Opposition to the massive data centers that power AI is bipartisan and growing across the country. From Maine to California, more states and local communities are passing moratoriums and bans on construction of the noisy, power and water hungry buildings. People are getting arrested for speaking too long at town halls, legislators are receiving death threats, and it’s clear that the fight against these computer warehouses will shape American politics for years to come.
In Ypsialanti Township, Michigan, the University of Michigan has partnered with America’s nuclear weapons scientists to build a massive $1.2 billion data center. Earlier this month, the Ypsilanti utility authority paused the delivery of water to new data center projects for six months, a move the University called “unlawfully discriminatory.”
On May 10, Colleton County South Carolina passed a six month moratorium on data center construction with an option to extend. The moratorium came ahead of the planned construction of an 800 acre data center in the ACE Basin Estuary that would build on 200 acres of untouched wetlands. Local landowners and the South Carolina Environmental Law Center were already suing to halt construction of the project. This is the second location for the particular project. The builders first tried to build the data center in Georgia last year but failed after local opposition grew too strong.
Logistics company Prologis eyed Washington Township, Michigan for a 312-acre data center project. Locals organized and voiced their opposition at planning meetings. “I have just learned that the petitioner for that project has just withdrawn their application,” Audrey Brown, a Washington Township Clerk said in a post on Facebook yesterday . “This means that as of today, there are no data center projects under consideration by the township. Therefore, I will be adding a temporary moratorium for all data center applications for consideration at tomorrow night’s board meeting. The moratorium will give our community time to put legal safeguards in place.”
Microsoft cancelled a planned 244-acre data center in the Village of Caledonia, Wisconsin after 2,000 people in the area signed a petition that opposed rezoning the land. “I would’ve liked to been able to engage directly with Microsoft much earlier in the process. We were not allowed to do that. I think that became an obstacle for a lot of different points and reasons,” Nancy Pierce, a Village trustee, told local news outlet WTMJ.
Georgia is considering a bill that would prevent cities from issuing permits to data centers until 2027. Maryland has a bill referred to committee that would pause data centers in the state until the legislature figured out how to provide power to them. Oklahoma is considering a law that would pause data centers until 2029 while the state conducts research on water and utility rate impacts. Even Virginia—home to massive concentration of data centers—is considering a proposal to halt new construction until specific power needs are met.
But there are high profile failures in the fight too. Maine was set to pass a statewide moratorium on new data center construction, the first of its kind in the United States. But Governor Janet Mills vetoed the bill saying that she supported a ban in principle, but wanted a carve out for a data center already under construction in the southern part of the state.
For anti-data center activists there will be victories and losses but a coalition is taking shape, one that cuts across party lines and has people engaging with politics on a local level in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades.
