Overview: A proposed data center consuming enormous amounts of electricity became a defining issue in Bessemer’s elections. Residents demanded transparency, and their votes helped usher in new leadership determined to scrutinize the controversial development.
Bessemer’s first female mayor takes office promising transparency on a controversial $14.5 billion development.
For the past 16 years, Kenneth Gulley has been the mayor of Bessemer, Alabama. Gulley had his eye on winning a fifth term, but he was beaten handily in a runoff election last month by a former City Council member.
A proposed $14.5 billion data center raised alarms over energy consumption, pollution and environmental damage in Bessemer, Alabama. Voters responded by electing a new mayor who promises to revisit the project’s contracts. Credit: Getty Images
Now, Louise Alexander is officially the city’s first female mayor, having been sworn in Oct. 5. She won the office, in part, because of her far more measured approach to Project Marvel, the controversial, $14.5 billion data center development planned for just outside of the majority-Black city.
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Gulley not only backed the project but also signed a non-disclosure agreement with the developers — a move that left Bessemer residents almost entirely in the dark about a vast industrial project with a massive environmental footprint.
“There was no transparency with this particular site — the data center,” Alexander, who also formerly served in the Alabama House of Representatives, told the local ABC television affiliate. The lack of transparency, she said, gave her real momentum against Gulley, and she promised that, if elected, she would shine a light on city contracts with the data centers.
In my first five days in office, we are going to revisit the contracts on the data center.MAYOR-ELECT Louise Alexander, BESSEMER, ALABAMA
In addition to electing a new mayor, residents elected three new councilors to Bessemer’s seven-member City Council. All three had voted earlier this year to rezone the 1,600-acre parcel of land where the data center is set to be built. The rezoning from agricultural to light industrial helped Project Marvel clear a major procedural hurdle.
The project, and the secrecy surrounding it, rankled Bessemer residents, who have vocally opposed Project Marvel based on what little they know. The data center, comparable in size to 17 Walmart Supercenters, would consume 90 times more electricity than the entire city of about 25,000.
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