00:00An Ohio town of 14,000 is about to vote on whether Amazon can build a 600-acre
00:06data center. Across the country, neighbors are suing, packing town halls, and helping kill
00:14projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Here is what is happening.
00:19In Trenton, Ohio, a Butler County city of about 14,000 people, voters will decide at the ballot
00:28box whether Amazon Web Services gets its data center. AWS has proposed 18 buildings on roughly
00:35600 acres of farmland, with about 1 gigawatt of peak capacity connected through Duke Energy.
00:43The company held a science fair-style open house at Edgewood Middle School,
00:48saying it wants to inform residents, not change minds, but a citizen-led charter amendment.
00:55Issue 17 would ban large-scale data centers, and it is on the November ballot. Trenton withdrew its
01:03annexation petition. St. Clair Township zoning officials passed a resolution banning data centers,
01:10and city council pulled tax-cut proposals that critics said could sway voters.
01:16Mayor Ryan Perry will also resign on January 1.
01:21That opposition is now making its way into courtrooms in Franklin County, Missouri.
01:28Two groups, the Pacific Root Coalition and the Franklin County Rural Coalition,
01:34along with neighboring landowners, have filed separate but similar lawsuits over data center
01:40rezoning approved on September 15.
01:42One project near Villa Ridge, beside the Shaw Nature Reserve, was approved unanimously.
01:50A second, south of Pacific off Highway O, passed two to one.
01:55Plaintiffs argue the rezoning is a legal spot zoning that benefits one property owner and does not
02:01match the county's master plan, and that no studies of environmental or utility impacts were done.
02:08They also claim improper notice and unreasonable limits on speakers at public hearings.
02:15A judge has issued a writ of certiorari in one case, and similar fights are underway in Festus
02:22and Montgomery County. Those fights are adding up to real money. A court's analysis updated October
02:3016 reports that local opposition has helped cancel two. $160 billion in U.S. data center projects.
02:39One example is in Illinois, where Karras Critical wanted to rezone plum farms.
02:45Rural land in Hoffman Estates. Residents of three towns pushed back.
02:50And the developer dropped the plan in late June.
02:53Amanda Pollard, a Barrington Hills resident who drove past the site every day, said the outcome
03:00shows that people can make a difference and that they do have a say in their community.
03:05But the report cautions that the wins may be temporary, because opponents may have to fight
03:11the same battles again at the state level.
03:15And the reason this fight keeps gaining momentum comes down to who pays for power.
03:21On October 7, the U.S. Department of Energy filed a statement at the Federal Energy Regulatory
03:28Commission. Reportedly its first such filing in at least five years, urging PJM interconnection
03:35to keep costs from shifting onto existing ratepayers.
03:39DOE says large loads like data centers, not households, should fund the generation and
03:46infrastructure they require.
03:48PJM wants to buy 6.8 gigawatts of new capacity to cover a shortfall from its 2028 to
03:562029 auction, but that procurement is on hold after FERC-flagged cost allocation problems PJM
04:04holds a special members' committee meeting October 22 and plans to refile its proposal
04:10by October 29.
04:14The pressure on the grid is only half the story, because water tells the other half.
04:20And in Georgia it may not be where you expect.
04:23Georgia Tech's Akanksha Menon estimates that generating electricity uses roughly 10 times more
04:29water than a data center's on-site cooling.
04:33In Mitchell County, NextEra proposed a 1,500-megawatt gas plant near Baconton that would draw about
04:401 million gallons a day from the Claiborne Aquifer, and residents including Lauren Dormany have sued.
04:48Meanwhile Georgia Power's plant Shearer, permitted to draw over 200 million gallons a day from the
04:55Osimulgee River, will stay online instead of retiring.
05:00A shift tied to data center demand, Altamaha Riverkeeper counts 33 data center campuses proposed in the
05:08Osimulgee Basin.
05:11State and local officials are taking notice, but they are not always acting.
05:16In Guilford County, North Carolina, commissioners heard from a packed room on Thursday about a
05:23proposed 180-day moratorium that would run through April 12, 2027.
05:30They did not vote.
05:31Instead, Commissioner Alan Perdue moved to postpone the decision to the next meeting,
05:37warning that a broad pause could hit broadband and emergency communications.
05:42Many speakers said six months was too short, and one demanded 32.
05:47In 2002, Susan Lindsay of the data center moratorium coalition urged a formal public advisory committee,
05:54while a high-point speaker warned that delays could drive jobs and tax revenue elsewhere.
06:00County staff say the current development ordinance does not even define a data center.
06:06And Chairman Skip Alston says the board is not rushing.
06:11Yet despite that regulatory wave, construction is pressing forward.
06:16In Taylor, Texas, Big Watt Digital and Powerhouse Data Centers secured approval of a development
06:23agreement for a 664-acre campus that could support up to 1 gigawatt of hyperscale capacity.
06:31The twist is power.
06:33Instead of waiting in line for the grid, the project plans dedicated, behind-the-meter generation
06:40fueled by natural gas.
06:42With power targeted for the first half of 2028, Big Watt co-founder and co-CEO Alex Hearn
06:49and President Keith Meyer lead the effort alongside Powerhouse, a division of American real estate
06:57partners.
06:57The approach reflects the pressure on the Texas grid, where ERCOT is tracking 438,000 megawatts
07:05of large load requests, about 89% of them from data centers.
07:11And the financial commitment behind that construction is staggering.
07:16In Van Buren Township, Michigan, the Planning Commission voted 5-1 on October 14 to approve the
07:24final site plan for Google's project cannoli near Detroit Metro Airport, a 1-gigawatt facility that
07:32could draw up to 3.6 million gallons of water a day. Google will pay for 480 megawatts of energy
07:40storage and 1.6 gigawatts of renewables. And the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a 20-year
07:48DTE energy contract. The Township and Wayne County agreed to half-price local taxes worth about $125
07:56million over 12 years. Google will also pay $15.4 million for local infrastructure, while neighbors
08:06report noise and dust. And a recall effort targets the Township Board.
08:19It helps us cover more of these stories.
