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St. Louis economic development panel takes aim at data center critics, calls many concerns ‘myths’ 45%
By Kavahn Mansouri59%
5/27/2026, 11:57:34 AM
Topics: Economy And Business
BS Summary: This article contains 35 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Framing Effect, with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 19.7% saturation with 146 hits. Analysis detected 2,160 faulty-reasoning hits from 741 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 47.7% and a BS Rank of 45% (12,075 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.20% of the article peer group.
A panel hosted by a St.
Louis regional economic development group took aim at critics of data centers on Wednesday, calling many of their concerns about the developments “myths” and lauding the economic benefits of the projects.
Greater St.
Louis hosted the panel at its offices downtown in an effort to highlight possible benefits of data centers, which are popping up at an exponential rate throughout the country.
The developments have created a national stir, sparking pushback in places where they are being proposed and built — including in the St.
Louis region, where data centers are slated for Midtown St.
Louis and Festus, among other places.
Greater St.
Louis has weighed in on a number of those projects, often speaking during public comment at hearings in favor of data center developments as one of the region's and state’s largest economic opportunities in decades.
In his opening remarks, Greater St.
Louis Managing Partner Ron Kitchens said the region is in a “war” for jobs created by data centers.
“This is about more and better jobs for the people that call St.
Louis home,” Kitchens said.
“This is about whether our children have a choice or not to live here and build their lives here.”
He argued that online opposition to the developments is driven by fake posters.
“When we talk about data centers, it's easy to get lost in big buildings,” Kitchens said.
“It gets easy to get lost in [the] fact and fiction of water usage issues and [the] boogeyman of electricity rates.
It's easy to get lost in all the rhetoric, much of which is coming from bots online driven by other nations that don't want us to succeed.”
When asked for evidence to back Kitchens' claims, a Greater St.
Louis spokesperson shared an article from the conservative Washington Free Beacon and one from Fox News that cited a report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
Greater St.
Louis has been advocating for data centers in the region and has taken public officials and Ameren employees on multiple visits to hyperscale data center facilities, including a trip to a Google data center in Nebraska last December.
In a statement after the panel, Kitchens called the debate around data centers important, but said misinformation is muddying the waters around the developments.
“Communities are debating whether data centers are worth pursuing, with concerns about electricity demand, water usage, and land use dominating the headlines,” Kitchens said.
“These conversations are fair and important.
But in too many instances, myth and misinformation are distracting from facts and common sense.”
For the past year, data center developments have drawn the ire of local groups and residents in the places they are being built.
Festus residents voted out half of their city council and recently mounted a recall campaign against Mayor Sam Richards after the council approved a hyperscale data center in the area despite their concerns.
And in St.
Louis, hearings on a data center in Midtown on the site of the old Goodwill building, and on zoning rules for the developments, have drawn hundreds of public commenters and hours of debate.
Concerns include how data centers, which consume large amounts of energy, will impact energy costs, water usage, environmental impact, privacy and transparency.
NPR’s Planet Money recently found that in many parts of the country where data centers have been built, power bills have greatly increased for residential customers.
Planet Money also found that energy bills have gone down in some places, like California, but it depends on the rules in place.
The panel’s conversation mostly swirled around those concerns, and a portion of the panel was spent “mythbusting” criticisms of data centers.
Panelists included Data Center Coalition senior manager of state policy Heather Coil, Missouri AFL-CIO President Jacob Hummel, St.
Louis City Branch of the NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt, former Missouri Public Service Commission member Scott Rupp, Port KC President and CEO Jon Stephens and St.
Louis Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer John Stiffler.
Greater St.
Louis business growth partner Maggie Kost moderated the event.
The group also highlighted possible economic growth and investment that data centers could bring to communities where they are developed, the possibility of new jobs created by the centers, tax revenue from the developments that sometimes goes toward schools and other municipal services and a possible “strengthening” of the power grid.
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