time they're coming and they have enough money to come here and do that.

Bringing in tourist dollars.

So if we put our best foot forward, maybe there's some investment.

opportunities.

Again, we're all humans.

I know it seems to be a bit of a battle between people who have a lot of money and people who are still struggling to make ends meet, which is the majority of us up in Wisconsin Rapids.

We're working every day to make sure we can pay the bills and feed our families.

So I get that.

But at the same time, it's a reality.

So we're going to invest that money in the airport and make it nice and use it ourselves.

And I encourage everybody to go and spend time there and you can get your deal with the EAA over there.

can get your license, you know, for not a ton of money.

I mean, if you can budget for it, I think it's a great experience or your kids can go up and fly and learn how to do that.

So there's so many good things that are happening at that airport.

And this is just one way of saying we appreciate all your efforts, and we're going to make it even better.

And another upcoming community celebration is the 4th of July Rapids Riverside Freedom Fest coming up on July 4th.

That's a Saturday, if I'm not mistaken.

And so that'll be a celebration where everybody can get together.

You can have some of these conversations, celebrate together, enjoy the beautiful community that we have.

And are you still looking for...

volunteers for anything with that?

Yeah, everybody's doing their part.

Again, a lot of great people in the county, the city, the school system, Rapids Friends of Music, Eric over at the PAC is helping us, you know, with...

getting the sound systems set up so that we can all enjoy the music and the national anthem.

There's still a slight possibility or, you know, that there's going to be a flyover at that time.

Again, I think what they say is we don't know for sure if it'll happen or not.

So you just kind of got to be aware when it does come.

But how great that would be.

250 year anniversary of the country.

I mean, that's pretty amazing in and of itself.

Great country, great people.

I think we've accomplished a lot in 250 years.

Looking forward to the next 250.

Are you

getting a lot of submissions for the 250 acts of kindness in the city?

We're getting some.

We appreciate everybody's willingness to participate, but at the same time, just doing acts of kindness.

You don't even have to call in and tell us about it.

If you're doing great things, keep it up.

Thank you for that.

Like the better we can treat each other, the better community it's going to be.

It's just awesome.

So yeah, and we've did some good fundraising because the fireworks just cost more and more, plus the other events that are going on.

So we're close to our goal.

be able to reach that and so we can do everything that we're hoping to do.

Yeah, be down there.

We're gonna have a dunk tank I heard and I'm pretty sure the mayor is gonna be in it so if you're really mad at me you can come down and dunk me or we can have a conversation about what's going on.

I appreciate everybody in the community and what they're doing.

everybody's passion and thoughts and intellect that goes into this.

I appreciate everything that they're doing for this.

And the

more we can keep these conversations civil and constructive, the better they are.

Agreed.

Well,

I really appreciate you taking the time today, Matt.

Thank you for having this conversation with Wisconsin Rappers Mayor Matt Zachar.

I'm Melissa K. Again, thank you, Matt.

Thanks, Melissa.

Appreciate

it.

And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective 1320 AM, 97.5 FM WFHR.