Growing awareness of the widening wealth gap between ordinary Americans and the ultra-rich is fanning a flame of bipartisan blowback against new data centers across the United States.
Although developers promise economic benefits like new jobs and tax revenue, that’s a hard point to sell when local residents perceive immediate threats to their personal wellbeing, including resource constraints, declining quality of life in communities, and the replacement of human jobs with artificial intelligence.
In addition, the Donald Trump administration has taken steps to shield data centers from legal liability for pollution, further underscoring the gap between the wealthy elites who stand to benefit most from AI dominance and the communities asked to bear the brunt of resource-hungry AI infrastructure.
Only 14 percent of Americans, including 9 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Republicans, say they would approve of a new data center being built in their community, according to June polling from Ipsos.
As the data center boom becomes an election issue ahead of the November midterms, some state and local office holders have supported new restrictions or moratoriums aimed at reducing the impacts of these new facilities, while others have been caught flat-footed.
The rising tide of new data centers
Data centers are not a new phenomenon, but the size of a typical data center has grown substantially in recent years to meet the needs of more powerful AI systems. The pace of construction has also accelerated rapidly.
More than 3,000 data centers are already in operation across the United States, with the largest being a 750-megawatt bitcoin mining operation in Texas. Many of the over 1,000 new data centers in the pipeline will be far larger, ranging from a 5.2-gigawatt Meta project in Louisiana to a highly disputed 9-gigawatt project in Utah.
Critics say the pace of development is too fast for local officials to fully understand and mitigate the negative effects on communities, leaving residents feeling like new data centers are being forced on them.
Over and above aesthetic objections, communities, public health professionals, and environmental advocates have raised concerns over air pollution and noise pollution, along with strain on local resources like water, land and electricity.
In addition, while urban areas used to be the preferred location for data centers, the preference has shifted to rural areas, exposing new groups of voters to the potential for disruption of community life. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example, farmers and residents have raised objections over the potential for developers to seize farmland for data centers.
Politicians are pushed to safeguard community wellbeing, or face the consequences
One sign of the political impact of rising data center skepticism surfaced in Maine, where Democratic Gov. Janet Mills dropped her bid for the U.S. Senate after vetoing a bill that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on data center development in the state. She halted her campaign citing financial reasons, leaving the Democratic field clear for political newcomer Graham Platner, whom supporters have portrayed as a strong fighter against the elite on the Democratic side.
Though Mills shot down the measure in Maine, localities across eight other states have already enacted data center bans, moratoriums or other restrictions, according to the online tracker Data Center Bans. Many of these bans are temporary and do not seek to permanently bar data center development in towns and cities, but rather to give lawmakers enough time to assess community impact and involve residents in planning and approvals.
Local legislation is pending in 11 other states, and some members of Congress have begun steps to take legislative action at the federal level.
In possibly the first statewide action, legislators in New York passed a data center moratorium bill in recent weeks, though Gov. Kathy Hochul has yet to sign it. Regardless of her decision on the matter, the proposed moratorium complicates her run for re-election in November as local small business opposition to data centers grows upstate.
Local officials are also deploying zoning ordinances and other tools to restrict unchecked development while calling for statewide action in the run-up to Election Day.
In Santa Rosa County, Florida, for example, Republican county commissioner Kerry Smith called for a 12-month moratorium as he runs for re-election this fall.
On the other side of the aisle, this month the all-Democrat city council in Asbury Park, New Jersey, adopted a resolution “urging Gov. Mikie Sherrill and the New Jersey State Legislature to enact a statewide moratorium on new, industrial-scale data center construction, particularly facilities serving artificial intelligence.”
The lawmakers listed regional electrical grid disruptions, strain on local water resources, noise and air quality issues, and diesel emissions from backup generators among their concerns. In the same resolution, they called for a temporary pause on construction within city limits.
“This is bigger than any one project,” Asbury Park Mayor John Moor said in a public statement. “Data centers of this scale need land, water, and power that a city like ours just doesn’t have to spare, and honestly, we’re built out already. But it’s not just about us. Every town in this state needs time to get this right before it’s too late.”
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons
