00:00Students in New Mexico just walked out of class to confront a data center project tied to $165 billion in
00:09bonds.
00:10Across the country, voters, courts, and city councils are pushing back as the build-out races ahead.
00:19In New Mexico, high school students walked out of class to take on one of the largest data center projects
00:26in the country.
00:27On Tuesday, about 200 students from the New Mexico School for the Arts left campus and marched to the state
00:35capitol in Santa Fe.
00:37Carrying signs that read We Can't Drink Data, they wrote letters to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and walked into a
00:45legislative water committee meeting.
00:48Their target is Project Jupiter, a data center under construction in Doña Ana County with Oracle as its main developer.
00:56Where commissioners approved $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds in a closed session, triggering lawsuits over open meetings violations.
01:09Organizers say the site sits within five miles of a high school, an elementary school, a middle school, and day
01:17cares.
01:17And advocates plan to push for bans before the legislative session in January.
01:24That anger is boiling over in California too.
01:28The Pittsburgh City Council in the Bay Area voted unanimously this week to impose a 45-day
01:35moratorium on the next two phases of the Aveo Data Center project.
01:39Planned on the former Delta View golf course, the first phase, approved back in 2024, is not affected.
01:49The pause takes effect immediately, and the council can extend it before it expires.
01:55The vote came after strong opposition from residents, who have been packing meetings since the summer.
02:01When hundreds showed up to protest the plan, resident Marta Rodriguez and advocates including Woody Little of Clean and Healthy
02:10California urged
02:11the city to act, for opponents, 45 days is a start, not a victory, because the council can still decide
02:20what happens when the clock runs out.
02:23That frustration is now making its way into courtrooms in Lonee's County.
02:29Two residents who live near a proposed data center site have sued the county commission,
02:34which approved the project about a week earlier.
02:38Their attorney, Arlene Richardson, argues the commission violated the State Open Meetings Act
02:44and failed to follow proper procedures.
02:47For a tax abatement under Chapter 9B,
02:50the residents are asking the court for an injunction that would stop the commission from taking any
02:56further action on the project until a judge decides whether the approval was legal.
03:02The case has already hit a snag.
03:05Circuit Judge Cleveland Poole recused himself.
03:08So another judge will be appointed.
03:11The developer has not been named in reporting.
03:14The fight echoes New Mexico,
03:16where Project Jupiter faces similar open meetings lawsuits.
03:21And the politics are following the protests.
03:25A late August YouGov and Economist poll found 63% of American adults do not want a
03:32data center built in their community.
03:34And a mid-September CNN poll found nearly two-thirds of registered voters say AI and data centers
03:41will be an extremely or very important factor in their vote.
03:46In Pennsylvania, residents of Springdale are fighting a 240-megawatt hyperscale project on a former
03:54coal plant site.
03:55In the Senate races, a Democratic-backed group spent $2.5 million on ads targeting Roger Marshall of
04:03Kansas and John Husted of Ohio.
04:07Allegheny County banned data centers over 25-megawatts on county land.
04:12And Texas Governor Greg Abbott paused development after rapid growth.
04:18Brookings scholar Darrell West expects the issue to stay in politics for years.
04:24The reason these fights keep escalating comes down to power.
04:28The Department of Energy has offered Constellation Energy up to $5 billion in conditional
04:35loans to add about 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by upgrading 11 existing
04:41reactors across eight plants in Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, including Braidwood, Byron,
04:50Clinton, Dresden, LaSalle, Quad Cities, Calvert Cliffs, and Limerick.
04:57The loan is not yet finalized.
05:00Constellation has committed more than $7 billion to add 1,080 megawatts.
05:06For buyers, Google is purchasing additional power from Limerick and four Illinois plants.
05:12Amazon is buying electricity from Calvert Cliffs.
05:16And META is effectively buying the entire Clinton plant.
05:20It shows how hyperscalers are racing to secure grid capacity for their AI data centers.
05:28The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
05:31Because water tells the other half.
05:34A new look at Arizona suggests the biggest water footprint may not be at the data centers
05:39themselves.
05:41Researchers at Arizona State University's Kyle Center say on-site use is lower than most people think.
05:48And Sarah Porter called the popular bottle of water per-prompt estimates not accurate.
05:54The larger demand comes from the power plants feeding them.
05:58A series study found water tied to data center electricity could rise by as much as 400
06:04percent to 14.5 billion gallons a year, enough for a city of 240,000 for more than two years.
06:13Yet the Arizona Corporation Commission does not require utilities to report water use at generating
06:20plants.
06:22And Phoenix's large water user ordinance covers anyone using 250,000 gallons a
06:28day or more.
06:31State and local leaders are writing the rules in real time.
06:35In southern Utah, the Iron County Commission voted unanimously on Monday to adopt new data
06:41center rules and repeal the state's first local moratorium, which had been set to expire
06:48November 22.
06:50There is no hard water cap, but sites using more than 50,000 gallons a day must submit a
06:56plan showing the extra use will not harm the aquifer.
07:01Power plants feeding data centers must sit a half mile from homes, hospitals, schools, and
07:09day cares.
07:10The Paiute Indian tribe of Utah said the county failed to conduct any real consultation, while
07:17resident Brian Penny warned demand may fall within five to seven years.
07:22Calling the build out a house of cards.
07:24The Antelope Data Center estimates 10.8 acre-feet of water a year for indoor use once it is operating.
07:34And despite the backlash, money keeps flowing toward new capacity.
07:39Hyperscale Data announced it has hired Newmark to arrange non-dilutive long-term debt financing
07:45for its Michigan AI Data Center campus.
07:49Operated through its subsidiary Alliance Cloud Services.
07:53The site has an initial 20 megawatts of critical AI compute under a master services agreement.
08:00With a California-based neocloud.
08:03With a right of first offer on another 32 megawatts that could bring the total to 52.
08:09The contract runs 10 years.
08:12With two five-year extension options.
08:15The company expects the first 10 megawatts to be energized in December.
08:19However, the financing amount and terms have not been announced.
08:24And Newmark's engagement is not a commitment to lend.
08:27Smaller than the hyperscale giants.
08:30Deals like this show how widely the neocloud model is spreading.
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