Modesto Residents Fight Secret Data Center Talks on Old FMC Chemical Site

A wave of opposition is building in Modesto over the possibility that a
Kansas City-based developer could bring a massive data center to a
45-acre stretch of land along Highway 99 that once housed an FMC
chemical plant. Residents packed into public discourse this month,
worried about electricity rates, water use, and environmental fallout
from a project that has not even been formally proposed yet. 

Elizabeth Miranda-Morales, a Modesto resident, said she does not want
her children to grow up in an area affected by a data center, according
to KCRA. Fellow resident Kayla Delgadillo told the station she does not
want a data center in Modesto and believes many of her neighbors feel
the same way, adding that the projects do not seem sustainable to her.
The target of that anxiety is a 45-acre industrial property at 1200
Graphics Drive, a site formerly occupied by an FMC chemical plant until
1984 and located just south of the Modesto Irrigation District’s
Woodland Power Station, according to the Central Valley Journalism
Collaborative. 

A Developer’s Quiet Paper Trail
NorthPoint Development has not filed a formal data center application
with the city, but the station’s report notes the company has kept a
foothold on the Graphics Drive parcel for more than a year. In May 2025,
the Modesto Planning Commission unanimously approved Resolution No.
2025-20, granting NorthPoint a two-year extension, through June 7, 2027,
to file a final parcel map merging properties at that address, per city
records reviewed by the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. That
extension preserved tentative parcel-map rights but did not grant any
land-use approval for a data center, the collaborative’s reporting
notes. 

District 3 Modesto City Council Member Chris Ricci said he was
approached by NorthPoint about data centers, and he has gone public with
concerns about the company’s electrical usage, its effects on residents’
rates, its environmental impacts, and its water use, per the same KCRA
account. The City of Modesto has confirmed that no formal applications
for data centers have been submitted, and the city said it has received
inquiries from companies about building a data center within city
limits. 

Why City Hall Says the Odds Are Long
Data centers are not permitted under Modesto’s current municipal code,
the city has confirmed. Ricci said that makes data centers coming to
Modesto highly unlikely under existing rules, though he stopped short of
calling it impossible, telling KCRA it is not 100% off the table.
Changing the municipal code would require multiple steps, including
approval from the City Council, and Ricci said he believes trying to
rewrite the code for data centers would be a poor decision; he added he
does not intend to meet about the issue. 

An official city statement issued in August, after Ricci revealed the
developer lobbying, laid out the same regulatory hurdles in more detail.
Any future project would require a code amendment, full environmental
review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and approvals
from both the Planning Commission and City Council, according to The
Modesto Bee. Public response to the prospect has been very negative, the
station’s report notes, and residents and officials alike have raised
concerns about the environmental and sustainability impacts of a project
that does not yet formally exist. 

Power, Water, and a Chemical Legacy Underfoot
Part of the anxiety traces to what a facility like this would actually
draw from the grid. Modesto’s electricity comes from the Modesto
Irrigation District, and industry experts note that a mid-sized data
center pulling 30 to 50 megawatts consumes as much power as a major
commercial airport or a large university campus, per the Central Valley
Journalism Collaborative. MID serves roughly 131,000 retail customers
across Stanislaus County, according to a Stanislaus LAFCO report,
meaning a single large tenant could reshape the utility’s load in ways
that ripple through everyone else’s bill. 

State lawmakers have already moved to head off that scenario. California
enacted Senate Bill 57, the Ratepayer and Technological Innovation
Protection Act, in October 2025, authorizing state regulators to examine
whether heavy AI data center energy demand shifts infrastructure costs
onto residential ratepayers, according to the American Bar Association.
The law requires the California Public Utilities Commission to deliver a
formal report to the Legislature by January 1, 2027. In April 2026, the
CPUC opened a statewide rulemaking to revise electric rate structures
aimed specifically at large data center loads, implementing
cost-allocation directives under SB 57 so that tech companies cover
their own grid buildout rather than passing the bill to ordinary
customers. 

Water is the other flashpoint. A May 2026 study from Santa Clara
University and the Next10 think tank found that California has no
unified, mandatory water reporting system for data centers, even as AI
facilities increasingly move into water-stressed Central Valley farm
country, according to CalMatters. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a 2025
water disclosure bill, prompting renewed legislative efforts this year,
the outlet reports. Layered on top of that is the Graphics Drive site’s
groundwater contamination from the former FMC plant, including arsenic,
corrosive acids, and inorganic salts, according to the California
Environmental Protection Agency. 

A Regional Pattern Takes Shape
Modesto is not the only Stanislaus County community wrestling with
tech-driven land conversion. Five miles north, in Riverbank, the city
secured a 40-year lease with the U.S. Army in March 2026 to convert the
172-acre former Riverbank Army Ammunition Plant, inactive for ammunition
manufacturing since 2010, into a commercial and light-industrial tech
complex, according to the office of Rep. Tom McClintock. Riverbank
resident Bonnie Arbuckle told KCRA that residents there cannot support
data centers, and she has opposed one being built in her area. 

Farther south, the pattern has already hardened into policy. Spurred by
community resistance over energy, water, and noise, the Southern
California city of Monterey Park enacted a citywide ban on data center
developments through a municipal ordinance and a 2026 ballot measure
after developers abandoned a 250,000-square-foot proposal there,
according to CoStar News. Whether Modesto follows a similar path, or
whether NorthPoint ultimately files a formal application despite the
code barriers and Ricci’s public opposition, remains an open question. 

https://hoodline.com/2026/08/modesto-residents-fight-secret-data-center-t
alks-on-old-fmc-chemical-site/