Thursday is here, let's get to it.

🌧️ Today's weather: Steamy and rainy, with a high approaching 90.

🎂 Happy birthday to our member Cindy Sergent!

🤝 Situational awareness: South Korean company SK Hynix is reportedly in talks with Intel about leasing part of the Ohio One semiconductor plant, per Reuters.

Today's newsletter is 909 words — a 3.5-minute read.

Columbus leaders are proposing a set of new guardrails on future data center projects.

Why it matters: Data centers are critical to AI infrastructure — they're also facing major public backlash locally, statewide and nationally.

The latest: At a news conference yesterday, Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin and Councilmember Christopher Wyche spoke in support of new legislation that Hardin hopes "can allow us to avoid higher rates on other residents and ratepayers."

State of play: They introduced an ordinance this week to require Columbus Water & Power to develop a new set of rates and charges for "large load/high-volume industrial and manufacturing users," including data centers.

• They say the change would ensure "high water users" pay their "fair share of infrastructure investment."
• Council is expected to vote on that ordinance Sept. 28.

In addition, the pair announced a three-part package of proposals at yesterday's hearing of the Public Utilities & Sustainability Committee, which Wyche chairs.

The package includes:

• A new ordinance aiming to mitigate environmental impacts of on-site energy generation — increasingly known as behind-the-meter or bring-your-own-energy policies — and require 30% come from renewable sources.
• Water conservation requirements designed to promote efficiency by adding public disclosures about water usage and encouraging the use of reclaimed water.
• Requiring data centers to have a "decommissioning plan" that ensures a site is "reusable" and lays out electronics disposal.

What they're saying: "The economic benefits of growth matter, but so do the costs and who bears them," Hardin says.

• "My focus is making sure we understand what those costs mean for the city budget and for the people who open their water bills every month."

The big picture: Increasingly unpopular data center projects are seeing major backlash across the country.

• Communities are pushing back on developments that support similarly controversial AI companies and use massive amounts of energy.

Yes, but: Project construction is boosting job growth (especially in Central Ohio) and bringing tech giants to town, giving leaders an incentive to forge compromises rather than enact full bans.

A Licking County judge announced a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity in the trial of Bruce Foster III, who shot and killed two people at a New Albany warehouse last year. (WCMH-TV)

📸 Ohio attorney general candidates of both parties have proposals to legislate Flock usage. (Ohio Capital Journal)

💰 Nearly $300 million has been spent on the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Jon Husted and Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown. (Dispatch)

🏞️ Hilliard will give 333 acres of land to Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks to massively expand Homestead Metro Park and preserve the Big Darby Watershed. (Columbus Underground)

🍻 The Ohio Craft Brewers Association wants the state to overhaul laws it says are resulting in brewers getting stuck in franchise agreements. (Statehouse News Bureau)

👩‍🍳 Central Ohio chef Mya Gonsalves is competing on "Hell's Kitchen," celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's cooking competition show. (614 Magazine)

Every door opened in Barbara Fant's life came "because I was a poet," the new Thurber House executive director tells Matter News.

State of play: The Youngstown native has past connections to the literary nonprofit as a poetry teacher and board member.

• She also founded the Black Women Rise Poetry Collective and has collaborated with institutions like the Lincoln Theatre and Columbus Museum of Art, per a Thurber House bio.
• A free reception will welcome her at 7pm tonight.

Zoom in: The literary nonprofit works to support local writers and serves as a museum at the former home of author James Thurber.

• It celebrated 40 years in 2024 and has faced financial trouble in recent years, though it reached a $200,000 fundraising goal in that anniversary year.

What they're saying: Fant is "always going to believe in the power … of uplifting other writers where I can and cultivating a space where other people's voices can be heard," she tells Matter.

• "And I look at this as an opportunity to do that."

Go deeper: Barbara Fant returns to Columbus ready to leave her mark on Thurber House

Before "Tom Sawyer," "2112," arena shows and the Rock Hall, Rush was a little-known Canadian band playing a $3 show in Ohio.

Flashback: Legendary Cleveland radio station WMMS helped launch the band's American career.

• The station pushed its single "Working Man" into heavy rotation and broadcast a remarkable local concert from Aug. 26, 1974.

Over 50 years later, Rush returns to the Buckeye State for shows tonight and Saturday at Rocket Arena as part of its "Fifty Something Tour."

💭 Tyler's thought bubble: Rush is my favorite band, and I'm bummed to not be making the trip up I-71. (Tickets were just way too expensive.)

• But I'm glad to have seen Rush play Nationwide Arena during its 40th anniversary tour in 2015, a typical marathon performance that appropriately ended with "Working Man."

Go deeper

Thanks to Tyler Buchanan for editing today's newsletter.

Our picks:

📴 Alissa is off.

🎸 Andrew saw Rush with his dad at the dearly departed Germain Amphitheater as a kid.

🎵 Tyler is listening to "Moving Pictures."