KQED79%
‘They’ve Been Very Quiet’: Pittsburg Residents Seek Answers as Data Center Sets Up Shop in City 27%
By Samantha Kennedy45%
8/2/2026, 3:29:08 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Confirmation Bias, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 13.2% saturation with 112 hits. Analysis detected 1,141 faulty-reasoning hits from 848 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.8% and a BS Rank of 27% (22,609 of 30,584 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 73.90% of the article peer group.
Pittsburg residents opposed to a planned data center at the site of a former golf course plan to rally at a meeting on Monday where they hope to discuss possible regulations with city leaders.
Although city council members voted to approve construction of the data center in 2024, pushback has grown in recent months among residents citing concerns over environmental impacts and a perceived lack of transparency from officials.
Amhari Perkins has lived in Pittsburg all her life and started a petition opposing the project in June after learning it would be built near her daughter’s school, other schools and residential areas.
“I remember having nights where it was kind of hard sleeping, just thinking about it and questioning, ‘Who else knows about this?’”
Perkins said.
Several people show up to a community visibility event to protest data centers in Pittsburg.
Residents protest the AVAIO data center in the city of Pittsburg.
After that petition garnered thousands of signatures in weeks, she formed the Stop Pittsburg Data Center coalition, which helped push people to voice their concerns at recent city council meetings.
The pushback has prompted council members to host a discussion Monday dedicated to the topic of data center policy and the project that has galvanized the community.
Phase 1 of the project by AVAIO Digital, which includes the data center, is approved and requires additional permits, according to City Manager Darin Gale.
The data center is expected to be operational by next year.
But developers of the Pittsburg Technology Park project are planning two other phases that include the construction of employment spaces.
Residents say they’re worried about the development’s water and energy use, greenhouse gas pollution and noise.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the city over similar concerns, saying that Pittsburg lacked a plan to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, water use and harm to wildlife.
The two settled.
The data center is required to use 100% renewable energy and recycled water for cooling under the agreement reached in late 2025.
City officials have also said the final project would use one-fourth of the water that the former golf course used.
Pauline Johnson, also with the Stop Pittsburg Data Center coalition, said that the group isn’t entirely against A.I. and data centers.
For her, she thinks that there needs to be a safer relationship with A.I. developments.
“A lot of these projects do encroach upon communities that have limited resources,” Johnson said.
“Versus like Walnut Creek or Danville, those kind of high-income areas.”
Transparency is another concern.
Perkins and other residents say they weren’t properly informed of the project when it was under consideration for years and that the name itself — the Pittsburg Technology Park — is misleading.
“The response that we’ve received from the city and the City Council, they’ve been very quiet,” Perkins said.
“It’s very scary for a lot of us.”
Despite voting unanimously to approve the data center two years ago, no city council members have publicly voiced their stance on the project since public backlash intensified.
Council member Juan Antonio Banales said in a 2025 statement that the AVAIO project would be part of the city’s push for economic development by adding more jobs to the area.
After a meeting in June, Perkins did recall a conversation with council member Jelani Killings where Killings suggested that Pittsburg was “different” than Oakley and Brentwood because it oversees the city-owned Pittsburg Power Company.
The power company will provide electricity to the data center, and not the company that powers local homes, PG&E.
Killings did not respond to a request for comment over the weekend.
Killings and Banales sit on an ad-hoc subcommittee that focuses on data centers and hydrogen, but the committee is advisory only and not subject to state transparency laws so meetings are not public.
The city counters that all legally required public notice requirements were met and “went beyond the minimum noticing the law requires,” according to the project’s webpage.
Gale said at a recent meeting that the name is now being referred to as the AVAIO Data Center Project in an effort to be more transparent with the community.
Other East Contra Costa cities have already taken steps to ban the facilities in their communities.
Oakley implemented a temporary ban on data centers in April, making it the first city in the Bay Area to implement a ban of any type.
Oakley and Brentwood are both exploring possible permanent prohibitions.
Both of those instances came after public backlash to data centers spurred an elected leader to call for the consideration of a ban, something that hasn’t happened in Pittsburg.
Instead, the city hosted a virtual forum last week and scheduled Monday’s meeting dubbed as a “data center policy discussion, Avaio project & direction to staff.”
AVAIO did not respond to requests for comment, but has said the location chosen in Pittsburg would help meet the increasing need for data centers in the industry that can’t completely be met in Silicon Valley.
Speakers
6speakers41%attributed speech499writer words
Selected voice
78%flagged-word coverageAmhari Perkins
147 attributed words42% of attributed speech72% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.