The Guardian•
US residents angry at datacenters ‘being shoved down our throats’ are recalling officials
Advocacy groups and community members protest against datacenters outside the Texas capital in Austin in February. Photograph: Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenAdvocacy groups and community members protest against datacenters outside the Texas capital in Austin in February. Photograph: Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via Getty ImagesDatacentersUS residents angry at datacenters ‘being shoved down our throats’ are recalling officialsPeople across the country are pushing for moratoriums, and electeds who approve projects are being punished
Lenoxdatacenter.com went live in May, promoting what it called a “proposed advanced technology and data center campus” in Michigan. The site did not state who wanted to build the center. Lenox Township officials denied anyone had applied to build one.
Emails obtained by residents through an open records request showed, however, that developers had contacted the township supervisor and deputy supervisor asking for their support to build a datacenter.
The perceived secrecy surrounding the proposed datacenter prompted residents to pack public meetings that sometimes lasted more than four hours. They expressed outrage at officials in the Republican-led rural municipality 40 miles (64km) north of Detroit and submitted a petition seeking to recall four members of the Lenox board of trustees, which oversees township administration, zoning and municipal ordinances.
“The community still has questions that aren’t being answered and the public deserves to have transparency,” a resident said at a June board meeting after the trustees did not extend a four-month moratorium on datacenter development.
Like Lenox residents, people across the United States are increasingly pushing for moratoriums on new datacenters and trying to oust elected officials approving such projects.
Supporters say the movement is encouraging, not only because it could slow an industry they argue will diminish their property values, strain water and energy resources and cause greater unemployment, but also because it features a phenomenon that is nearing extinction in American politics: unity among Republicans and Democrats.
“It reflects the growing anxiety about AI writ large,” said Evan Sutton, a Seattle resident who works in strategic communications and has voluntarily helped datacenter opponents in 10 states, including California, Montana and Ohio. “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”
The US has more than 4,400 datacenters, according to Data Center Map, and one center can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes, according to a University of Michigan report. They also require water for cooling, and a typical datacenter uses 300,000 gallons of water each day (equivalent to the demands of about 1,000 households), but large datacenters can use an estimated 5m gallons of water each day, equivalent to the daily usage of a town with about 10,000 to 50,000 residents, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
That consumption can strain a local water supply – particularly in arid areas – and electric grid capacity, which means utilities then must invest in infrastructure upgrades and charge consumers more.
The effects of datacenters are especially acute for people who live close to them. Neighbors often complain about constant humming from the facilities’ cooling systems, and air pollution.
When companies try to build new ones, industry analysts say they frequently do so clandestinely without revealing which tech firm would use the facilities. Researchers found that among 31 Virginia localities with existing, approved or proposed datacenters, 80% had non-disclosure agreements with the companies behind the projects, the Virginia Mercury reported.
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