More than 100 people packed into tight county board chambers carrying signs reading “Protect Our Water” and “Approve the Moratorium.”
They showed up at the Champaign County Board meeting in east central Illinois this spring to support pressing pause on development of large scale data centers — a move many communities have made in recent months in response to an influx of development proposals.
Dozens of people voiced concerns about the massive amounts of water and energy data centers use, including sixth grader Samuel Tomory, who’s worried about the impact to Champaign County’s water source, the Mahomet Aquifer.
“We need the water from our aquifer, but we do not need AI [artificial intelligence]. We can just have the intelligence ourselves,” he told county board members. “We don’t need the AI, as we need our water.”
The board unanimously passed the one year moratorium in April, giving a new task force time to develop zoning standards for undeveloped land in the county.
This pushback against data centers is becoming more common as development of the large scale facilities is booming across the Midwest and South. More communities are fighting against them – pointing to the massive water and energy usage and concerns about noise.
Analysis from Pew Research Center finds the Midwest alone is set to see a 64% increase in development, and overwhelmingly, the development is planned for rural areas. About two-thirds of planned data centers in the U.S. are located in rural communities.
Many local and state governments are now adding guardrails or pressing pause on data center development.
In Texas, what some are calling the first data center moratorium in the state passed in May in Hill County, about an hour south of Fort Worth. In eastern Wisconsin, Manitowoc County passed an 18-month moratorium in April. And Huron County in eastern Michigan passed a three year data center moratorium in May.
Kate Stoll with the American Association for the Advancement of Science helps connect scientists with decision-makers on many issues, including data centers. She said more communities are asking to hit the brakes on data centers.
“We’re also seeing some trends of cities and counties setting pauses or moratoria on data centers while they kind of shore up their data center specific policies in this time of rapid growth,” she said.
Debates get divisive
From fears of noise and changing rural landscapes to environmental concerns, people are coming out in droves to block efforts to bring giant data centers to their communities.
That effort worked in Champaign County, Illinois, at least for now. But an hour away in Springfield, the data center debate went a different way.
In April, the Sangamon County Board approved a controversial $500 million data center, after several contentious public meetings.
The county’s zoning code was not written for this type of development, said Lori McKiernan, with the nonprofit Sustainable Springfield, which promotes sustainable practices in the community.
“The developers are taking advantage of that,” she said. “They’re going to these communities that don’t have strong zoning.”
Petitioners in the Springfield area are currently gathering signatures to remove the county’s board chair and the leader of the Democratic caucus from their leadership positions, McKiernan said.
“They’re not listening to their constituents,” McKiernan said.
Sangamon County residents are not alone in their anger.
In Festus, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, the community voted out half of its city council after it approved a $6 billion data center deal.
Rick Belleville is a newly-elected council member in the city. He decided to run for office to bring more transparency to the project, he said.
“When somebody comes to town and says, ‘Hey. We’re gonna give you millions of dollars, and we’re gonna build a data center,’” he said, “you need to slow down and get a full understanding of how the full thing’s gonna affect their community.”
Now, Belleville is working on ordinances that would put limits on water use for any new industry – including data centers – that want to build in Festus. Meanwhile, residents are trying to remove the city’s mayor and the rest of council.
In Illinois, at least one Sangamon County board member said there’s movement to respond to community concerns.
“Now that there has been greater public input about what the concerns are that we do need to go back and look at what our zoning code would do if data center number two applies,” Tony DelGiorno said.
The head of the county’s Democratic caucus, DelGiorno is at risk of losing the position if a citizen petition to recall him is successful.
The board is already considering changes to the county’s building code to address concerns residents have raised, DelGiorno said.
Changing tides
State lawmakers are also pondering how to regulate data centers.
Missouri lawmakers passed a law last year that raises rates for customers using large amounts of energy. Petitioners in Ohio are collecting signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment banning new, large-scale data centers. Legislation was also introduced in several states this year, including Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, to tighten regulations.
“I think people are trying to catch up,” said Dave Owen, a law professor at the University of California San Francisco who studies the energy impacts of data centers.
This flurry of legislation stems from the outrage many communities feel when data center developers try to build in their backyard, he said.
“I don’t think really anybody foresaw how much of a popular backlash there would be against data centers,” Owen said. “Even a year and a half ago, a lot of state and local governments were very eagerly trying to court data centers.”
Analysis from the National Conference of State Legislatures found that as of May, 38 states offer dedicated incentives meant to attract data centers, including every state in the Midwest and almost every state in the Great Plains, except for Nebraska and South Dakota.
But several states are changing course, said Nicholas Miller with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“We saw about an even number of states considering creating a brand new incentive versus pressing pause or walking back their existing incentives,” he said, “and as legislative sessions have progressed, we’ve seen more movements legislatively in repealing incentives or in rolling them back then we have in adopting new data center tax incentives.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently paused the state’s data center tax exemption.
DeWine said in a statement that he supports the legislature's work to study the issues, including benefits to communities that offer tax exemptions to data centers.
“As this work is ongoing, I believe it is appropriate for the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to pause its consideration of new data center tax exemptions while the full impact of data center growth in Ohio is being reviewed,” he said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has made a similar move. Although he praised the passage of the state’s data center tax incentives in 2019, he changed course in his State of the State speech this year.
“In the face of rising demand and surging prices, I’m proposing a two-year pause on authorization of new data center tax credits,” he said during the address.
This month, Pritzker announced that since the legislature failed to act, he would implement the tax incentive pause starting July 1.
“Illinois has an opportunity to continue leading in technological innovation and economic growth," he said in a statement, "but we also have a responsibility to protect working families and local communities as the data center industry rapidly expands."
He's now calling on legislators to advance comprehensive reforms, including establishing data center electricity rates, setting energy and water efficiency requirements and creating a framework for data centers to generate or pay for their own clean energy.
Five states, including Michigan, are considering a full repeal of their data center incentives, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Michigan's tax incentives for data centers went into effect just last year. State Rep. Dylan Wegela, a Democrat, is sponsoring legislation with Republican State Sen. James DeSana to repeal them.
“As people especially have started to see the bipartisan local pushback, a lot of legislators have changed their mind on this,” Wegela said.
But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer still supports data centers.
“I say they should be built in a place that makes sure that we protect consumers and ensure that ratepayers still get good rates and have access to the energy that they need and that we do it in a way that is really smart when it comes to protecting our natural resources – our water,” she said at a forum in April.
Wegela said the regulations for data centers aren’t strong enough in Michigan. He doesn’t think his legislation to repeal the incentives will pass. But he’s optimistic it will spur some action at the local level.
“I hope that the bills that we’ve introduced can convince as many local communities as possible to pass moratoriums and put in strong regulations and obstacles that these companies have to get around,” he said.
Should it be up to local governments?
These decisions surrounding data centers are often a heavy weight for individual communities to bear, according to Jonathan Coppess, the director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“This isn’t fair to put on a county board,” Coppess said.
He thinks the federal government should help regulate data centers. While states can help take off some of the pressure from local governments, he said, it can be challenging.
“I do think it’s a really difficult thing even for states,” Coppess said. “Water, electricity flows across state lines.”
That’s something local lawmakers are concerned about, too.
“The counties around us are not doing the same work that we’re doing, and they could easily put this on the border of our county,” said Stephanie Fortado, a Champaign County board member in Illinois, during the data center moratorium hearing in April. “And it impacts our water. It impacts our utility rates.”
Kate Stoll with the American Association for the Advancement of Science has worked with county commissioners who were trying to put guardrails in place for data centers when a developer presented a proposal. But when local leaders tried to slow it down, the developers went to the county next door and signed a deal, she said.
“They were trying to be deliberative and take their time,” she said, “and in the end, they got the externalities without the benefits.”
Federal legislation to pause data center development has been introduced, but the bill — sponsored by Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — is unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled Congress.
That likely means decisions about water, energy and large-scale development will remain in the hands of local and state governments, leaving a patchwork of laws from state to state and community to community.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
