Anger at AI boom, as Americans spurn data centers
Voters in dozens of American cities approved restrictions or outright bans on data centers during Tuesday’s midterm elections, in one of the clearest signals that a groundswell of anger over the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has cut across political divides.
“Democrat, Republican, that didn’t matter,” said Alisha Lange, a farmer from Piqua, Ohio. “People want their town back.”
She was one of the driving forces behind the grassroots group Save Piqua, which advocated for a ban on data centers with a capacity of more than 25 megawatts, effectively ruling out any large-scale project.
The ban passed in a ballot measure on Tuesday and now jeopardizes the construction of a data center worth more than $1 billion planned by Meta, even though the project had already been approved.
“We’re just a little farm town, and we would much rather just have a cornfield or have some sort of industry that provides an income to a larger amount of people,” the 42-year-old farmer said, referring to the relatively small number of jobs that data centers tend to create after they’re built.
While ballots are still being counted around the country, more than three dozen local measures have already passed that resulted in tighter regulations for data centers, according to consulting firm Redbud Consulting.
The outcomes add to restrictions already imposed by nearly 600 jurisdictions across the country, according to Electric Choice, including entire states in some cases, like New York and Texas.
Meta isn’t the only big tech company spending billions on data center construction—Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are also investing heavily in an effort to meet growing demand for their AI products and services.
In Ottawa, a small town near Kansas City, residents also overwhelmingly approved a ban on large data centers.
“We’re not for sale,” Michael Lewis said.
Last straw
Lewis is a member of a grassroots organization called Ottawa United, and ran for Congress this cycle as a Democrat, though he lost on Tuesday to the incumbent Republican.
“You can dangle some money in our face; it doesn’t mean we’re going to give away our resources and deal with the environmental issues that stem from” data centers, he said.
In Janesville, Wisconsin, a majority of city council members were initially open to a proposal from developer Viridian, which was ready to put $8 billion on the table to build a data center on a former General Motors site that closed in 2008.
But communities are starting to ask for more than job creation potential and total investment when scrutinizing new construction projects.
A project’s impacts on local tax streams, broader infrastructure, quality of life, and other land uses “can be equal to or greater in importance than the number of jobs or just the dollar amount in capital investment,” Cathy Erdman, a member of Janesville for Responsible Development, said.
Under pressure, the city council ultimately rejected the Viridian project in June, then adopted a one-year moratorium, before a majority of voters on Tuesday backed new restrictions.
Any large-scale project on the former General Motors site must now be approved by referendum.
In Piqua, the Meta project was the last straw, Lange said, leading to the removal of two city council members and the mayor.
