TRENTON, Ohio — Signs calling for voters to approve Issue 17, a data center ban in Trenton, were scattered across the parking lot of Edgewood Middle School Thursday as Amazon Web Services representatives welcomed people inside for an open house.
The auditorium was lined with Amazon displays all about data centers, and the plan for an 18-building, 600-acre data center proposal along Wayne Madison Road just outside of Trenton featured prominently around the room.
AWS Economic Development Manager John Werkman said the company had flown experts in from all over the country to talk with people living in this region, hear their concerns, and provide education where necessary.
"We were able to build data centers for a long time without anybody kind of knowing or saying anything about it, right? We're in a different paradigm now. We understand that. Our company's leadership understands that, which is why we're changing," Werkman said.
WATCH: We ask Amazon reps your questions at data center open house
Werkman acknowledged the effort to ban data centers in Trenton and, when we asked what he thought of the animosity people feel, told us part of their mission was to show how their projects are different than developments from other tech companies.
"I attribute that to a lot of fear and a lot of misunderstanding," he said.
Amy Hubert walked into the auditorium wearing a bright white shirt with "ISSUE 17 VOTE YES" emblazoned across the front.
Knowing she was advocating for a data center ban, we asked why she came to the open house.
"I came to hear what AWS had to say," Hubert said.
She told us she is a hard no on data centers over concerns about power consumption, land use, water use, potential contamination, and more. She said, for example, if someone could prove to her that water use was lower than she expected, it would go a long way to swaying her opinion.
So, we talked to AWS Director of Power and Water Brandon Oyer.
"We're only using water for about 3% of the year in this area," he said. "97% of the year, we're only going to use air. We'll take giant fans and we'll blow them across the servers to cool the servers," he said.
Like many in the crowd, Hubert wasn't quick to take Oyer's answer at face value.
"Ohio has bipolar weather, so 80s are nothing in November, even. There's going to be days that it's extremely hot, especially during summer months. So, 3%? I find that hard to believe," she said.
Oyer referenced a Northern Indiana data center using water 2% to 3% of the year in a sustainability article from Amazon in June 2026. Hubert told us she would be checking meteorological data to see if the comparisons are appropriate.
Werkman said the data center open house was part of an increased transparency push at Amazon, including turning away from making government officials they work with in the early stages of data center projects sign non-disclosure agreements.
"We really are trying to be more transparent about what we're doing and at the same time allowing the folks that we work with locally to actually talk about what we're talking about," he said.
Voters will go to the polls to either pass or reject the data center ban on Nov. 3.
