00:00Four hours of public comment, then shouting, and the vote passed anyway.
00:05Across the country this week, one county chairman broke a tie to kill a ban,
00:11and Texas froze every new data center hookup on its grid after connection requests climbed past 470 gigawatts.
00:21We begin in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,
00:25where Middlesex Township supervisors approved the first phase of what is described as the biggest data center project proposed in
00:34the state so far.
00:35Public comment ran nearly four hours, and the meeting ended in frustrated yelling once the plan passed.
00:42Only two supervisors cast the vote, because a third resigned last week.
00:48The approval clears six buildings as phase one of a 16-building campus known as PACS-1.
00:55Residents living near the site say substation construction has already made the area unbearable.
01:01Sarah Merritt described the sound as loud.
01:04Extremely loud.
01:06Earl Beam told the board he expected to die in the house he has lived in for years.
01:11And now is not sure he wants to live there.
01:15Supervisors said their decision rested on legal standards.
01:26That kind of anger is exactly what county commissioners are trying to manage.
01:31And in Bullock County, Georgia, it came down to one vote.
01:36The board split three to three on a text amendment that would have disallowed data centers as a
01:41permitted use and barred the county from issuing building permits for them.
01:47Commissioners Toby Connor, Nick Newkirk and Anthony Simmons voted for the ban.
01:53Ray Davis, Ray Mosley and Timmy Rushing voted against it.
01:58Chairman David Bennett then cast the deciding vote and killed the proposal.
02:02saying he was not for the idea of having a ban and that a ban, in his words, is not
02:09legally defensible.
02:11He argued the county needs to lower taxes and that data centers are an opportunity to grow the tax.
02:17Digest the existing moratorium, already extended through December 31st, remains in force.
02:25And the reason officials keep reaching for pauses comes down to the grid.
02:31Texas has become the first major American data center hub to freeze new grid connections entirely.
02:37While regulators work out how much of the demand attributed to the artificial intelligence boom
02:43actually exists.
02:46Requests to connect surged to 474 gigawatts,
02:50more than five times the state's peak demand.
02:53In 2023, that same queue measured 48 gigawatts.
02:58The industry calls the gap ghost demand.
03:02Developers file multiple speculative requests to hold queue positions cheaply.
03:07Without firm customers or funding behind them.
03:10Combine the queues nationally and the number tops 700 gigawatts.
03:15An order of magnitude beyond what the industry actually draws today.
03:19The Public Utility Commission and grid operator ERCOT will run the audit.
03:25And they aim to finish by December.
03:28Bullock and Middlesex are not isolated.
03:31A Midwest Newsroom investigation published this week traced organized data center opposition across
03:39Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.
03:43And found it uniting people who agree on almost nothing else.
03:47Gallup found 7 in 10 Americans oppose an artificial intelligence data center in their local area.
03:55In Tonganoxie, Kansas, roughly 100 residents filled a Leavenworth County planning meeting in shirts and signs.
04:03Opposing the thousand-acre project Bluestem.
04:06In Oto County, Nebraska, commissioners suspended data center permits for up to a year.
04:14In St. Charles, Missouri, the council passed a one-year moratorium after residents spent months trying to learn who was.
04:22Behind a 440-acre proposal, the applicant turned out to be Google.
04:28Political scientist Jacob Montgomery said the left worries about water and energy.
04:34The right about property rights and utility bills.
04:38The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
04:42Water tells the other half.
04:44And in Charlotte the two arrived together.
04:47City leaders opened the first of six community meetings this week.
04:51Gathering resident input while a 150-day pause on new data centers ticks down.
04:57That moratorium began on June 8 and is now more than halfway elapsed.
05:03The first session ran from 3 to 5 in the afternoon at the David Williamson Jr. Indoor.
05:09Pavilion at Hornets Nest Park.
05:12With a city task force in attendance alongside subject matter experts.
05:16Residents raised how much electricity and water these facilities consume.
05:21A pointed question in a city still operating under drought restrictions.
05:26Others focused on noise, traffic, and quality of life in the neighborhoods nearest the proposed sites.
05:34Five more sessions follow before the pause expires.
05:38In Amherst County, Virginia, a similar question is being decided out of public view.
05:45The Board of Supervisors held its regular meeting and then went into closed session to discuss a
05:51proposed data center and the county's new zoning rules.
05:55The core dispute is narrow but decisive.
05:58The applicant says its filing is a complete application.
06:02And the county says it is not.
06:04That determination controls whether the project falls under rules adopted before or after August.
06:11When supervisors voted to require special use permits for future data centers rather than allowing
06:18them by right, a special use permit means neighbors get a hearing and the board gets a vote.
06:25Without it, they may get neither.
06:27During public comment before the doors closed,
06:30one resident said it is disgusting to push this onto us knowing full well that no one here wants it.
06:38State legislators and county boards are taking notice.
06:42And in Lake County, Illinois, the pause is now one vote away.
06:47The county board's planning, building, zoning and environmental committee voted unanimously to
06:53recommend an eight-month moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas.
06:59Committee Chair Mara Altenberg said this is probably the number one issue people in America are
07:05talking about now.
07:07Board member Paul Frank said he raised the question back in December and the answers were not
07:13satisfactory.
07:15The moratorium, he said, gives the county time to do better.
07:19A packed public hearing and more than 1,300 written comments went into the record.
07:25Lake County has not received a single data center application yet.
07:29It is acting anyway, because an administrative deferral expires October 7th, and the full
07:36board meets September 8th, and the money behind all of this is now buying something more durable
07:43than goodwill.
07:45Frederick County, Maryland reached a $110 million agreement with Catelus, the developer behind the
07:52Frederick Digital Campus in Adamstown.
07:55County Executive Jessica Fitzwater called it an unprecedented win.
08:00Catelus agreed to shrink the campus from 18.3 million square feet to 15 million.
08:07Cut daily potable water use by nearly 80 percent, and set aside 433 acres as nature reserve.
08:16$40 million goes to a community center.
08:19$30 million to renovating Carroll Manor Elementary.
08:23$14.5 million to workforce training.
08:26In exchange, the county agreed to freeze zoning at the site.
08:30No future council can revisit the development rules.
08:34No matter how public sentiment shifts, residents already lost a referendum on this land at the
08:41Maryland Supreme Court in June.
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