Local Communities Unite to Stop the Growth of Data Centers

Tech companies are building data centers at unprecedented rates across the United States. They’re popping up everywhere from the Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia to the desert plains of the Southwest — and are especially prevalent in the backyards of working-class communities. People are frustrated, and are organizing en masse in grassroots coalitions to curb data-center growth.

What’s unique is that the movement cuts across party lines and demographics, with many people organizing for the first time in their lives. What makes the data-center issue so different from others?

That’s what our Capitol Hill briefing featuring local community leaders explored. On July 22, Free Press Action teamed up with AI Now, the Athena Coalition, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Data Center Working Group for a discussion featuring Sen. Ed Markey (D–Massachusetts) and local leaders representing four different states.

Sarah Martik, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice (Pennsylvania); Ben Inskeep, program director at Citizens Action Coalition (Indiana); Maggie Schuppert, director of strategic initiatives at CURE Minnesota; and Matthew Rodriguez, co-founder of the Amanecer People’s Project (Texas) all took part in this briefing for legislative offices, which Free Press Action Advocacy Director Jenna Ruddock moderated. Panelists dove into the growth of these unprecedented coalitions, residents’ concerns, parallels to other movements and next steps.

Why the fight to stop data centers is so urgent

Local coalitions in Texas are fighting a $13 billion Meta data center in El Paso, along with a power plant for a new Amazon data center projected to be the “largest single source of climate pollution in the United States.” Similar movements are springing up in Lebanon, Indiana, where Meta is building a $10 billion hyperscale data-center campus. Murky, undrinkable water in Morgan County, Georgia, prompted a congressional inquiry into the EPA’s lack of oversight.

“People have never really seen this scale of development at this speed ever in our lives,” Rodriguez said. “It’s something that most people have never seen in West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The data centers are scheduled to take more energy than the states of Arizona, Utah and Nevada.”

All of this, he said, is fundamentally reshaping “energy, how people pay their utilities, and that’s not even mentioning all of the infrastructure that comes along with these data centers — all the power lines, all the substations.”

Data-center development is also “chaotic,” as Martik noted, with developers “running the gamut from concrete proposals … to these abstract ideas.”

And local communities are concerned and disillusioned. A troubling lack of transparency has marked data-center development, with many local governments signing nondisclosure agreements with developers as decisions are made in back rooms. 

Then there are the environmental and public-health harms — poor air quality, poor water quality and noise pollution — which disrupt community members’ daily lives. People are also contending with rising utility bills and invasive infrastructure — including the construction of gas pipelines in residential backyards. Local communities are also concerned about increased surveillance from data centers.

The same marginalized communities are — and historically have been — harmed the most

Sen. Markey said it best in his opening remarks: “Data centers aren’t being built in Mar-a-Lago, next to Zuckerberg’s apocalypse bunker in Hawaii. They’re being built in your backyards, in the backyards of working-class Americans who don’t have the time, don’t have the money, don’t have the big White House connections that this industry wields against regular communities all across our country.”

Some of these same communities suffered from the impacts of fracking in Pennsylvania — just as earlier generations suffered from the effects of coal mining 100 years before that.

“They’re the ones who are continuing to bear the cost,” Martik said. “Low income, working-class communities of color.”

And the same pattern emerges when it comes to responses from institutions, both public and private. Tech giants compete to build in the same regions, without regard for the communities residing there, while local governments have been drawing from the same playbook that prioritizes corporations over communities.

“People have had enough,” Martik said. “They know what it is to live next to something that’s a diesel generator because the diesel generator is what’s powering the active frack on the well pad that’s 500 feet from their homes. That’s the part where the air emissions aren’t regulated at all, and they know exactly how hard it is to breathe whenever that happens.”

“This is not a new story for anybody,” she added. “People are just fed up with the experiences that they’ve been forced to have because of decisions that are made in rooms where they’re not invited.”

Local communities are organizing with unprecedented unity

The national movement resisting data-center growth features intersectional solidarity across party lines, in every part of the country.

“We’re seeing more mobilization from a more diverse group of people than we’ve ever seen for any other issue, and folks should not discount that this issue is moving fast,” Inskeep said.

“The silver lining is just seeing people connect the dots and see themselves and others around them,” Rodriguez said. “Here in El Paso, we’ve had town halls with 380 people. We’ve had new information sessions [where] 70 people show up, and it’s Republicans, Democrats, people who have never voted, and this just connects so many dots of this same broken system. … [People realize] that this is why our system is not working, not because of immigrants or whatever scapegoat, but because this system is favoring corporations over you.”

“The energy that is coming from this is organic,” Schuppert said. “It is coming from the ground. If anyone thinks that the resistance to data centers is being driven by nonprofits or environmentalists, disabuse yourself of that notion.”

Schuppert also issued a warning. “Something that we need to be very careful of is that a lot of [data-center organizing] is being driven by growing distrust, certainly in data-center developers, but also in our governance structures, certainly at the local level. That is building up and up and up, and I think the last thing this country needs is growing distrust in our public institutions.”

Public officials must listen, rebuild trust and act

In the absence of effective outreach from government officials, constituents will continue to lose trust — especially in our public institutions, which are key to enacting solutions.

“If this energy is not channeled effectively, if the constituents telling their elected officials to do something aren’t listened to, I think there’s going to be consequences associated with that, and I think folks shouldn’t underestimate that,” Inskeep said, citing the Tea Party movement as an example.

Active engagement with local communities also helps keep democratic participation alive, which we need to counter widespread disillusionment in our systems and institutions.

“There will be detractors that will say, look, you did all this. The data center was still built. This is why you should never participate in the process again,” Rodriguez said. Without appropriate and intentional acknowledgement and response, communities feel blindsided by the very people who are supposed to serve them.

As for other actions federal officials can take? Schuppert suggests a data-center moratorium to build effective governance structures, while Inskeep recommends that Congress focus on curbing online misinformation from Big Tech and building bipartisan coalitions to address data-center development.

Markey is working on a bill, currently open for public comment, to “create a national framework to address data center harm.” The legislation, Markey said, would require “Big Tech to prove that a data center won’t harm the public interest before it can start any permitting process.”

“Here in Washington, we have an obligation to listen and learn from real experiences from the people that dedicate their time day in and day out to delivering a livable future for everyone,” he said. “I stand in partnership and solidarity with all of you to make sure our fight won’t get derailed by big tax money and influence, but leads to the wave of change which we deserve.”

On Aug. 19, Free Press Action, AI Now, the Data Center Working Group and other groups are hosting the webinar “You Passed a Data Center Moratorium; Now What?!” RSVP to join us.