SPRING CITY, Pa. — Tech companies and developers seeking to build data centers to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing are increasingly running into stiff community opposition, the Associated Press reported, as residents pressure local officials to reject proposals and municipalities grapple with zoning and environmental review questions.
Communities across the United States are learning from each other’s battles against data center proposals, which AP said are multiplying in both number and size as developers branch out to find faster connections to power sources. In many cases, municipal boards are trying to determine whether energy- and water-hungry data centers fit within local zoning frameworks, including considering waivers or trying to write new ordinances.
As more people hear about a proposed data center, AP said municipal meetings that once drew fewer attendees now feature crowded rooms of residents pressing officials to reject requests. In Pennsylvania’s East Vincent Township, Larry Shank asked supervisors, “Would you want this built in your backyard?” adding, “Because that’s where it’s literally going, is in my backyard.”
AP said opposition also spreads across communities as developers and utilities line up partnerships, including efforts by Big Tech firms, real estate developers and electric utilities. Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL, counted seven or eight deals he worked on in recent months where opponents went door-to-door, handing out shirts or putting signs in people’s yards. “It’s becoming a huge problem,” Cvengros said.
Data Center Watch, a project of 10a Labs, said it is seeing a sharp escalation in community, political and regulatory disruptions to data center development. Between April and June alone, AP reported, Data Center Watch counted 20 proposals valued at $98 billion in 11 states that were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state-level pushback—amounting to two-thirds of the projects it was tracking.
Some environmental and consumer advocacy groups have reported fielding calls daily as they work to educate communities about how to protect themselves, AP said. In Indiana, Bryce Gustafson of the Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition said, “this by far is the biggest kind of local pushback I’ve ever seen here in Indiana,” and he counted more than a dozen projects there that lost rezoning petitions.
The concerns AP cited from residents include steep increases in electric bills and losing open space, farmland, forest or rural character. Residents also raise worries about damage to quality of life, property values or health linked to on-site diesel generators and the constant hum of servers, and they have concerns that wells and aquifers could run dry. AP also said lawsuits have been filed both ways over whether local governments violated their own rules.
While Big Tech firms including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook did not answer AP questions about the effect of community pushback, Microsoft acknowledged in an October securities filing that operational risks include “community opposition, local moratoriums, and hyper-local dissent that may impede or delay infrastructure development.” AP said the pushback is having an impact even with high-level support from state and federal governments.
Developers and industry groups have said the local fights can change how projects are handled, especially when zoning decisions become uncertain after power access is secured. Maxx Kossof, vice president of investment at Chicago-based developer The Missner Group, said developers worried about losing zoning fights are considering selling properties once they secure a power source, and he warned, “You might as well take chips off the table.” Kossof added that having power to a site can still be futile if zoning and community support are not won.
Industry allies said they are trying to improve how developers engage with the public, AP reported. Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, a trade association that includes Big Tech firms and developers, said, “It’s definitely a discussion that the industry is having internally about, ‘Hey, how do we do a better job of community engagement?’”
AP said that winning over local officials has not translated to winning over residents. In Matthews, North Carolina, developers pulled a data center project from an October agenda after Mayor John Higdon said it faced unanimous defeat. Higdon said town meetings overflowed and that emails, texts and phone calls were “999 to one against,” and he added: “That’s for sure,” describing what he said would happen if the council approved the project.
In Hermantown, a suburb of Duluth, Minnesota, AP said a proposed data center campus several times larger than the Mall of America was on hold amid challenges over whether the city’s environmental review was adequate. Residents connected through social media and organized protests, door-knocking and other efforts, and AP said they described feeling misled after they learned that state, county, city and utility officials knew about the proposal for a year before the city released internal emails in response to a public records request filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “It’s the secrecy. The secrecy just drives people crazy,” said Jonathan Thornton, a realtor who lives across a road from the site.
AP said documents revealing the extent of the project emerged days before a city rezoning vote in October. Mortenson, which is developing it for a Fortune 50 company that has not been named, said it is considering changes based on public feedback and that “more engagement with the community is appropriate.” Rebecca Gramdorf said she found out from a Duluth newspaper article and worried it would spell the end of her six-acre vegetable farm, adding, “I don’t think this fight is over at all.”