When a data center company wants your land, your water, and your power… Darden Copeland is who they call.
What are the dark intentions behind Darden Copeland's run for Congress?
Middle Tennessee is the target and his firm already built the playbook.
The next wave of megasites is hunting for exactly what District 7 has: farm land, TVA power, and river water. Darden's firm highlights "Data Centers" as a practice area on its website. Calvert Street has this service on the shelf, waiting for a client to set their sights on Nashville and the surrounding counties.
Here's what impact Darden's business would have on YOUR community:
YOUR WATER
Large data centers can draw millions of gallons a day for cooling. In Cheatham, Dickson, Robertson, and Macon counties, families are on wells and small rural utilities. Communities across the state have reported impacts to water quality and availability from the data centers Darden Copeland is being paid to build.
YOUR POWER BILL
Hyperscale facilities are among the biggest new loads on the grid. The tech companies negotiate their discounts up front. The grid upgrades get paid for by everyone else.
YOUR LAND
Once a megasite is graded and poured, that ground never grows anything again. There is no "former" data center farm.
When a landfill needed to grow, Darden had his employees pretend to be neighbors.
Darden Copeland's client, Middle Point Landfill, is known as "Mt. Trashmore" to local residents. The City of Murfreesboro is suing its operators in federal court under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, citing discharges of landfill leachate toward the East Fork Stones River — the source of drinking water for Rutherford County families. The city has logged over 4,000 odor complaints, some from residents five to seven miles away. State regulators issued seven violations in ten months. Murfreesboro's mayor calls it one of the worst-run landfills in the country.
Residents file class action lawsuit against Middle Point Landfill
Neighbors say odor and runoff from the Rutherford County landfill have made their homes unlivable and their water unsafe.
Murfreesboro mayor accuses Nashville PR firm of deception
Mayor Shane McFarland says Calvert Street Group staff posed as local residents to manufacture support for the landfill's expansion.
While that city fought to protect its drinking water, the landfill's operator hired Calvert Street to help push an expansion.
Then Mayor Shane McFarland went public: he accused Calvert Street employees of impersonating local residents at a town hall to build fake support. Video of the meeting appears to show two of the firm's employees doing exactly that.
"…two Calvert Street Group employees impersonated Rutherford County residents."
Video from the town hall appears to show both of them speaking in favor of the expansion — without disclosing who was paying them.
"We don't believe in paying people from outside our community to deceive our residents."
— Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland
When the Nashville Scene asked Copeland and his firm to respond, they didn't.
SOURCES: Nashville Scene · City of Murfreesboro litigation page · WSMV · WGNS
Don't take our word for it. Take his.
"…Copeland has helped site and permit new landfills, mining operations… casinos, and other controversial developments."
Controversial is his word, not ours. And the controversy is always the same thing: your water, your roads, your bills, your backyard.
"We help our clients control the message."
That's the product. Ask yourself who the message gets controlled for and who it gets used on.
The firm bragged about chartering a bus tour for data center skeptics — bringing wary neighbors to a facility to turn them into supporters.
That's not community outreach. That's a paid campaign, aimed at the people who live closest to the fence line.
The evidence points to dark intentions behind Darden's run for Congress.
Maybe a man whose firm gets paid to win approvals for data centers, landfills, and casinos would go to Congress and vote against the very industries that made him rich. It's possible.
Whose side is Data Center Darden on?