PEORIA, AZ (AZFamily) — The City of Peoria is partnering with AMKOR Technology to build and develop a semiconductor facility near the neighborhood of Vistancia.
While the City believes this $2 billion project will create thousands of jobs, residents of the Vistancia neighborhood believe it will endanger their lives.
The AMKOR facility is set to be built on a 55-acre plot known as Five North in Vistancia. According to AMKOR’s website, Peoria approved the facility under a two-phase plan that will eventually create a 2.1 million square foot facility.
Residents Steve Riggins and Cynthia Schuster said the neighborhood knew the City had been working on this development since last year; however, they said they had no idea how big it would be until recently.
“I think I really zoned in on what they were doing this January and the magnitude of the scale had basically almost quadrupled,” Schuster said.
“I learned about this deal with AMKOR one month ago,” Riggins said. “The area they want to put AMKOR is a place that was planned for a community center. Putting this very large and industrial plant there doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.”
The city council approved AMKOR’s plans through a vote on Feb. 20, 2024.
Having been zoned for high-density employment for decades, AMKOR and the City of Peoria said Five North is the best place for this facility because of its access to resources such as electrical and water.
However, according to Megan Staub with Citizens for Smart Growth, it goes against the neighborhood’s master plan as the community’s commercial core.
“The biggest response is that it’s always been zoned this way, and it’s coming no matter what you say,” she said. “We feel it’s not always been this way and were originally told it was for commercial use like hospitals, educational centers, office buildings but never a massive 2.1 million square foot manufacturing facility.”
Citizens for Smart Growth is a nonprofit organization that advocates for smart and sustainable development, and it got involved with Vistancia when it heard the plans and residents’ frustrations.
AMKOR says once fully operational, the facility will use almost 2 million gallons of water per day. However, the City said it has an approved sustainability plan where the AMKOR facility is required to use reclaimed water and return nothing less than 80% of treated water to be recycled back into the city.
With the facility to be connected to the city’s sewer system, Riggins is worried that operations could contaminate their water.
“The hazardous waste it’s going to generate, all the water it’s going to use, about 2 million gallons a day, then pipe the wastewater into our waste treatment that has no way to filter out any of the chemicals that will come out of that facility one way or another,” Riggins said.
Another concern is that the AMKOR facility will be built across from a new charter school, American Leadership Academy, which is set to open in the fall of 2025.
Knowing many area kids will attend the new school, resident Shannon Grey is concerned AMKOR’s operations could impact safety and traffic volumes.
“They’re going to have sports fields; they’re also going to have playgrounds, and our children are going to be a few feet away,” Grey said. “It’s really terrible that they’re choosing this particular location because if there’s ever a shelter-in-place, we’re stuck here. If there’s an evacuation, a biohazard situation, it puts all of us in jeopardy.”
The City said it and AMKOR have approved sustainable mitigation plans that would address traffic, environmental and water impacts. The City also mentioned new roads would be built and shifts would be staggered to accommodate peak traffic times.
Citizens for Smart Growth and Vistancia residents plan to keep fighting against the facility from being built, and they plan to protest on Friday from 2 to 5 p.m.
The City of Peoria and AMKOR Technology hope to start construction in Vistancia this summer, but residents tell Arizona’s Family they hope to make noise to spark change during the next city council meeting.
READ AMKOR’S FULL STATEMENT BELOW
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