HOWELL, MI — Impassioned residents packed Howell High School’s auditorium Thursday, Nov. 20 to urge local officials to reject a controversial proposal for a $1 billion hyperscale data center to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The data center project — reportedly backed by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta — is seeking to rezone more than 1,000 acres of mostly agricultural land in Howell Township to research and technology uses, on the condition that the land be used only for the data center.

The Howell Township Board of Trustees did not vote on whether to rezone the land at the meeting. That could come on Dec. 8.

But the board did vote to put a “moratorium” in place to pause for six months any consideration or approval of data centers. It will give them time to inve

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