No Data Centers In My Backyard

Driving in Wisconsin feels like cruising through Eden. It is unimaginably green given the heat-wave summer. There are fields of corn and clover blossoms and Queen Anne’s lace; in the temperate evenings, fireflies trace and weave star-trails between cottonwood trunks. Everyone we meet is generous, warmhearted, ready to show us the meaning of “Midwestern nice” one free beer at a time.In those halcyon environs, the data centers land like a spaceship crash.Data centers are the most visible, physical manifestations of the AI boom. For a technology that we think of as immaterial, existing only in “the cloud,” a hyperscale data center—often spanning hundreds of acres of land—is impossible to ignore. Inside these behemoths live the chips and servers that train new AI models and process user queries from apps like ChatGPT. To perform such complex calculations at lightning-fast speed, data centers require an enormous amount of electricity, so they often come ensconced in a web of new transmission lines. Data centers don’t look cyberpunk, solarpunk, or otherwise inspiringly futuristic. They are just greige.When I visited DC in February to start researching the brewing AI backlash, I found that the top two uniting issues were kids’ safety and data centers.1 These were very different concerns from those I hear in San Francisco—a city with no kids and no data centers—which preoccupies itself more with fears of strange, self-propagating machine species, or the more workaday concern of your startup running out of cash.Through the spring, I watched digital maps light up with proposed data center sites, then proposed moratoriums. Viral videos showcased protesters dragged out of city meetings, or residents whose tap water suddenly ran brown. More Perfect Union blamed AI companies. OpenAI blamed China.2 Polls indicate that Democrats and Republicans are matched in detesting data centers: roughly 30% for, 70% against. Comedian-turned-activist Charlie Berens called data centers “the most bipartisan issue since beer.”I still felt that I did not really understand the data center backlash, and was slightly skeptical of the one-sided national news. New closed-loop cooling systems use about as much water as a golf course. Factories and power plants are just as ugly and much more polluting. Construction opposition is usually highly localized—build it, just somewhere else—so what made data center activism such a nationwide phenom?The only solution seemed to be hitting the road, going to the towns where data center fights were happening, and talking to as many people as I could: activists, yes, but also workers, planners, politicians, and residents. I wanted to learn: Do most people actually care about data centers, or just a passionate few? What’s motivating these revolts—is it about AI, or energy costs, or good old NIMBYism? How did local opposition become a national issue? And how is AI moving elections?On July 13, I packed my bags and flew to Madison, the trailhead for my 10-day, 4-site data center adventure in the upper Midwest. Three friends and co-researchers joined me for the trip. It’s worth noting that Wisconsin and Michigan are not exactly data center central, as they rank in the upper-middle of the pack.3 But what these states offer is a unique lens on how data center fights intersect with battleground primaries, industrial history, and residents’ deep attachment to the land.ShareOur first stop was Janesville. The city crossed my radar via the 2017 book of the same name, which chronicled the community’s struggles after a 90-year-old GM plant closed in 2008. The whole city—about 64,000 people—had been built around auto manufacturing. And since 2008, the old GM/JATCO site has remained unused, a derelict 250-acre lot in the middle of town.It used to be Adam Shultz’s job to find a buyer for the empty parcel. Adam—who calls himself “a dealmaker at heart”—is a commercial real estate broker with Coldwell Banker and an ambassador for Forward Janesville, the local economic development group. Adam grew up in Rock County. He had family who worked at GM. And for five painful years, he had a hell of a time trying to sell the site.The main deterrent is the hazardous waste in the soil: heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and an unknown cocktail of forever chemicals produced by decades of industrial operations. After they went bankrupt, GM never finished cleaning it up. Two hundred prospects reportedly turned down the brownfield due to contamination.So when Adam heard that the data center developer Viridan Partners was interested—and that they’d cover the $30 million cleanup, plus contribute an estimated $4.8 million a year in taxes—it sounded like the best deal Janesville was ever going to get.“People have pitched fairgrounds, or housing, or wouldn’t it be great if restaurants were down there? But our retail corridors struggle to fill vacant retail buildings, so they’re not going to go to a buried area of town that’s formerly heavy industrial,” Adam explained. He knew the data center proposal was getting pushback, but he found the opponents frustratingly unrealistic.“We will have a data center down there, or we will have a giant slab of concrete. The numbers make no sense to anybody other than this industry.”The GM/JATCO site is a five minute drive from Janesville’s downtown corridor. It’s exactly what Adam billed it as: a giant concrete slab with an old rail line running through, overgrown with weeds, and baking in the 90-degree July sun.Three volunteers with the No Janesville Data Center effort met us there. Alyssa Capozziello is a disabled mom who resolved last year to become more engaged in her community. Kaycee Peterson, lean and ponytailed, is finishing her bachelor’s in environmental science. Cathy Erdman is a local organizer and firefighter who just returned from a vacation to Mongolia.The three activists are feeling victorious: the day prior, they got a ballot placement for a referendum requiring voter approval for future developments exceeding $450 million. The city’s letter of interest with Viridian expired in June. A few months before, they pressured the Janesville city manager into resigning, and elected one of their own organizers onto city council.Alyssa and Cathy had first learned that Janesville was courting new development when an RFP showed up last July. But they were furious to learn that the city’s discussion with data center developers had begun a year earlier, under NDA. Everything about the arrangement seemed shady: the secrecy, the tax incentives, the $1380 bill they got served for a public records request, Viridian’s marketing presentations at council.“Small communities don’t have the legal budget to negotiate well. You’ll never hold a company to a contract,” said Cathy, who feared Janesville once again tying itself to a single big employer—especially one in a “high-risk industry” like AI. City officials were promising to lower wheel and property taxes on residents, but that assumes everything goes right. What if the project gets abandoned? How does Janesville avoid “another GM plant scenario”?Kaycee, meanwhile, has been reading academic articles to understand data centers’ effect on local aquifers. She joined Alyssa and Cathy after finding them on Facebook. “I want to see the long-term impact studies done before you just start building these all over the place, instead of just throwing them up and then worrying about the damages later,” Kaycee said.And Alyssa is perturbed by the idea of a data center so close to Janesville’s underserved neighborhoods. “They’re coming to one of the poorest counties in our state, with a property that’s been vacant, knowing that people are thirsty to have development here,” said Alyssa. “If you look at where data centers are being built, it’s not in Mark Zuckerberg’s backyard. It is in hardworking Janesvillians’.” In August, she plans to vote for Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist hoping to win rural red voters through a data center moratorium—and as of recently, Wisconsin’s Democratic frontrunner for governor.4I ask the three what they envision being built here instead, but don’t get much of an answer. I suspect that Adam is partly right—maybe this is a choice between a hyperscale data center and a concrete slab. And Alyssa, Cathy, and Kaycee would rather pick the slab.Like the Janesville site, Mount Pleasant’s data center sits on storied ground. For a moment in time, during Trump’s first term, the village was supposed to herald the revival of American manufacturing. Now, it hosts several gigawatts of Microsoft compute.In 2017, the Village of Mount Pleasant, Racine County, and State of Wisconsin offered over $4 billion in tax incentives and infrastructure investments to win a bidding war for a Foxconn plant. In return, Foxconn promised Mount Pleasant—population 26,000—a $10 billion investment that would create 13,000 jobs making flat-screen TVs. The village eminent domained the land and prepared infrastructure. But Foxconn kept downsizing their plans, citing high labor costs. By the end of 2024, just over a thousand jobs had been created. Mount Pleasant was saddled with over $183 million in debt that Foxconn and Microsoft are still servicing.The memory of the Foxconn fiasco is still raw. We heard it referenced in conversation after conversation as a flaming symbol of corporate failure.Mount Pleasant’s government tried to learn from their mistakes. In 2023, Microsoft purchased part of the Foxconn site for $50 million. This time, the village negotiated a tax guarantee and did not perform new borrowing, infrastructure spending, or subsidies. It avoided an NDA, which had amplified dissent with Foxconn, and held upwards of sixty public meetings discussing the Microsoft development since its kickoff. (The village said most were empty until the data center backlash went national last year.)If any data center project should have gone down easy, it should’ve been Mount Pleasant’s. The