Bessemer’s data center non-disclosure agreement raises ‘deeply concerning’ public records questions

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – After nearly a year of asking the city of Bessemer for copies of a non-disclosure agreement linked to the controversial Project Marvel data center, threats of a lawsuit prompted city officials to comply with Alabama law and release the agreement to Alabama Rivers Alliance and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The text of the non-disclosure agreement improperly shields Project Marvel from scrutiny by keeping the public in the dark about important information including potential water usage or other environmental impacts, the identity of the developer, or the status of the project. Other details include:

Only three Bessemer employees, including Mayor Kenneth Gulley, signed the NDA the city provided. Yet the entire city is expected to follow the terms of the agreement.

• The NDA runs for two years, meaning any communications about Project Marvel from February 2025 through 2027 could be shielded from the public.
• The NDA requires the city to destroy information considered “confidential” by developers, including any notes city officials made about the project.

“It is absurd that three city officials – two of whom are not elected by the people of Bessemer – can sign a document that makes an entire city government more accountable to out-of-state developers than their own constituents,” said Charles Miller, policy director for Alabama Rivers Alliance. “In Alabama, our elected officials should work for us, not Silicon Valley AI companies and their associates.”

Only after the conservation groups threatened to take the city of Bessemer to court for violating the state’s open records act did the city produce the Project Marvel non-disclosure agreement.

“Alabama law is clear: citizens have access to public records. It’s deeply concerning when it takes legal threats for a government to comply with basic transparency laws,” said Ryan Anderson, a staff attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Alabama office. “What’s worse is the city frustrated an open records act request for a document that’s very purpose is to shield information from the public about a highly controversial data center.”

While businesses have an interest in protecting proprietary or trade secret information that could give competitors an advantage, the Bessemer non-disclosure agreement appears to go far beyond that kind of information. The broad terms of this agreement do more to shield Project Marvel’s developers from public scrutiny than to protect sensitive economic development or trade secret information.

Project Marvel is a hyperscale data center that will be one of the largest data centers in the world, including 18 buildings larger than an average Walmart Supercenter. The project will have major environmental impacts including using an estimated 1,200 megawatts of power, millions to possibly tens of millions of gallons of water a day, as well as air and noise pollution. Project construction could impact the newly discovered Birmingham darter thatlives downstream from the property. Despite widespread public opposition, the Bessemer City Council twice voted to rezone a total of 1,600 acres of forested land to accommodate the project.