St. Clair County residents got a second public workshop on data centers’ health risks Oct. 12

PORT HURON, Mich. — St. Clair County residents who want a say on data centers before one lands next door got a second chance on Monday, Oct. 12, when the county’s Advisory Board of Health held another public workshop on the health and environmental questions the projects raise.

The session was set for 6 to 8 p.m. in the County Commissioners Meeting Room on the second floor of the St. Clair County Administration Building, 200 Grand River Ave., the Port Huron Times Herald reported. Overflow seating was planned in the Donald Dodge Auditorium on the first floor.

It came as several townships in the county were considering putting data center development on hold, according to WGRT. The station said industrial hygienist Kristen Meghan Kelly was scheduled to walk through the possible health and environmental effects, and anyone who wanted to speak would get three minutes during public comment.

The first workshop, held Sept. 15, was built around five concerns, according to the county’s announcement as reported by the St. Clair Area View: noise, water use and the effect on nearby wells, exhaust from on-site backup generators, the reliability of the electric grid and emergency planning for hazardous materials.

The advisory board counsels the county health department and the Board of Commissioners. The county has said the workshops are meant solely to educate residents and local leaders about the public health questions data centers raise.

The county planned to stream the meeting on its SCCountyIT YouTube channel. Ahead of the September session, the county also invited written comments by email to healthdept@stclaircounty.org or by mail to the health department at 220 Fort St., Port Huron, and said those comments become part of the public record.

Updated Oct. 13, 2026: This story was written before Monday’s workshop, and its event language has been changed to the past tense. In the county’s video of the session, health department medical director Dr. Remington Nevin said he does not expect the county to write its own health rules for data centers for now, leaving the decisions with the townships and cities that control zoning, and said the Advisory Board of Health will discuss next steps at its 9 a.m. Oct. 21 meeting. Our follow-up, “St. Clair County’s health doctor leaves data center rules to townships for now,” has the full account. The headline was changed to the past tense.

Sources:
St. Clair County, “October 12, 2026 St Clair County Advisory Board of Health Workshop” (video, SCCountyIT YouTube channel), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgixjJOCeLY
WGRT, “Health Board Hosts Data Center Workshop,” Oct. 7, 2026, https://wgrt.com/health-board-hosts-data-center-workshop/
Port Huron Times Herald, “St. Clair County to host public workshop on data centers,” Oct. 5, 2026, https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/local/2026/10/05/st-clair-county-michigan-to-host-public-workshop-on-data-centers/92057743007/
St. Clair Area View, “Board of Health to host public workshop on data center development Sept. 15,” Sept. 11, 2026, https://stclairareaview.com/articles/news/board-of-health-to-host-public-workshop-on-data-center-development-sept-15/
Photo: Carl Lender, “Datacenter Server Racks (22370909788),” Nov. 4, 2015, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), cropped and color-corrected, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Datacenter_Server_Racks_(22370909788).jpg

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